September 2010 Developments - 64

Operations
Dishing It Out
Maintaining a food-and-beverage operation doesn’t have to eat away at your profits

Steve Eubanks

W

atch a few minutes of the show “Kitchen Nightmares,” and it’s easy to see why most golf course owners wake up trembling in a cold sweat when dreaming about their food-and-beverage operations. Between the yelling, the chaos, the pots and pans clanging, smoldering vats of multicolored sauces—not to mention the vague hierarchies of a kitchen staff, ever-spiraling costs and never-predictable revenues—it’s no wonder so many golf operators hang their heads and cry when it comes to food service. Even though the golf shop and the restaurant might be only a few feet apart, the chasm between the two is often deep and wide. It doesn’t have to be that way. Once a course owner understands the basic fundamentals of food service and recognizes the pitfalls that lie in every foodand-beverage operation, the restaurant side of the clubhouse can transform from a money pit to a cash cow. All it takes is discipline and an obsessive eye on the bottom line. “You have to establish what kind of operation you are and where you want to be, and be that,” notes Aaron Gleason, vice president of operations for Walters Golf Management, an Illinois-based management firm that runs Missouri Bluffs Golf Club in St. Louis and Gateway National Golf Links in Madison, among others. While it might seem like an oversimplification to say that you can’t be all things to all people, the point is valid. Once you decide what sort of food service you want to offer at your club, you must then come to grips with the economic realities of that decision. “I’ve been at some pretty high-class clubs that can sustain a Ritz-caliber foodand-beverage operation because they’ve told themselves, ‘This is just how it’s going to be,’” Gleason says. “‘People pay big initiation fees and substantial dues every month, and this is what they expect.’”

Of course, in an era when many public and private facilities are sputtering, the majority of operators can’t (and don’t really want) to provide that type of service and experience; the numbers and more judicious spending habits of their customers simply won’t sustain it. “So, the big mistake—the one you can’t make and stay in business—is to go out and incur the major expense it takes to run that kind of five-star operation, assuming if you just make things better that the revenues are going to come,” Gleason adds.

Easy as…
It may seem like an oversimplification, but food-andbeverage success is as easy as… well, you get the idea. Anyway, here’s what you need to do: Forget about being all things to all people and go with what best suits your market. Run the simplest food-service operation you can get away with given your customers’ demands, keeping in mind that your most profitable outlets will always be the simplest (vending machines, beverage carts, snack shacks, and the like). Obsess on labor costs, making sure you send people home whenever possible and cross-train as many staff members as you can. Get the most out of your menus by knowing the cost of every item that’s put on a plate.

There’s no industry more fickle than food service, and no business in America has a higher percentage failure rate than à la carte fine-dining restaurants. To assume that a golf club will succeed where people who know food service intimately have not is folly. “If I were to design the perfect food-and-beverage area for a golf course, it would be a concession stand,” Gleason quips. “The only reason I’d do a concession stand is because it’s probably unacceptable at this time to put in vending machines.” This statement wasn’t made in jest. At most golf operations, food-and-beverage profitability is inversely proportional to the size of the menu and the number of people on staff. The beverage cart normally boasts the highest profit margin, followed by the snack bar or halfway house and, finally, the sit-down dining room. At Shipyard Golf Club, a 27-hole resort facility on the south end of Hilton Head Island, the most profitable food-andbeverage outlet is an octagonal snack bar no bigger than a starter’s hut positioned at the intersection of the three nines. In an average year, that facility spins off a six-figure profit with no kitchen and a staff of one. Meanwhile, the managers of the Rawls Golf Course at Texas Tech University in Lubbock have created an indoor version of this same model with Jerry’s Grill. Offering walk-up window service, disposable flatware and utensils, and menu items that range in price from $2.99 to $7.29, the facility seems at odds with its Tom Doak-designed golf course, which is regarded as one of the best in west Texas. “There’s no shame in it,” Gleason says. “You can make money that way because you don’t have to hire back-of-thehouse people. You can train your frontline people to grill a burger and make a turkey

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September 2010 Developments

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