Golf club operators: is your golf club making the most of its F&B Opportunities? Here’s a story that might make you think again…

‘Give us one coffee offer good enough to attract regular F&B business and another to keep the golfers happy!’ – that was the brief from Houghwood Golf Club, in Merseyside, to St. Helen’s based North West Vending / Coffee 1652. The response? Two industry-leading solutions in one. Ian Reynolds-Young found out more…

Golf courses cannot live on golf alone…

You could say that when Houghwood Golf Club in Billinge opened twenty-years ago, it was ahead of its time…

The course was the result of the coming together of two adjacent farms: it was a joint decision to convert landscape that was challenging for agriculture into a course that’d be challenging for golfers. Right from the start, the developers realised that they needed to create something rather more than a golf course to have any chance of turning a profit. That’s why a restaurant – Fairways- and a bar was always an important part of the plan; it’s been open to non-members since Day One.

It was a farsighted decision. These days, though, it’s more important than ever that the food and drink part of the golf club thrives and prospers. Hundreds of clubs up and down the UK are cottoning-on to something Houghwood always realised. Golf courses cannot live on golf alone…

With golf club membership falling, the focus on attracting F&B business intensifies…

During the past five years, an unprecedented number of golf courses has been forced to pull up the pins and let the grass grow. At the root of the problem is a shortage of members. Golf England recently announced that, in the last decade, England has lost a staggering 200,000 golf club members.

Uniquely placed to serve the business communities of St.Helen’s, Skelmersdale and the surrounding areas – and commanding magnificent views over open countryside – Houghwood’s management is working hard to attract new customers to the club’s attractive lounge, bar and restaurant facilities. ‘We’d developed a steady lunchtime trade’, said Houghwood Golf Club M.D. Peter Turner, ‘a lot of ‘soup-and-a- sandwich’ business. There was potential for us to build on that success and that’s why we decided to take our coffee offer up a level or two.’

It wasn’t a decision taken lightly, though. In fact, it took a couple of years, several visits to trade shows and a series of consultative meetings with local supplier North West Vending / Coffee 1652 before the Golf Club settled on its direction and began to stride ahead.

Getting to know you, getting to know all about you…

Peter outlined what the club hoped to achieve: a coffee shop feel for the bar area that would expand the possibilities of attracting trade, from lunch times and evenings, to all-day. The coffee had to be ‘as good as anything discerning visitors would expect to be served on the High Street or in the finest hotels’, but the machine that dispensed it had to be simple. Also, they wanted a coffee of similar quality for the locker room – but with a price ceiling of £1.50

Part One: The Bar

‘We have to rotate staff between the bar and the function room upstairs’, Peter Turner told us, ‘so the coffee machine is something everybody has to be able to deal with. It really does have to be idiot proof. There are no idiots on my staff, but you know what I mean?’

The bar area targets sales in the region of 300 cups of coffee a week, far less than a high street shop. That ruled out many commercial coffee machines due to cost, whilst others failed to tick the ‘idiot proof’ box that was so important to Peter. However, there could be no compromise on quality. The machine also had to look great: it was going to be centre stage, front of house; the focus of attention.

Pete Atmore of Coffee 1652 picks up the story: ‘We’d been aware for some time of a new machine from N&W, Karisma, and we thought it could be the ideal machine for the job. However much we badgered N&W, though, we were told that the machine wasn’t quite ready to go.’

Happily, this time luck was on is side: just as Peter Turner confirmed Houghwood’s requirements, Karisma finally arrived in the UK. Soon enough, Pete Atmore secured the first available machine and subsequently, the first Karisma in the country was installed.

Tried and Tested

‘N&W has strict protocols that dictate the way they bring a product to market’, Pete Atmore explained. ‘They’ll produce a prototype, introduce it to the market place, take note of comments and reactions and then go away to engineer the solution. You know the machine has pedigree before it arrives. In some ways, that’s frustrating, because you’re always wishing you could have it now; but on the other hand, it’s reassuring to know that before the machine hits the marketplace it’s been thoroughly tried and tested’, he said.

‘The cleaning system is excellent, for example. It’s so simple to use. You leave the milk container in place and simply add cleaning liquid. The machine then adds exactly the amount of water required to dilute it; it runs exactly the right amount of the mixture through the machine to clean it, and then exactly the amount of clean water to rinse it. All automatically. There’s no room for human error at all.’

‘We’ve set an alarm on the machine’, Peter Turner adds, ‘so now, every evening at 10 pm, the Karisma tells us its time to get busy!

‘Eye-candy’: Karisma is a real head turner

Pete Atmore said: ‘N&W invested time and expertise not only in terms of engineering and functionality, but also in aesthetics and visual appeal, and in Karisma, they’ve delivered genuine ‘eye-candy’.’

No wonder coffee sales at Houghwood Golf Club are on the up. Better yet, the regulars have been fulsome in their praise of the club’s new flagship Belizzi brand coffee. So that was the first part of our Houghwood ‘puzzle’ solved. Part two concerned the golfers themselves…

Part Two: The Golfers

‘Golfers are a thrifty lot’, Peter Turner said with a wry smile. ‘They aren’t prepared to drink rubbish but they refuse point-blank to pay more than a pound for a coffee in the locker room.’ Now, they don’t have to; neither do they have to accept an inferior product… Our solution was another N&W machine, Canto Touch. (And another notable ‘first’ for us and for the golf club: Houghwood’s is the first Canto Touch in the UK).

Canto Touch is a different animal altogether from Karisma. Karisma sits behind the bar, to be admired by many but operated only by the chosen few; whilst Canto Touch is a free-standing, high-volume drinks vending machine that’s sufficiently robust to withstand the demands of the hectic call centre break out area, never mind the rarefied atmosphere of the golf club locker room…

Be that as it may: The club’s golf pro, Barry Taylor, is a big fan. ‘It’s like a giant iPad’, he said approvingly. ‘It doesn’t even look like a vending machine’. He’s got a point: featuring a 21 inch, high definition screen with touch-screen interactivity, Canto Touch could be mistaken for a games console! ‘It’s dead easy to make a drink to your own specification and the quality is amazing’, Barry continued. ‘The golfers really like it too and personally, I think the locker room coffee’s as good as the Belizzi* sold in the bar.’

‘There’s nobody in the world fussier than lady golfers’, Peter added. ‘They’ve really taken to the Canto Touch and, believe me, that’s a major coup!’ (It is a coup: it means Peter doesn’t need to staff the bar for those Saturday-morning-at-seven starts…

Italian heritage – it has to be real espresso…

Barry Taylor had hit upon the truth without realising it. You see, Canto uses the exactly the same coffee blend to deliver exactly the same coffee-shop product as Karisma. The only difference in the finished drink is that Canto uses freeze-dried granulated milk rather than fresh milk. (It tastes great and there a far fewer calories, by the way…)

How can that be possible? Pete Atmore explained: ‘Both Karisma and Canto use the same brewing unit. We created a blend of coffee specifically for use with the fully automatic, high-pressure brewers that are virtually unique to N&W. It’s in their Italian heritage to deliver the best espresso based drinks possible: I think that’s how they’ve been able to create such an amazing machine (Karisma) from a standing start.’

And Finally…

‘Everybody’s happy’, Peter Turner said. ‘I’m happy because the bar area now has the ambiance of a coffee shop and business people are coming back to us regularly to host meetings, to network with their peers or to meet friends, over a meal or over coffee. We’re busy all day, not just in the traditional service times. Customers regularly tell us how much they enjoy the whole experience here at Houghwood and that’s very rewarding. Just as importantly, the golfers are happy too, because they’ve got a new toy! Seriously, the feedback we’ve had has been great, our members like the futuristic look of ‘their own’ coffee machine and they’re really impressed with the drinks it dispenses.

Golf Club operators don’t need a vending publication to tell them that attracting incremental F&B business to golf club bars and restaurants is top-priority these days. However, we hope they don’t mind if we give them a bit of a nudge: ‘upping your coffee game may be easier than you thought thanks the state-of-the-art super-automatic coffee machines that are available from your trusted local vending operator, now.

*PV Recommends that golf clubs insist that their chosen vending supply is a member of the AVA.  Find out more, here.

**For more information on Canto Touch and Karisma, please contact N&W on 01902 355000, or e-mail sales.bilston@nwglobalvending.co.uk

*** To contact North West Vending, or Coffee 1652, please click on the appropriate logo, above.

Thanks!