I want to start by saying something clearly; the golf clubs that are struggling with F&B are not, in the main, struggling because the people running them don't care.

They care enormously. General Managers, F&B Managers, Secretaries, and boards up and down the country are working hard, under real pressure, trying to get this right.

The problem isn't effort or intent. The problem, more often than not, is the question they've been handed to answer.

When a board looks at the F&B operation and sees a cost centre that isn't pulling its weight, the question that follows is almost always some version of this:

How do we make F&B more profitable?

And that question, reasonable as it sounds, sets off a chain of decisions that tends to lead somewhere unhelpful. Menus get rationalised. Staffing gets trimmed. Opening hours get reduced. Margins get squeezed. Each decision, taken individually, looks defensible on a spreadsheet. Taken together, they quietly hollow out the thing that made the F&B operation worth having in the first place.

I understand why it happens. The financial pressure on golf clubs is real, and boards have a responsibility to manage it. But I think what gets missed in these conversations is that transaction optimisation and cost management are responses to a commercial problem; they're not a hospitality strategy. And when you run a hospitality operation without a hospitality strategy, you tend to end up with something that satisfies neither the accountant nor the member.

I've been thinking a lot recently about the Asian hotel model, and what it might offer golf clubs as a frame of reference.

In Western hotels, F&B typically contributes around 30% of total revenue; a respectable number, but one that reflects a supporting role. In Asia, that figure can reach 50%. The difference isn't explained by superior kitchens or more expensive menus. It's explained by a different question at the beginning of the process.

Asian hotel operators don't ask how to make F&B profitable. They ask what kind of cultural experience they're creating, and how food sits at the centre of it. That shift in starting point produces a fundamentally different kind of place.

You feel it most acutely in the lobbies. Where Western hotel lobbies are largely transactional — somewhere to check in and move through — Asian lobbies are designed as cultural crossroads. Locals come to meet. Business gets done over lunch. Relationships form over dinner. The hotel doesn't sit alongside its community… it becomes part of it. And the F&B operation is the mechanism that makes all of that possible.

Golf clubs, when you think about what they actually are, have everything the Asian hotel model is built on. A community of people who genuinely want to belong somewhere. A physical space that members return to week after week, year after year. A natural social rhythm built around shared experience. The raw ingredients are all there.

What shifts when you ask the right question is how you see the clubhouse. Not as a building that needs to justify its catering costs, but as the social engine of the community; the place where the club's culture is either built or quietly neglected, one interaction at a time.

F&B, in that framing, isn't a cost centre. It's the mechanism by which people stay longer, come back more often, bring guests, recruit new members, and feel that this place is genuinely theirs. The commercial returns don't disappear when you think this way. If anything, over time, they improve.

I'm not suggesting clubs ignore the numbers. The numbers matter, and anyone who tells you otherwise hasn't run a hospitality operation under real financial pressure. But there's a difference between managing the numbers and being managed by them; and the clubs that are building something genuinely special tend to be the ones who've worked out which side of that line they want to be on.

The Asian hotel model didn't produce those F&B revenue figures by focusing on F&B revenue. It produced them by focusing relentlessly on experience, community, and connection; and trusting that the commercial case would follow.

For golf clubs, I think the same principle holds. The clubhouse that feels alive, welcoming, and worth lingering in isn't just a nicer place to be. It's a more commercially resilient one.

Start with experience, and the numbers tend to follow. Start with the numbers, and the experience rarely does.

Have a great weekend.

Tony

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.