What is your real revenue? And what is your real labour margin?

Welcome — and a Thank You.

First things first; if you’ve just signed up to this newsletter, thank you, and welcome. I really appreciate you being here.

I really want this newsletter to be is something I genuinely enjoy writing, because if I enjoy writing it, hopefully you’ll enjoy reading it. Thoughts, ideas, conversations about where F&B sits in UK golf clubs today — and hopefully a lot of added value too.

Now, let’s get into it.

Here’s a question I want you to consider: What is your real revenue? And what is your real labour margin?

Stick with me, I know that’s cryptic!

Take an example club:

You might have £500,000 in F&B total revenue, with a labour cost base of £250,000 a year. That’s obviously a 50% labour margin. Perhaps you may feel that’s too high and doesn’t stack up.

But golf club F&B isn’t a restaurant, and restaurant metrics don’t apply.

You’ve got downward pressure on pricing, because your members rightly expect value; you’re not charging High Street restaurant prices. Then add on member discount, and what you’ve actually got is a situation where, if you were to apply "real-world" pricing, your revenue might look more like £600,000.

Now, yes — I hear you — you haven’t got £600,000 in the bank. But the point is: when you start to view your operation through this adjusted lens, that same £250,000 in labour starts to look like 41% of revenue, not 50%.

All of a sudden, you’re not as far out of shape as you thought.

It’s so tough to balance offering a ‘Service to your members’ — against the financial realities of running a hospitality operation.

You’ll hear me come back to this a lot in these newsletters — because honestly, I think it’s a conversation that everyone in a golf club should be having. From Management, to your F&B Team, to the membership; it affects every corner of the club. The reality is, it’s a brutally difficult balance to get right. It pulls you in two directions at once — and the trick isn’t to pick a side, it’s to live in the tension between the two, and keep in mind what the goal of your F&B is.

Look, labour is going to be the biggest hot button in 2025, it’s brutal. I will explore how to use casual staff in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, if you’re genuinely focused on offering a ‘Service to you Members’, that unfortunately comes at a cost that restaurant metrics don’t apply to.

Quick one — if you’ve not done this yet, my scorecard helps you spot gaps across guest experience, costs, and day-to-day ops. It takes two minutes and you’ll get a proper report at the end.