6 minute read
Getting Ready For The Festive Season
by Boylen
Whether it’s your first Christmas and New Year running a pub, or your fiftieth, it’s always good to check you are fully prepared for peak season.
Many hotels have their own checklist. For those that don’t, Hotel SA offers a few suggestions to get you started.
Do The Basics
Watch your costs. Some Xmas menus are released eight months in advance, with set prices. There is a danger that some costs will increase during this time. If, for example, the price of beef soars, how will you ensure that you retain your margins?
As you add temporary staff to cater for peak demand, make sure your employment contracts are all in order.
Remind and train staff about their responsible service of alcohol obligations. The festive season does not dilute your obligations.
If certain dates are quiet, give them a special theme and then use your database to conduct email marketing.
Make sure you are using internal promotions (posters, TV screens etc) to publicise the right events (that is, the dates that aren’t filling as fast as you would like).
You can also promote the fact that some dates are sold out. Nothing prompts people to book like scarcity.
Plug your Christmas menus and other promotions on social media.
If you are really nervous that numbers are down, harness the power of online advertising. Make sure you localise your ads, select the best keywords and use any profiling options (eg. tradies, white collar workers, female, male etc).
Introduce a deposit for peak days in order to limit “no shows”.
Also, use automated technology through your booking platform – or organise a member of staff to phone each reservation contact – to ensure you aren’t faced with empty tables.
Advertise your opening hours, including the bottle shop.
Reorganise your bottleshop so that easy gift ideas that attract good margin are prominently displayed, so that busy shoppers can ‘grab and go’.
Does your Xmas tree reflect your hotel? Many hotels have been beautified in recent years, so make sure you aren’t still using Xmas decorations from the 1980s. The same goes for those elf hats that staff love to wear!
If Christmas and New Year are shaping up to be a resounding success, look further forward. Can you repeat that success with other festive events in 2024, such as introducing Chinese New Year and Diwali, both of which are celebrated by a large number of people in Australia.
Care For Staff
With full bookings and hectic days, the festive season means long hours for your staff. While everyone else is having fun, they are experiencing peak workload. With staff shortages affecting many hotels, the preChrismas period is the time to be putting plans in place to be able to respond when chefs and other key staff fall sick.
Consider cross-training, so that staff can be moved into other roles to fill gaps when required. Keep an eye on rostering, wages and hours. Are they where they should be? Don’t over-staff in quieter times. This is the time to let staff have a break – and keep your wages bill down.
The AHA|SA has resources for stressed staff (and owners) on its website. You can also listen to a series of great podcasts here. Helping staff manage their stress and work-life balance is important in 2023.
Buy Cheap But Watch Cashflow
Smart publicans buy big when prices are cheap. The lead-up to the party season often sees good discounts. There are stories of hotel owners filling their home garage, shed and spare rooms with product they bought in November but won’t use until well into the new year.
It makes sense to focus on essentials. Don’t go on a spending spree for something that might go out of fashion - or expire.
Keep a future eye on cashflow. Your bank balance might seem healthy during this peak period, but if your cash position has been poor leading up to Christmas and New Year, use the increased levels of business to get back into the black, rather than buying on promotions that could strain your cash position when business can be quiet.
Food Presentation
With many new guests entering hotels during Christmas and New Year, it’s a wonderful opportunity to capture repeat business by ensuring a memorable experience. If your target audience appreciates large serves, then how you present meals makes a difference.
In a nutshell, to please lovers of “quantity”, spread food over a plate, rather than stack it.
This is because “consumers perceive portions as smaller… when foods are presented vertically (ie stacked on the plate) versus horizontally (ie spread across the plate),” according to food researchers patrons use the surface area of the portion as a way to compute how large the portion is. So a schnitzel cut in two and stacked would be perceived as being smaller than the same sized schnitzel left whole.
As researchers Courtney Szocs and Sarah Lefebvre explain, “portions presented vertically have a smaller surface area”
They cited previous research: “size perceptions is driven by the surface area of the portion being more salient than the height when individuals look down at a plate of food, as they typically do when seated at a table.”
Noise Control
Managing noise bleed within your venue is critical. Patrons in the dining room don’t want to shout to be heard, or be drowned out by revellers in a nearby bar. As mentioned previously, it’s also likely that you will have a surge in visitors who haven’t visited your pub before, so it’s important to control noise to win them over as repeat customers.
One common problem is that many upgraded dining rooms have done away with carpet and soft furnishings. They have been replaced with hard surfaces that are easy to clean but they reflect sound, rather than absorb it.
If you have a problem with sound levels, it may be that your furnishings are absorbing as little as 5% to 10% of the noise.
The good news is that it is a relatively simple process to retrofit acoustic panels. Many venues choose fabric styles and recess them into the ceiling, matching shapes and colours.
Acoustic experts can tell you in advance how many panels would be required and what the noise reduction effect would be.
