North East hospitality firm The Apartment Group has been forced to invest in a fleet of vehicles to overcome supply chain struggles.
The Newcastle leisure group – the owner of bars, restaurants and hotels across the North East – is among the thousands of business affected by the well-documented HGV driver shortage, which has continued to put pressure on a range of industries, despite driver numbers growing by 30,000 in the last quarter.
Operations director Debrah Dhugga said the company has invested in vans to make sure deliveries could be made around the firm’s venues, which have recently seen the opening of ChachaBuchi, La Fee, Verano and Howlers on Collingwood Street, Newcastle, to replace former sites Floritas, Madame Koo and House of Smith.
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Ms Dhugga said: “I can’t tell you how hard it’s been. Even getting your beer delivered. It’s crazy - they’ve got no drivers. For a site like ChachaBuchi, you need deliveries every day, for the volumes. They won’t deliver every day up in Northumberland, they don’t have enough drivers. The hub of our business is in Northumberland.
“In all 30 years of working in hospitality I’ve never known it to be like this.
“The pressure on the team is incredible - and even getting things like teaspoons and napkins, stirrers, is so hard. And prices have rocketed, simply because of supply and demand.
“I’ve had to buy three company vans to be able to get things from venue to venue because we can’t get deliveries, and then we have own staff members driving things in the van I bought around the other venues because it’s the only way to deal with that logistically. It’s unbelievable.”
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Originally, five different venues were due to replace the Collingwood Street bars, mixing street food, cocktail parlours, a subterranean play zone with a bowling alley, virtual reality zones and karaoke booths. Work was well under way until lockdown led to the sites closing.
Ms Dhugga said the firm altered its designs and plans for the city centre properties in February, upping investing from £2m to £3m to come up with the new names and themes and adding a strong focus on daytime food. She said the new venues have all drawn in the crowds since reopening but recruitment remains a major issue.
Thousands of former hospitality workers switched to different careers in lockdown, and wooing them back is proving hard.
She said: “We now have 600 staff on our books but we need more because we’re growing. But what we’re finding is there’s just not the interest. If you look on any recruitment platform there’s thousands of jobs.
“People can go and work at Amazon in the North East and get money just for signing up - and they are doing bigger drives for Christmas. We’ve lost some staff to Amazon.
“I think people have just looked at lifestyles and thought what do they really want now? I want to show them how fun it can be though.
“What I really want is for people to just have fun. I want them to come to work and enjoy themselves - it is a lifestyle thing. That’s what is lacking. Enjoyment in hospitality has been hit so hard.”
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Meanwhile, the group, which also owns boutique hotels The Joiners Arms and Le Petit Chateau in Northumberland, is poised to start work on creating two new luxury hotels in County Durham.
The Apartment Group acquired Whitworth Hall Hotel & Deer Park and Jersey Farm Country Hotel shortly before the pandemic started, and both properties have been completely closed until now.
Initial meetings have now been held with designers who will transform Jersey Farm into Runa, a special destination for ‘boho, honest and earthy’ experiences, with the farm and its produce at its heart.
They will then work on plans to turn Whitworth Hall & Deer Park, a Grade II listed mansion near Spennymoor which sits within its own private deer park, into the region’s most luxurious hotel with a chapel, ballroom, and bedroom suites.
Ms Dhugga, who has more than 25 years experience in the hotel industry, added: “People have learned a lot more about what the 海角视频 has to offer.
“We had to lock the hotels up all this time. But now we have Collingwood Street open we have got to get Runa open. That will be open first, for weddings next year, and then we’ll move straight onto Whitworth Hall.
“They will need quite a bit of investment. I’m going to make them the best hotels the North of England has ever seen.”