Chief executive of SA Brain & Co, Alistair Darby, said the business was making progress in addressing high levels of staff churn in its pubs and bringing more women into senior roles.
Addressing a meeting of Cardiff Breakfast Club, Mr Darby who took up his role at the Cardiff-based and family-owned business last year from Scott Waddington, said the business, which has more than 160 pubs, needed to be more reflective of the fact that than 50% of its pub customers were women.
It has now has three women in senior management roles, while its finance director Hannah Heath, who joined last October, is the first female board member in its 138 year history.
Mr Darby, a former chief executive of Mitchells & Butlers, said: “In our business if we are going to be successful we just have to develop the very best people in order to ensure that everyone of our pubs are exceptional. It really is simple as fantastic people lead to fantastic hospitality.
"Brains is a great company that can be even better and it is really exciting how much we can do in this business.”
He said when he arrived there was an average churn of staff in its pubs of 100%. Mr Darby added: “So, you start the year with a team of ten and by year end those ten people are completely different. So, that’s a different kitchen team, servers, etc. It’s a blended average as some of our pubs have remarkable stability, but the simple point is if you have a constantly changing team you will not get consistency, stability, career development or anything, and as a result the business will suffer.
“For us, in an industry that has always had a history of high staff turnover, one of the biggest challenges is if we can get it down not only will we save money by not having to recruit and train, but we will get much better consistency. So getting staff turnover down and creating career pathways, with people seeing the hospitality trade as an actual career, will be really critical. We are not there yet, but we are making progress on, which is good.”
He said that more than half of its customers were women, who were often the decision-makers when choosing which pubs and restaurants to go to.
Most Read
He added: “When I arrived at Brains we had the grand total of zero women in senior positions. What I am delighted to say is that we have moved from no women on our board and the senior team to three. Our finance director Hannah [Heath] is the first female board director that Brains has had in its 138-year history. This is not tokenism, but is unbelievably important, as if more than half of our customers are women and you don’t have a single woman at the senior table then how are you ever going to have a conversation about what is important?
“So, there are some fantastic opportunities and we are changing the whole culture of the business really rapidly, which I am just delighted about it. Diversity is something we will just keep pushing on as it makes such a huge difference.”
Last year SA Brain & Co sold a majority stake in its expanding coffee business, Coffee#1 to Caffe Nero, which continues to operate under it own name through a joint venture partnership.
Mr Darby said: "We have a great relationship with Caffe Nero and we have a business plan that spans out for three years and at the end of that both parties have the option to stay in or not.
“The key thing for us is that Coffee #1 is a fantastic business and we have done an amazing job growing it out. There are many businesses that dream of getting to 100 stores and never achieve it, but we did.
“However, there comes a point where you get to a business of that size that you need to partner up with somebody bigger and the great thing about the joint venture partnership with Caffe Nero is that is has freed up some cash to invest in our pubs, but also meant we were in bed with a family-owned quality coffee business. We are just looking to grow it in partnership with them and we would like that in three years time for Coffee #1 to be at 140 to 150 stores.”
Cardiff Breakfast Club is sponsored by the Western Mail, Blake Morgan, Lloyds Banking Group, Stills Branding and Effective Communication.
Don’t miss
The next meeting of the club on February 20th, will be addressed by chief executive of Confused.com Louise O’Shea.