BUSINESS, FINANCE LEGAL

PUBS AND RESTAURANTS – NEXT CHALLENGES

By Jim Rayner

It’s never been easy to run a profitable pub, restaurant or café. Even in normal times the failure rate of hospitality businesses is around three times higher than most other sectors. Success has always depended upon hard graft, attention to detail and a firm grasp of some important numbers. The last of the COVID restrictions should soon be gone but hospitality businesses now face a new set of challenges: • Costs are rising – particularly food plus dramatic increases in energy costs • Government support being withdrawn – the temporary

VAT cut to be scrapped in

April • Staff shortages – increasing the cost of attracting and keeping good people • Tax rises – National

Insurance paid by employers rises by 1.25% in April Some of these changes – food and drink increases and the VAT change – affect variable costs. Those are the costs that vary according to how many meals you serve. Others affect fixed costs, which don’t change as you sell more meals. And let’s not forget, restaurant customers are facing their own cost of living squeeze with increased gas bills, a 1.25% rise in NI and possible mortgage rate increases on the horizon.

All of which means hospitality businesses are facing big cost increases just at a time that many customers have less cash to spend. Setting profitable prices is never easy but it’s now even more challenging. Here are some golden rules: 1. Don’t be tempted to put off reviewing prices. The longer you delay, the larger the increases you will eventually have to make. And your regular customers (who are of course your best ones)

probably won’t object to small incremental changes but may be shocked by a big price rise. 2. Don’t cut prices (or fail to pass on cost increases) in response to falling demand; it will nearly always make your business even less profitable. Restaurants that cut average prices by 5% typically need to attract at least 8% more business to be better off. And price conscious customers are not loyal. 3. Don’t concentrate on your total sales. The key income measure to focus on is the margin after taking off the

cost of ingredients (food and drink). That’s what you have available to cover your overheads and leave you with a profit. 4. Know your breakeven level, the number of covers you need to serve to avoid making a loss. 5. Look at ways to make more use of your capacity by attracting budget-conscious diners at off-peak times. To help pub, restaurant and café owners set profitable prices, I’ve put together a free interactive calculator you can access on my website www.james-rayner. co.uk.

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EMAIL SET-UP AND SYNCHRONISATION (PC, MOBILES AND TABLETS)

By James Flynn, Milborne Port Computers

We get asked a lot to resolve email issues, especially where the user wants to use multiple devices like a PC as well as a laptop, smartphone and tablet. By the time they get to us they’ve usually managed to tie themselves in knots and we have to start back at the beginning. To help understand the difficulty, let’s take a look at how email works.

Email, just like a text message on a mobile, is a piece of written text maybe with attachments that gets bundled up and sent to an email address elsewhere. Your device (PC, laptop, etc.) sends the message to your SMTP server (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol for those that are interested!). The email then whooshes off to the intended recipient via the internet where it arrives at the incoming mail server and drops neatly into the recipient’s mailbox on that server. So far so good? Now comes the more complicated bit …

The recipient has basically three ways of getting that email:

1. WebMail – all mail is stored on the server and is viewed as a webpage. Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo were the pioneers of this technology and are probably still the most common. Most ISPs now provide this functionality with varying degrees of success but nearly all have on-page advertising that can be a real pain! 2. POP Mail – via a mail client like Outlook, Windows Mail, MAC Mail, Thunderbird, etc. POP stands for Post Office Protocol for those that are interested, and this is where the client goes to the incoming mail server and says ‘hello, any mail for me?’; the server then sends any mail to the client and the mail is then viewable by the user. Importantly, this is a one-way transaction and having been completed, the server is then cleared. Most ISP-based email (BT, Tiscali, TalkTalk, Virgin) traditionally used this method.

3. IMAP Mail – again via a mail client but using Internet Message Access Protocol that allows multiple connections via multiple devices using twoway transactions. The mail is always stored on the server and each client replicates that information. In this way if you ‘read’ an email on one device, it shows as having been ‘read’ on another device. Equally, if you send an email from one device then that sent email

A WONKY WEEK AT WORK

By Patricia Marks

Balderdash, crikey, crumbs, bother, drat, heck, gosh; these are just some of the printable expletives I have used in this last week. It has been a week of weeks – Murphy’s Law kicked in big style, and I got lost in it!

To remind you, Murphy's Law (‘If anything can go wrong, it will’) was born at Edwards Air Force Base in 1949 at North Base. It was named after Captain Edward A. Murphy, an engineer working on Air Force Project MX981, a project designed to see how much sudden deceleration a person can stand in a crash. One day, after finding that a transducer was wired wrong, he cursed the technician responsible and said, ‘If there is any way to do it wrong, he'll find it.’ The contractor's project manager kept a list of ‘laws’ and added this one, which he called Murphy's Law. By the end of the week, I feel it was a self-fulfilling prophecy – I was inadvertently creating the ‘wrongness’ and taking it with me as I could not let go of each issue before I moved through the week to the next thing. I arrived at every transaction, meeting, conversation, email and decision in the wrong frame of mind and could not see straight and probably made things worse. So, what can you do to get back on track?

Immediately:

• Remember the next day is a new day with new possibilities and opportunities. • A good night’s sleep is usually helpful. • Stay hydrated to keep your body working properly. • Talk to someone you trust and sound it out.

• Control your emotions, when things have gone into ‘wrong’ mode, leave emotions at the door. They completely get in the way of you making rational, conscious, realistic decisions.

• Stay calm and retain your composure. • Analyse the situation, get deep into the reasons why it happened, and be reasonable about what you’re going to do about it. If you can recognise and define what the issue is, you’ve done half the work.

Medium term:

Practising positive thinking helps too. The power of a positive business owner mindset can be the key to success. Positivity has been linked to increased ability

Support will include:

to solve problems; more energy; increased resiliency; better decision making, and can even be infectious! With all these benefits, it seems crucial that a positive mindset should be the foundation upon which any business is built.

Long Term:

Take time out to think clearly about the bigger picture and what it is you need for each step along the way to execute your business goals. Be discerning of the people around you – which person is the best at what job, which clients will take you the furthest and what it is that you feel you should be doing to make your business more efficient.

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is shown in the ‘sent items’ folder of all other devices, ditto for deleted, drafts, etc. All WebMail and good ISPs provide this functionality today. This, folks, is where the knots usually get tied up: different devices using different protocols – one PC using POP mail and clearing the server, one smart phone using IMAP and trying to replicate. If you’ve got yourself tied up, most providers have help documents that describe in detail how to set up each device properly. Just read carefully and follow the stepby-step instructions.

The choice as always is yours, but if you think you need advice, you know where to come.

Strategy

This programme will look at business and organisational strategy in line with key goals and objectives.

Management

Time will be made to look at management and staffing processes, procedures and structure.

For more information:

care@sbacic.org

Finance

Each organisation will undertake a financial assessment to establish their current position.

HOW MUCH DO I NEED IN MY PENSION TO RETIRE?

By Mark Salter, Fort Financial Planning

The question of ‘how much do I need in my pension to retire?’ is something I’m asked frequently but it’s not a question you can answer unless you know what retirement looks like for you. When I work with clients, I ask them to spend time thinking about what retirement looks like for them personally and what they want to achieve. Here are some things to think about before you can start to answer this difficult question.

Setting a retirement date

Are you planning to retire on your 65th birthday or is your goal to retire as early as you can? Some people now prefer to transition into retirement over a number of years by reducing their hours or the number of days they work each week. You may be thinking ‘I’d like to retire tomorrow but can I afford it?’

If you begin to plan early enough, you can decide when you will retire or reduce your hours, rather than waiting until you reach your pension retirement date or state pension age.

Building a budget

Once you have a date to plan for, you then need to consider carefully how much you want to spend each year. Is £20,000 enough or will £60,000 a year provide you with the lifestyle you’d like, enable you to travel and eat out more often? Are there sports and hobbies you’d like to take up or continue into retirement? Without work, you have more time to enjoy yourself, but will this come at an additional cost? Building a budget for your retirement is a good starting point but also think about how your spending habits might change as you grow older. When will you finish paying the mortgage or will you still be helping fund your children’s education?

State Pension

With so many changes to the state pension in recent years, have you obtained a state pension forecast from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)? This can be obtained simply online or by completing an application form which then gives you the important information about when you will start to receive it, how much you’re likely to receive and whether you are on track to get the maximum level of income. From April 2022 the new state pension can provide up to £185 per week which is £9,628 per year.

Pensions, savings and investments

When planning for retirement, don’t just look at the size of your pension fund; it is the combination of all your personal savings, investments, pensions and other assets like a business or properties that can help provide you with income and capital during your retirement.

You may have accumulated several different pensions during your career, invested into ISAs, purchased shares and have a number of different savings accounts. All of these need to be considered as part of your retirement pot and it’s a good idea to have a record of these in one place. A personal net worth statement can be put together on a simple spreadsheet and should be reviewed regularly. What are they worth now and what value are they likely to be in the future? If you’re investing into a pension on a regular basis, the pension provider should be able to provide a statement of what level of benefits you may receive at a future date.

As a starting point, the very basic rule is that if you’re retiring at 65, you’re likely to need a pension fund of 20 to 25 times the amount of income you’ll need each year. Based on a withdrawal rate of 4%, you may need pensions and investments of £500,000 to provide an income of £20,000 per annum.

Planning for retirement

Planning is the key to answering the difficult question of how much do I need in my pension to retire, but those that have a plan are likely to know when and how much they’ll need. It then gives them the confidence to enjoy their retirement when it comes.

At Fort Financial Planning, we work with individuals and business owners to build and help implement their personal retirement plans. If you’re interested in finding out more about financial planning and being able to visualise your financial future, then contact FFP on 01935 813322.

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WHY YOU SHOULD LEAVE A DIGITAL LEGACY?

By Adam Hillier, Battens Solicitors

Trying to access the important data locked into the phone of a deceased relative can be a logistical nightmare. But now Apple has launched a new Digital Legacy program to overcome this problem. Senior Associate Solicitor Adam Hillier reports.

Advances in mobile phone technology have seen us progress from just a telephone resembling a small brick into the sleek multi-purpose devices that many of us now use. There really is an app for everything, easily downloadable, straight onto your phone.

All this data remains locked safely within the phone through a combination of passwords, unique thumbprints or other security measures. However, such protection can mean that without careful forward planning, a sudden unexpected death of a family member could lead to their mobile phone blocking access to their personal or professional material. Under the iCloud Terms of Service, the deceased person’s data would effectively die with them.

Apple is now attempting to simplify this problem for users of iPhones, iPads, MacBooks and other such devices. In its recent iOS update (15.2), it has introduced its new Digital Legacy program. a message via their phone to a maximum of five people requesting that they become legacy contacts. They are most likely to be family members or friends but could also perhaps be trusted professionals like solicitors or accountants who may have been appointed as executors to act in their will.

When the legacy contact is notified, the message shares a unique access key with them, and this is then automatically stored in their Apple ID settings. Additionally, Apple does still require proof of death via a death certificate meaning that nobody can attempt to access the data whilst the individual is still alive. It would be prudent to check with your legacy contact that they are happy to have this responsibility before sending the message and if they do not own an apple device themselves or perhaps it is too old to update to iOS 15.2, you can instead print a copy of the access key for them or alternatively leave such information with your will. would be able to access your Apple account data from the phone in a simplified and organised manner, rather than a timely, expensive and likely unsuccessful legal battle with Apple, who would fight to protect their customer’s privacy.

At Battens, we would suggest that when you prepare new wills or update existing ones, careful consideration is given to your digital data and suitable precautions put in place to assist loved ones after death.

For more information, contact Adam Hillier at adam.hillier@ battens.co.uk or on 01935 846165.

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COMPENSATION FOR WORK ACCIDENTS

Rod Dutton, Solicitor

Rod Dutton is a Fellow of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers. He deals with injury compensation claims but with a particular interest in accidents at work.

If you have an accident at work, you are not automatically entitled to compensation. Employers must insure their employees against accidents, but remember it is the employer that is insured. For the employee to recover compensation he or she must prove that the employer accepts legal responsibility or ‘liability’ for the accident.

Your lawyer will be looking at three things; cause, breach of duty and damage.

Cause

In most cases the cause of an accident is clear, but the claimant has to prove the cause, or the claim fails.

A worker might suffer from back pain which he or she believes has been caused by repetitive lifting at work. If the evidence casts doubt on this, the claim will be a struggle. The employee has to show that the repetitive process either caused or contributed to the injury.

Breach of duty

An employer has a duty of care to protect the employees. The employer must: • Provide a safe system of working • Provide a safe place of work • Provide competent colleagues • Provide adequate training • Assess risks

Your solicitor will be looking to work out whether the employer can be criticised on any of these counts. If so, then the employer will have been in breach of their duty of care to the worker and a claim is likely to suceed.

An employer must assess risks and act on the findings of the assessment. A failure by the employer to assess risk or to assess it properly is often the key to a successful personal injury claim.

Damage

Damage includes injury compensation and any financial losses that reasonably flow from the accident. Typically, these losses will include a claim for loss of earnings, other financial losses, such as medical expenses, travel costs and possibly care costs.

Cause and damage are often closely interconnected. It is for the claimant to prove that the damage claimed has been caused by the accident in question.

It is a sad fact that there are upwards of half a million accidents at work in the UK every year. 100+ are fatal accidents.

The figures for 2020, are these: • 700,000 accidents • 65,427 more serious accidents • 111 fatal accidents • 38.8 million working days lost to accident or work-related illness.

Humphries Kirk offers free initial advice on all accident compensation enquiries. We can offer no win no fee. For advice

please call Rod Dutton on 01305 251007, or email him on r.dutton@hklaw.uk or any other member of our litigation team.

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If through no fault of your own, you have suffered accidental injury or medical malpractice, speak to one of our highly experienced personal injury solicitors.

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