Peter Borg-Neal, founder of the Oakman Inns & Restaurants Ltd, talks about how to maintain the company’s award-winning standards against the backdrop of a volatile trading environment, his return as chief executive and the sector must remain agile and respond quickly to the extraneous pressures it is facing.
Quick quotes:
"Bounced out of covid really well, made some acquisitions.. as time went by cracks began to appear... I came back following pressure from non-execs... question that bugged me was – are we still relevant? You have to ask fundamental questions, are we effective?"
"What we did not want to do is simple cost cutting.. pizza express ran into trouble because it put prices up and quality down... We were selective about cutting and we were prepared to put prices up... We have evolved the brand, revolution in a recession is a big risk... We needed to re-engage with our people… looking at successful pubs it was the people, ultimately, that made the difference."
"Leadership has to win the hearts of minds of the team, we got rid of five directors but we have put our training budget up, team retention is all time high, even compared to pre-covid, we have turned that around and our customer satisfaction scores have followed."
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