REFLECTIONS ON COVID-19 & PLANS FOR THE FUTURE

THIS MONTH, DRAM SPOKE TO SEVERAL KEY OPERATORS TO FIND OUT HOW BUSINESS HAS BEEN SINCE THEY REOPENED, HOW THEY ARE MANAGING TO BRING STAFF BACK FROM FURLOUGH, WHICH NEW TECHNOLOGY THEY ARE USING - AS WELL AS WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS NOW THAT EAT OUT TO HELP OUT IS OVER AND THE FURLOUGH SCHEME IS TAPERING OFF. BY JASON CADDY

JOHN BURNS

OWNER BLOC+ GLASGOW

We are operating at a 72-seated capacity in a venue with a 190 total legal capacity, which is not bad considering we had 78 seats before restrictions came in. We were able to keep more seats by shuffling things around and moving out the sound decks and the DJ table. We are now doing in excess of 100 covers per day compared to around 400 pre-pandemic. We made a decision not to take any pre-bookings. If you go down the two-hour slot route, say, I feel it can encourage binge drinking as customers quickly order more drinks at the end of their time slot before moving on. And what happens if you get a two-hour booking and they only stay for 45 minutes? Then you’re left with a dead table. And if the food takes, say 45 minutes to arrive in a two-hour slot when it’s busy, it can leave customers feeling cheated and this can lead to animosity. That’s why we continued to operate a first-come, firstserved system. We looked at all apps and decided against all of them. If you’re busy for food, and if you have 10 tables arrive in space of 10 minutes, all the orders coming through at once will overwhelm the kitchen. You need staff on the floor interacting with customers to regulate the flow of orders to the kitchen as well as knowing which food is for whom so that they don’t have to ask the customers in each party. Apps also impact negatively on tips. We have metal QR codes on tables for contact and trace, which once submitted bring up the menus. This is free (apart from getting the metal signage made) and is a useful tool for the future because we can adapt it to promote live events etc. All 25 staff at Bloc+ were furloughed and some are back full time and some are on flexible furlough and I only had to let go of two staff because they weren’t comfortable with coming back to work. But once furlough ends I think it’s going to be apocalyptic and the biggest disaster to the trade in living memory. How is a business that is turning over 40 per cent of what it used to do expected to survive? I think there is going to be mass redundancies and I know lots of people are being laid off already. We are getting 10 new job applications a day - which is what we used to get a month pre-COVID. We are a live music venue that puts on 400 bands a year and if it weren’t for our food offering we would be in desperate trouble. Eat Out to Help out as made us marginally busier and I understand that this has proved to be a huge benefit to those that aren’t ordinarily busy for food whereas we were and still are. I think that the restrictions on background noise are having the opposite effect to what they are intended for. I think that low-level music acts as a buffer to help groups hear what is being said in their conversation bubble because the music stops conversations from other ‘bubbles’ wafting over. Whereas now customers have to compete and so people are talking louder.

REFLECTIONS ON COVID-19 & PLANS FOR THE FUTURE

KEVIN CAMPBELL

CO-FOUNDER (WITH TONI CARBAJOSA) Rioja, Halloumi, Pickled Ginger, Kilmurry & Co, and La Rotunda, Cranside Kitchen. He also operates Bibimbap GLASGOW

We managed to save about 60 to 70 jobs because we opened Cranside Kitchen on Tunnel Street beside the North Rotunda building in Finnieston. On a good Saturday, we are doing 2000 covers and this has injected some extra cashflow into the business. We also now have 170 staff back at work across the business, having opened our city centre venues first followed by Rioja, Pickled Ginger, and Halloumi. Eat out to Help Out was amazing. It turned the week on its head with other days not being quite so healthy sales-wise, but that’s not a complaint, and we are extending it ourselves across all venues in September. It’s also now full steam ahead for opening/extending another five venues in the next 12 months. Bibimbap on West Nile Street is being extended into the neighbouring premises, taking it from 26-seater to 70, and will open in the new year. We are also on target to open Katsu on West Nile Street in October. We got a few business grants from the council during lockdown which we needed as, like everybody else, our cash flow was immediately turned off and I can’t really fault how the government has handled this situation, between furlough and the grants that were made available. I want to try and be as positive as I can be about the future and the way I look at it, things move really quickly in hospitality and I’m hopeful that once furlough has ended, the industry will have moved on again and things will have picked up because customers will be more used to the situation and accepting of it, and, well, just get on with it. We were using apps before all of this started because of our delivery business that we built up over eight years and which now employs 50 drivers. We have also been using Open Table for 11 years and it’s very good and very easy to use.

LAUREN CLEGG

Co-owner (with husband Callum) The Giddy Goose & The White Goose Dundee

The Giddy Goose is trading but The White Goose is closed for a three-month refurbishment. Between The Giddy Goose bar, the beer garden, and the upstairs space, we are doing between 150 – 200 covers on a weekday, increasing to 350 – 400 at the weekend. Prior to lockdown, we were a 60/40 food-led operation but since we reopened I’d say that we are 70/30 wet-led. Why the change? I think it’s because we were one of the first bars in Dundee to reopen a beer garden and so this attracted lots of new customers that have stuck with us. We have also expanded our gantry and have a brand-sponsored grass wall, which has just switched from Havana to Beefeater gin. Because of the White Goose refurbishment where we are upping the covers from 35 to 50 and giving in a bright and airy new colour scheme, we had to let a couple of staff go. Everybody else was absorbed into The Giddy Goose. No-shows have been a big problem for our fellow Dundee operators as well as us, and weekends can be a nightmare with up to 50 no-shows, but we are lucky in that we get a lot of walk-ins so we can usually fill them. The trouble is customers are booking multiple places on the same night to hedge their bets, and then, perhaps after a few drinks they either forget to phone is or just don’t bother to. Technology-wise, we always used Open Table – it’s easy for customers to use as well as us because it gives us a clear seating plan and we can easily see who is in and who is arriving, etc. But I have to say that during this whole situation, Facebook has been the biggest godsend. Most customers have it and it’s free and easy to use.

SCOTT MURRAY

Cru Holdings Inverness Co-owner Angels Share, Bar One, Scotch and Rye, The Keg, Dows Bar, The Classroom, Prime

We furloughed all 108 staff and most operators I know do seem to have brought back their entire workforce. In terms of how things will pan out once furlough ends, I think it will come down to how the market reacts now that Eat Out to Help Out has stopped and whether or not there is a second wave. Some businesses will struggle post furlough, but we don’t envisage any redundancies because we have the hours to give the staff. There may be a falling away in some consumer confidence and there’s no doubt that this scheme has championed this. To a point. Thanks to Eat Out to Help Out, our blended sales are100 per cent up on last year, and in some of our venues where there is less space because of social distancing rules, it’s 60 to 70 per cent. As a group, I would say that we are performing at 85 per cent on last year week on week. I would caveat this by saying that this is not down to a lack of demand – there’s a three-week week wait for tables in some of our venues and we would get more in people in we would. However, we also run a travel agency and the market seemed fairly buoyant and people were still making plans into next year. Until they shut Spain down. That’s when things changed and people started to become more cautious and I can see a parallel in our industry. We have been cautious in the targets we are setting our managers, and as a group, we only expect to break even between now and March 2021. We are not being greedy. We were able to take the available government grants and also take a bank loan just to have the money there should we need it and then if we don’t we can pay it back in 12 months. We are using software, such as an app from Appspace, to give staff more autonomy. Say a glass-washer breaks down they can scan in the code and troubleshoot it themselves. This is also good for prompts around paperwork and fire checks – all automated checklists in fact. There hasn’t been as high a demand for table ordering using QR codes and despite keeping labour costs down, customers just aren’t buying it. I still maintain that customers come out for the hospitality experience and this is why they want human interaction and to look into a person’s eye when they order and especially at the moment. This is why the ban on background music is also baffling because it impacts on the customer experience by sucking out the atmosphere. Pubs need something to break the silence. We haven’t seen this impact out business though yet because demand in the Highlands trumps a lack of atmosphere. People here want to go out and enjoy themselves and I am optimistic about the future because I don’t see this going away. Domestic tourism has also filled the seats that would otherwise be left by a lack of trips from abroad. I think that we can keep up the momentum in November and December as the Christmas trading period starts, although it will be tricky with social distancing and we are working on some workarounds, which I’m keeping under wraps. Then there’s the employment bonus scheme in January. Then let’s see what the business landscape looks like then and if normality looks like it’s restoring.

DAVID WITHER

Chairman Montpeliers Edinburgh

We have just opened our sixth venue, Eastside on George Street, which is now only open four nights per week. It joins Tiger Lily, Montpeliers of Bruntsfield, Indigo Yard, Rabble, Candy Kitchen & Bar. Lulu is the only one of our venues that remains shut. We were anticipating 50 per cent of normal sales but we are achieving 80 per cent, so we are very buoyed yet remaining cautious at the same time. Eat Out to Help Out is now stopped, winter is setting in and there is no end in sight to the one-meter social distancing rule. We would expect to be operating at 75 per cent of normal sales going forward until the social distancing rules are relaxed. The reality is 25 per cent less staff, but this won’t necessarily mean redundancies. We furloughed all 300 staff and they are all now back. We were able to relocate Lulu staff in other businesses and make nobody redundant because of natural attrition, like English students not being able to return. When furlough ends it’s going to be incredibly difficult for the industry as a whole, compounded by the threat of a second wave. The late-night sector, once it eventually does re-open, will take a long time to get back to normal and this is a worry. Eat Out to Help Out was a brilliant scheme. It incentivised people to step out of the house and test the water and I would like to think that they all felt safe in our hands. We are almost definitely going to be continuing with something similar going forward which will be funded internally and reviewed on a month-by-month basis thereafter.

IAN MCCOLM

Owner Bowlarama, Tiki Bar Glasgow

Tiki Bar has been doing really well. We have 200 booked in for this Saturday including bar bookings and it’s all down to our new beer garden which has added another 70 seats, which will be 200 once we can accommodate people standing again, on top of a 198 capacity. We were planning the beer garden anyway, which was supposed to be ready for Euro 2020, now Euro 2021. Eat Out to Help Out has been brilliant too, although not so much for guys with traditional pubs – surely these guys deserved something too? Bowlarama has only just opened so it’s too early to tell how that is doing, but at least people can listen to bowling pins flying through the air on account of that fairly ludicrous no background music policy. We got a bounce-back loan and a grant for Tiki Bar but Bowlarama was too big on rateable value to qualify for anything. As for the furlough scheme - all I can say is thank you Chancellor Rishi, and if he were a benign dictator, I’d vote for him. We furloughed 20 Bowlarama staff and 14 Tiki Bar staff and they are all back bar one whose bother has immunity issues which is absolutely fair enough. As for when the furlough scheme ends, I don’t envisage any redundancies and mainly because of the new beer garden. Sustaining business depends on when phase four in the route-map out of lockdown kicks in and when nightclubs are allowed to reopen and when the public builds up more confidence around using public transport. Offices and call centres need to come back too. A friend of mine has a cafe on Glasgow’s Ingram Street and 30 per cent of what was a vibrant business has been wiped out because there are no offices open. My view is we must reopen eventually and I favour the Swedish model by protecting the elderly and letting the rest of us use our common sense. We use the Open Table app for online booking and payment for bowling in Bowlarama, I have just ordered Orderman tablets for both venues to speed things up and we did struggle slightly with speed of service at start and got some bad reviews as a result, which was a shame considering we were trying to find our feet again after a global pandemic. Order apps are okay but we have over 200 rums and we are never going to upload all of them to this type of app. You also can’t tell if a person’s drunk if they order by app.

IAIN DEMPSTER

Licensee The Horseshoe Inn Peebles

We furloughed all 23 staff and they are now all back, plus we have taken on more staff because of the success of Eat Out to Help Out. We have been doing 250 – 300 covers Monday to Wednesday, 120 covers on Thursday, 250 Friday and Saturday and about 180 on Sunday. By end of August compared to last August our sales were up 15-20 per cent. We also got a business grant. I’m optimistic about the future, and even for when furlough ends because we have generated a lot of new business these past few months. These customers now know what we do and they like it, and see that we also offer value deals as well as winning their consumer confidence with the safety measures we put in place and by serving the local community during lockdown. We allowed villagers to use or suppliers for products like vegetables and so on and so we became a hub for the local community many of whom are elderly and shielding. We also got a small reimbursement for providing the local community with free meals. I feel that businesses surviving after lockdown will have a lot to do with how they are operating now and if they have remained closed, which I totally understand, then they may struggle more to find their feet. We have upped our technology use and I was switched onto Padology through by being a member of The BII and I have to say it is brilliant. I was already using their till system and I contacted them to ask if they were linking with an app company and they said, funnily enough, we are developing our own system that we now use for our outside tables and sends orders straight to the till. They are a great bunch of guys and so proactive.