In a future issue we will feature a major, $1M club dining room improvement project funded completely by catering set-asides. Now that’s progress.
In one of our first issues after we launched Club & Resort Business in 2005, our Founding Publisher, Bill Donohue, wrote a Publisher’s Memo where he suggested that many of the private clubs with food minimums might as well come clean and admit they were really just imposing a tax on their members for inferior food and service.
Bill knew this would be a good way to get some attention for our new publication—and boy, was he right. Based on some of the swift and intensely personal reaction we received, you would have thought he had called for the firing of every existing club chef, along with their GMs, and maybe a clean sweep of all Board members, too.
We received an equal number of responses, though, that praised Bill for shedding some long-overdue light on an issue that needed to be addressed, and for sounding the call that all clubs, of all types, needed to get serious about running their food-and-beverage operations as self-sustaining units, as an important part of their overall long-term strategies for survival and growth in a changing and increasingly challenging business that was no longer revolving around golf alone.
Six years later, if Bill were to write the same column today, I have a feeling that a lot less negativity would register on the reaction meter—if indeed there would be much reaction at all. Yes, many clubs still have food minimums—but repeatedly I hear chefs, and GMs, tell me they are no longer getting “slammed” at the end of minimum periods by resentful members who want to try to eat their fill of what they’re being charged for anyway. (Unfortunately, this also means I don’t get nearly as many calls at the end of the quarter or year now from friends who want to take me to lunch or dinner at their clubs.)
I’ve even had many chefs and club managers tell me they’ve raised their minimums, without any complaints, after noticing how F&B spending per member was now far exceeding the threshold level, and seeing through survey results that the dining experiences they provide had become not only so accepted, but so acclaimed, that minimums were no longer seen as any form of coercion, but instead embraced as part of the value and appeal of club membership.
This issue has many other examples of how F&B has become a bona fide contributor in its own right to club operations, and no longer something that needs to be falsely propped up or subsidized. Our feature on kitchen design reports on how the popular new Chef’s Table at Tripoli Country Club is self-sustaining and has built up its own decorating and improvements fund through its minimum seating charge and corkage fees. Our F&B Profile on Rock Manor Golf Course details how even a small grille operation at a high-volume daily-fee can make a significant bottom-line contribution—and in the process, earn a promotion to Director of Golf for a former chef and F&B manager.
In his turn in the Publisher’s column spot this month (“Orange Barrels,”) our President, Dan Ramella, does suggest that clubs that still do have food minimums might be better served to convert them to capital improvement funds—again making the point that if your food and service still can’t stand on its own, you should probably close your dining rooms. But I don’t expect much of a hue and cry to such a statement this time around. In fact, we’re going to feature a club later this year that funded a major, $1 million dining room improvement project completely through set-asides from its catering business. Now that’s progress.
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