Service Spotlight: Marc Griffiths from 'World Famous Dive Bars.'

This week in Service Spotlight we continue our series where I ask ten essential questions to influential leaders from the pub and hospitality industry. In each edition, we dive into their experiences, challenges, and successes to offer valuable insights for professionals like you.

This week, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Bristol-based Marc Griffiths, a seasoned expert in the field, to discuss his journey and thoughts on the future of hospitality.

1. What inspired you to pursue a career in hospitality, and how has your vision evolved since you started?

I had always wanted to work for myself but had spent my twenties looking for a way to do so. Some of those years had been spent in Kitchens, so I knew roughly what to do with a pot and pan. However, I had found my way into a pretty plum sales job selling air conditioning by my early thirties, I was earning good wedge and I was good at what I did. I liked my boss and my colleagues. I was sitting at my desk one day when I realised that if I didn't do something to change my outlook then this was going to be it for me. I could see myself sat at my desk as a much older man, the boss I liked was now retired and the colleagues I liked were no longer working there. This unsettled me to such a degree that when I found out that a failing cafe in the Centre of Worcester was up for sale I re-mortgaged my house to buy it. I didn't know much but I was sure it was the right thing to do. I built it up and sold it three years later for double what I had paid.?

I did however almost fail. I went into that business without really knowing what I was doing and although I had the grit to make it work, it could have gone south very quickly. I thought too much about how I wanted everything to be and work and now I am much more flexible. I do more research and rely on my gut much less. I let the business and its customers guide me more and more than anything I listen to everybody I can before I form an opinion.

2. Can you share a pivotal moment in your career that significantly influenced your professional path?

I had been running my first real business, a proto-hipster café called St Custards, in Worcester for a couple of years when my accountant pointed out that I was caught in a VAT trap. Essentially the 17.5% that I paid out on my T/O was not being adequately offset because I had built my whole ethos around producing my dishes from scratch and most of my raw ingredients, Fruit and Veg, meat etc, did? not have VAT applied to them as food items. My T/O at the time was just over ￡110k and there was very little chance of substantially increasing it due to the limited hours of operation I had in the unit where the business was situated. I decided that because of this my move should be into the licensed trade and put the business up for sale that week and started looking for a pub or bar to buy. I still use that accountant to this day 18 years later.?

3. What unique challenges have you faced in the hospitality industry, and how did you overcome them?

I sold a business in the credit crunch for what I wanted to get from it, when everyone said I should cut the price and get out all together. I bought a bar in the centre of Bristol at the height of the same credit crunch that had changed hands 7 times in 9 years, on a street that had seven empty hospitality units on it. All had been businesses with terrible reputations for trouble or poor service. Prior to my purchase a doorman had been shot in the leg at my Bar (a fact the landlord kept from me!) and had been closed shortly after. I opened with very little cashflow, but with the help of some good staff made it work and The Mothers Ruin is still there 17 years later and is now managed by my eldest daughter. All the hospitality units are now thriving businesses and our street is one of the nightlife destinations for the city.?

All of those problems were out of my control. I hadn't caused the credit crunch or the poor reputation of my bar prior to my arrival. That was what I had to work with but I knew that if I was creative with how we approached the offer within the bar itself? we would prevail. I only bothered with things that were in my control so I asked a lot of favours of my suppliers and creatively found ways to use their experience of my business to increase GP.? We worked on customer experience all the time, even if we didn't know that was what we were doing when we found the most popular art students and encouraged them to put on a club night, and we made many, many mistakes but using our guile and initiative we succeeded in establishing this bar and growing our business initially to include 4 Enterprise leased properties which we sold in 2017 and now includes the 6 free of ties sites we have today (Mothers Ruin, The Crown, The Greyhound, The Colosseum, Bliss and Nosh Pizza) all under our World Famous Dive Bars Ltd group banner.

4. How do you see technology influencing the hospitality industry, and what tech advancements have you embraced in your career?

Social media was big for us from 2007 onwards. Facebook was in its infancy but we used it to advertise and promote things we were doing and it always worked for us. That side of things has evolved so much now we employ a team of three full time now that handle all our marketing across the 6 sites and the two other businesses. We have a full CRM system to electronically market but also still employ physical advertising as well. If we hadn't have made this move two years ago then the growth we have managed to realise in our businesses wouldn't have been achievable. As with everything, remaining curious to changes in our sector has enabled us to grow.

The other major technological change we embraced was cashless trading. We installed an integrated sales and stock system that runs off individual hand held PDA'S. This enabled us to track productivity in individual employees, wastage, shrinkage and helped us spot trends in sales much earlier. However its main advantage to us was that it significantly increased thru-put on our bars. Without cash to count, change to give out, the wait for a colleague to use the till in front of you and the walking to and from the till meant service times were slashed. This with some structural changes to our bar tending (introducing supervisors to take orders and bar backs to dispense) and management roles gave us a significant uplift in our T/O and customer satisfaction due to the better experience the customer enjoyed, spending less time in a queue and more time with friends enjoying themselves.

5. Could you describe a memorable customer interaction that reshaped the way you approach service?

There was a point when I was still working behind the bar, that I thought running a cool kids only, mean team was the right way to approach customer service. We had a collection of sometimes surly, smart mouthed individuals who were well known for wise-alec remarks and withering put downs on occasion. We served a young, art school crowd and the bar was always busy and rowdy and late. I thought we had cracked it.?

The bar had a regular at the time who was female and a little bit older, she came in every week and spent well having a good time. One shift I had been in the trenches, super busy and tired when this lady came to the bar. She asked for a drink, did nothing wrong and for no reason I can fathom I was rude to her. I never saw her again. It stayed with me and slowly I changed how we worked, when new people came into our employment they were trained better by me, I started hiring different types of people to work for me. I became a better manager and the businesses did better also on the backs of these people.

6. What strategies do you use to motivate and lead your team, especially during high-pressure situations?

If someone comes to me with a question or a problem I ask them what they would do first, before I offer any advice or say what I think my solution would be. I want them to have buy in on any decisions that are made because ownership of the decision making process is the highest motivator in my opinion. It allows people to have control of their actions within their roles whilst also knowing they have your support. They cease being your employee and almost become your partner in the tasks they are doing.?

I gave up yelling at people over ten years ago when things go wrong. I ask them what their solutions are and help them implement them. I don't discipline anyone for making mistakes in their role. If you make a mistake for the right reason that's a failure of management and is a training point not a disciplinary issue. Train people to have better skill sets, try and use their strengths but don't expect them to be superheroes. Pay them for every minute they work, do good hourly rates and bonuses not salaries, work on retention where possible and a thorough recruitment process but accept people will leave and plan for good exits from your business.?

7. In your opinion, what are the most critical skills a hospitality professional should possess today?

Flexible curiosity. If you are not curious about the direction your business is going, and where it will end up then you will not succeed in hospitality. Hospitality is a creative industry, not many saw craft beer establishing itself after what seemed like a emperors new clothes approach to marketing and an initially inconsistent product base. Professional curiosity has pushed the Cocktail boom that spread, like ink in water, out of New York's bar scene in the?early 2000's to move away from the flashy bottle tossing of the mixologist into the space that it occupies now. A space reserved before only for fine dining. Who predicted the failure (at this moment) of Hard Seltzer in the UK after its massive boom in the states?

If you remain curious about the innovations of others in your own professional space and are flexible enough to incorporate that approach into your own world view then your business, and you personally will benefit. The flexibility to embrace the new and not have a fixed idea of the future is essential for success in our world.

8. How do you approach training and development within your team, and could you share an effective tactic?

Peers need to have a baseline level of training to be respected by each other, make sure you as an employer work hard to level this for everyone in your team. If a junior member of staff gets promoted into a higher role, do not expect them to operate at the same level as an experienced member of your team. Its your responsibility to make them better, more confident and over time they will rise to the same level. Engage in CPD practices and encourage training with an end goal, whether this is progression or building a skill set should be up to the employee not the employer.?

9. What trends do you predict will shape the future of the hospitality industry over the next decade?

Trends are in my opinion irrelevant. If you follow a trend then that trend will serve itself and not you. Customers are smart and fickle, do not risk your business on the back of a trend. Build it with good core values and it will withstand any trend. Watch what is happening and take what you need from it but retain your own control of the changes. Hospitality has moulded itself to what the customer wants since we started inviting strangers to sit around the fire with us in our caves, the next decade wont be any different to that.

What is more relevant to the next decade is what outside influences may affect how we run Hospitality. Operators embracing the need for better training for staff for one, society hopefully seeing hospitality as a valid career path with a high skill set needed to be effective for another. Local authorities embracing hospitality, and the late night economy as a societal need and not a problem that needs solving.?

10. If you could go back to the start of your career, what advice would you give yourself?

Become a marketeer before you get bogged down in the nuts and bolts of the business. You are the businesses biggest advocate so concentrate on getting customers, keeping them and turning them into advocates for your business, that's your most important task. Hire people to do the complicated stuff because they will be better than you, and listen more to them but also don't waste time doing the boring stuff either get people to do that for you. Staying curious and motivated is highly important but so is enjoying what you do.

Thanks for joining me on another edition, as always if you'd like to get involved or if there's topic you want to hear about please drop me a message.

RA