A slice of life
The beginning of this month saw Globe managers John and Sally Hunt return from a well-deserved family holiday in the sun, only to be thrown right back into the breach as they arrived just one day before the biggest event the new-look pub has hosted so far - the Overton Bonfire.
This had always been an event in the calendar, with the entire village gathered at the Globe on 5 November for a party and a huge bonfire, but previous landlords had stopped doing it until the Hunts arrived. "It's a village thing and a community thing," John Hunt says. "This pub was the meeting point and, as a result of management over the past few years, it's no longer that - we hope to put that right."
He adds: "If they see some change in the place and realise that the pub is prepared to put its money where its mouth is, then it can only do good by creating goodwill."
John was noticeably nervous as the final preparations were being made for the party but, as it worked out, it was a successful night. They set a target of £2,000 for food and drink on the night, but in fact took £2,800, and that was with just a barbecue for food.
With the Hunts back in harness, there are more long-range issues that need to be addressed at the Globe, most noticeably the food gross profit - one of the few things in the pub not above target. That target is 52.5% but it is constantly coming in at about 4.3% below that, which translates into thousands of pounds of lost profit since the Globe reopened.
"The whole point of carveries is that they are about consistent volume, and they have to be very tightly controlled," says John. "But we've failed quite miserably to do that, mainly because we can never tell how many carveries we're going to be doing."
The figures bear this out. For example, during one week in October, the Globe sold eight carvery meals on the Monday and 30 on Tuesday. On Monday the following week there were 21, and on the Tuesday 57. That means the gross profit target isn't being met simply due to carvery over-portioning and the waste of meat and vegetables.
A carvery works on a pence-per-cover basis. When John Hunt worked for Toby, for example, the target was £1.20 for meat and 35p for vegetables. "And that includes everything," he explains. "Whatever we wasted, overcooked or threw away at the end of the night all contributed to how much we made. Now, we can't get to the £1.20 levels of profit, because we can't get the meat prices Bass gets. Our meats are a lot more expensive because we're a single business."
The Globe charges £5.95 for a carvery meal, so to get the target 52.5% profit per customer the Hunts need to be spending £1.50 on meat and 50p on vegetables. But the inconsistent cover numbers mean that there is a lot of wastage due to overpreparation.
John says there are many solutions to these problems. "Diners, maybe, expect huge portions," he says. "When we first opened, we wanted to create a good impression and everyone got a plateful of meat. We've now told the chefs to cut down on the amount they first put on the plate and then give the customer the opportunity to ask for more, rather than giving them loads to begin with."
And the same principles have to be applied to the vegetables. "With the vegetables," John continues, "we've tried to get keener on buying those that are cheap at the moment. For example, we used to buy broccoli, which is nice to see on a carvery, but it's very expensive and it doesn't hold for long."
The main problem, though, is finding a way to get a regular volume of diners. "Our other main-course items make the target profit because we've got a good idea on the volumes we need," John says, "but with the carvery we just don't know that. The only day we know for sure that we're going to do big carvery numbers is Sunday."
Do all these problems mean that they might consider getting rid of the carvery at some point? "I can't see us getting to that," John says. "First of all, because it cost a lot of money to put in, and second, it is a unique selling point. We just have to try a bit harder and think a lot harder about how we get that selling point across to the public. Clearly, adverts in the papers and leaflet drops haven't worked to the extent we want them to."
The large adverts and inserts placed in the local paper last month emphasising the carvery and, particularly, party bookings for Christmas have failed to attract the desired response. "So far, after all that, we've had six bookings for the whole of December, and that's pretty disappointing," John says.
The explanation for this, though, may be that the Globe has never done bookings before and it doesn't have the repeat business won by, for instance, Hughes and Birkhead's other pub, the Hest Bank. Despite this, as John explains, compared with the previous year, Christmas will still be considered successful - in December 1998 the Globe took £11,531, with just £2,500 from food.
"You expect November to be quiet but, with the promotion we've done, you would've thought we'd have done a bit better than we have," he says. "Having said that, we did £6,600 the week before bonfire night, and on food we took more that week than they took in the whole of November last year. So we can't complain about it - I just thought it might be more." He concludes: "We haven't found the answer yet. It's out there - we've just got to find it."
Next visit to the Globe: 23 December
