Costs all round but the city's looking up

Great news this week regarding the closed C&A store next door to our Lincoln restaurant. National retailer Wilkinsons is relocating from elsewhere in the city early next year. Wilko attracts an enormous footfall and it also trades seven days a week, both of which will help to revitalise an area of the city that has perhaps been left behind by other retail developments.

Furthermore, Lincoln is to have its first piece of "public art" in the form of a sculpture spanning the river at a point close to our front door. This project has attracted substantial interest (much of it negative) that should serve to create additional pedestrian flows.

The fuel shortage of a few weeks ago meant that sales were well down during the week in question. Although initially one might view the problem as simply an inconvenience, it quickly becomes apparent that everybody suffers - no customers means no supplier orders means no deliveries means drivers laid off, and so it goes on. We forget how reliant we are on that liquid gold.

We are beginning to research options for stakeholder pension schemes. Clearly we will have to provide access to a suitable scheme but we are not convinced that the take-up will be worthwhile until (or unless) the Government makes such schemes compulsory.

Local insurance brokers are implying that fees will be involved to help set the thing up initially, or we could consider offering a contributory group pension scheme that meets the criteria. Whichever option we choose, it seems likely that it will be another cost to the business.

We like to nudge prices upward every six months or so and are now finalising the menu print-run to be effective from the end of October, nine months since we last adjusted our prices. In that time we've seen materials prices edging upwards and of course our wage rates have increased by some 4%. We price in 5p units and that means increases of between 2% and 7% on many items, hopefully averaging at around 4% overall.

Many readers will have been thinking about Christmas for months and, not to be outdone, we've just been to buy decorations to match our new decor. But some things never change - where's the Slade Christmas tape?

JOHN DOWNS is managing director of Lincoln-based Jay-Dees Family Restaurants

Next diary from John Downs: 16 November