Museum showcase
Three months after taking over the catering at the Buckinghamshire County Museum in Aylesbury, Baxter & Platts (B&P) turned the museum café from a loss-making operation into one that is producing a small profit for the council.
The extent of the venture's success has been a surprise. Projected turnover for the 55-seat café had been estimated at £740 a week, but since the contract's inception, weekly takings have been as high as £1,500-£2,000 from an average spend of £1.50-£2 a head.
Now, county museum officer Colin Dawes is using the catering service as part of his plans to market the museum and its facilities. He is also considering extending the café to accommodate the crowds.
"The café was opened originally as part of the museum services to customers," says Dawes. "It's all part of the package visitors expect. Now, even in the rain, the café is taking as much as on a good day."
As a result, Dawes hopes to use catering services as a hook when people book rooms for training. "I'm using the catering to attract business to the museum's two meeting rooms. I can foresee it opening in the evening if a full-scale kitchen can be built," he says.
The contract for the café is included in a three-part deal won by B&P in April. This is because the café came up for tender at the same time as the feeding contracts for the local authority staff and Judges Lodgings, a prestigious operation feeding judges on the county circuit, which the company had been running since 1993.
Among those tendering for the total business were Eurest, Bromwich Catering and the local direct services organisation - the incumbent staff-restaurant caterer. The café was previously run as a franchise by a local catering company.
The diverse nature of the three catering operations means each has a different contract: a commercial one for the café with a small percentage of the takings going to the client, and fixed-price for the staff catering and Judges Lodgings. The deal is that B&P can use the facilities at the latter for outside events on a commercial basis, with profits going towards achieving the fixed price paid by the council.
On taking over, B&P renamed the café under its Butlers brand. The operation has no kitchen and equipment is limited to a chilled cabinet, ice-cream freezer and drinks machine, which means only cold food such as sandwiches, snacks and pastries can be served. B&P kept the same prices but introduced floral oilskin cloths for the outside tables, flowers, home-made cookies and cream teas.
Senior citizens make up an important part of the café's market, but because the Roald Dahl Children's Gallery is housed in the museum, the bulk of its customers are children. Hence, the café has introduced individually fashioned gingerbread-men and a children's lunch-box containing a sandwich, a home-made cookie, a bag of sweets, crisps, fruit juice and a free balloon in a colourful container.
"These have been successful and we hope to get orders for school parties," says general manager Linda Membridge.
The café is open seven days a week and the number of visitors to the museum is expected to rise from 75,000 to 100,000 this year. Business is seasonal.
It's early days and despite initial success, B&P hasn't discounted the fact the café's business may tail off out of season. The caterer had expected to make a net profit of about £2,500 a year. Under the agreement, if the café makes a profit of £2,500-£10,000, B&P will share half the profits with the council; should profits rise above £10,000, the council will take 70%.
