Spring Is Coming. Is Your F&B Ready?

January is quiet. The course has been closed; and it feels like the season is miles away.

It’ll be here before your team know it!

Easter weekend is 12 weeks from now. The clocks go forward in 10. That first sunny Saturday, the one that catches everyone off guard, could be 6 weeks away… fingers crossed anyway!

Now is the time to get things ready for a brilliant Spring and 2026 season.

Here are five things your F&B operation should be focused on before the season arrives.

1. Tighten the Menu

Every menu grows. Dishes get added to please a loud member, to use up a surplus ingredient, or maybe just to try something new. Before you know it, you've got 40 items and your kitchen is drowning.

Now is the time to cut. Please be ruthless.

Pull your ePos data from the last 12 months. Find the dishes that aren't selling; you'll have some that shift fewer than five portions a week. They're taking up menu space, creating prep work, and adding ingredients to your order that sit in the fridge going off.

Then look at margin. You'll have dishes that sell reasonably well but make you no money. Either reprice them, re-engineer them, or remove them.

The goal isn't the longest menu. It's a tight menu your kitchen can execute brilliantly, every single time.

15 items done well beats 35 done averagely.

Action for your F&B Manager: Run the sales mix report. Identify the bottom 10 sellers and the 5 worst margins. Come back with a recommendation for what goes, what stays, and what gets reworked.

2. Train Your Team

When was the last time you actually trained your front of house team? Not inducted them, trained them.

January is the time. You've got quieter services. You've got time to pull someone aside and work on the details. You've got space to do it properly.

Think about what slips when you're busy:

• Table touches that don't happen

• Refocus on coffee

• Members waiting too long to be acknowledged

• Orders getting muddled

• The short game; cutlery, condiments, side plates, forgotten

These aren't bad staff problems. They're training problems; they're also fixable now, while you have the bandwidth.

Run a short session each week on one specific thing. Don't try to cover everything at once. Service standards this week. Coffee next week. Wine knowledge the week after.

Small, consistent investment now pays back tenfold when you're slammed at Spring Meeting.

Action for your F&B Manager: Identify the three service standards that slip most often. Build a 15-minute training session for each. Schedule them for the next three weeks.

3. Review Your Suppliers

When did you last properly review your supplier relationships? Not just check the invoices, actually assess whether you're getting the best quality, the best price, and the best service?

January is renegotiation season.

Your suppliers know it's quiet. They're more flexible now than they will be in June. Use that.

Start with your big three: wet stock, meat, and fresh produce. These are where the money is.

Ask yourself:

• Is the quality consistent? Or are you getting let down regularly?

• Are the prices competitive? Have you benchmarked recently?

• Is the service reliable? Deliveries on time, orders accurate, problems resolved quickly?

If the answer to any of those is "not really," now is the time to have conversations. Either with your current supplier to improve things, or with alternatives to see what else is out there.

You don't have to switch. But you should know your options.

Action for your F&B Manager: Identify your top 5 suppliers by spend. Score each one on quality, price, and service. For any that score poorly, get two alternative quotes this month.

4. Fix Your Systems

Every F&B operation has something held together with tape and hope.

Stock control that's a bit vague. Rotas that get done last minute. Ordering that relies on someone's memory rather than a proper system. GP tracking that happens quarterly instead of weekly.

You know what it is in your club. The thing that's been annoying you all year but never quite urgent enough to fix.

Now is urgent.

Because when spring hits and you're doing three times the volume, that weak point will break. And you'll be fixing it under pressure instead of fixing it properly.

Common culprits:

• Stock control: Are you counting weekly? Do you know your actual vs theoretical usage? Can you spot waste and over-pouring before it kills your margin?

• Rotas: Are you planning labour against the tee sheet and bookings? Or just copying last week and hoping for the best?

• Ordering: Is there a system, or is it whoever remembers to check the walk-in?

• GP tracking: Do you know your food and wet margins right now? This week? Or just vaguely from last quarter?

Pick the weakest system. Fix it this month. Then move to the next one.

Action for your F&B Manager: Identify the one system that causes the most problems. Map out what "good" looks like. Implement it before February.

5. Lock In Your Pricing

Do you know, right now, whether every dish on your menu is making money?

Not roughly. Actually.

Can you tell me the GP on your club sandwich? Your fish and chips? Your Sunday roast?

If the answer is "not exactly," that's your January job.

Spec out every dish. Ingredient by ingredient, portion by portion. Calculate the cost. Calculate the margin. See what's actually happening.

You'll find surprises. Dishes you thought were profitable that aren't. Dishes that are carrying the menu that you could push harder. Portions that have crept up over time without the price following.

Then set your prices for the season. Know your targets – food GP should be sitting somewhere between 65-72% depending on your model. Wet GP higher.

Don't wait until you've sold 500 portions of something to discover you're losing 50p on each one.

Action for your F&B Manager: Spec every dish on the menu. Calculate true GP. Flag anything below target. Come back with a pricing recommendation before the spring menu goes live.

The Bottom Line

Quiet months aren't downtime. They're preparation time.

The work you do now – on menu, training, suppliers, systems, and pricing – determines whether spring feels like chaos or control.

The season will be here before you know it.

Make sure you're ready.

If you found this useful, forward it to your F&B Manager. This is their checklist for January.

If you'd like dedicated time to work through your club's F&B challenges, book a Power Hour Strategy Call. One hour, focused on your situation, with benchmarking, guidance, and a clear action plan to take away. £245 + VAT.