Case Study: The Cradock Arms
The Cradock Arms in Knighton, Leicester is a gem of a pub offering a fantastic range of drinks, freshly cooked meals and regular festivals, live entertainment and private events means there is something for everyone in this lovely, community pub.
Business owners Jonny & Leah have lovingly developed the Cradock over many years and created a fabulous business but like many businesses they came out of the pandemic with several challenges including a very different food offer affected by the trading conditions of covid and no head chef to support the changes needed to recover.
"..working with Simon at Profit Hound has been very useful, with a fresh pair of experienced eyes offering ideas that has lit the fire in us to get the food operation back on course, very exciting!!
Thank you for your advice, patience, and support…."
- Leah and Jonny - Owners
Profit Hound Support
Fair to say it has been a real journey since The Cradock began trading with Profit Hound in March 2022, with all the well documented head winds for hospitality in play….!! Two head chefs have come and gone, food inflation at 20%, loss of VAT support and energy price increases.
That said with the support of Profit Hound the kitchen is in the safe hands of joint head chefs, our previous sous chefs and whilst the chef upheaval has delayed progress The Cradock now has the contemporary and progressive food offering that was the ambition at the outset along with a very positive stable food margin.
Here’s a summary of how we arrived at this point.
Procurement Review
Identifying like for like savings of 20% by changing vegetable suppliers as well as 16% savings on seafoods and additional savings on meat by implementing a second supplier.
Sunday Lunch
Was a large separate menu and unusually offered 5 roasts which we reduced to 4 and introduced “The Cradock Roast” at a premium price to provide menu coverage and additional revenue along with a few linked favourites to make Sunday an efficient and profitable day.
Starters and Desserts
The weekday and Sunday dishes were not linked, which impacted potential wastage and labour cost, this was rectified by retaining and linking the best-selling dishes.
Flash Food Report
Simon suggested a very simple document to record spend and income to build a picture of profitability “in month” giving the ability to proactively manage performance.
Menu Management
Simon introduced the Jelly Kitchen Management App which allows us to buy online, photograph and store invoices, build recipe costings from product data automatically stripped from the invoices, tracks product price changes and most recently to automate our Flash Food Report.
Priced Order Sheets
User-friendly, fully bespoke priced order guides were developed and are maintained monthly to optimise best price purchasing to support the chefs in making the most effective purchasing decisions.