Steele at a Glance | by Steele Service Co.

  Steele at a Glance | The Labour Percentage Trap: Are We Measuring the Wrong Thing? In our last edition of Steele at a Glance , we looked at moving away from reactive "fill-in-the-blanks" scheduling toward an empowerment-first model taking inspiration from aviation's preferential bidding systems to align shifts with our people's lives and preferences. But even the best-designed, staff-centric roster can fall flat if it’s built on a metric that measures cost without measuring value. That brings us to the single number that has likely dictated more shift decisions than any other: labour percentage . Sales are soft? Check labour. Wages are over budget? Cut a shift. Forecast looks quiet? Send someone home early. Labour percentage is useful, and every operator needs to understand it. But problems start when we treat it as the ultimate grade for whether a roster is actually working. A lower labour percentage doesn't automatically mean a better-run venue, and in fact, c...

  Steele at a Glance | by Steele Service Co. Beyond the Fill-in-the-Blanks Roster: What Hospitality Can Learn from Airline Rostering In our last edition of Steele at a Glance , Ben explored how independent venues could collaborate through shared talent pools and joint training networks—tackling hospitality’s labor challenge by giving great staff access to more hours and clearer career pathways across venues. Building on that idea of rethinking our approach to people power, this week I want to dive into what happens within our own venue walls when we fundamentally change how we construct our rosters. If you’ve ever managed a team in a club or hotel, you’re familiar with the weekly puzzle. The roster opens, the blank shifts stare back at you, and the goal quickly becomes plug-and-play: put a name in every slot until the floor is covered. It gets the job done, but it treats rostering as a purely administrative task rather than what it truly is: a core driver of culture, productivity, ...

  Steele at a Glance by Steele Service Co   From COGS to People Power: Rethinking Hospitality’s Labour Problem In our last instalment, we looked at how independent venues could work together to increase their buying power, lower COGS and create some of the efficiencies that naturally come with scale. But purchasing is only one area where scale matters. Ask most hospitality operators what keeps them awake at night and wages, staffing and retention will be somewhere near the top of the list. Anyone who has written a roster knows the problem. You have a great casual who wants 25 hours a week, but this week you can realistically give them 14 without blowing your wage percentage. You want to keep them, they want to stay, but they also need to pay their bills. So they pick up work somewhere else, and a few months later you’ve lost a good employee and you’re back advertising, interviewing and training someone new. The Staffing Challenge for Independent Venues One of the natural adv...

    Steele at a Glance by Steele Service Co. Local First, Stronger Together: Reclaiming Scale & COGS In our last post, we explored how independent venues can join forces through shared technology and loyalty networks to level the playing field against large corporate groups. This week, we are taking on one of the biggest pressures sitting on every operator’s balance sheet: Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) , and how collective buying power can fundamentally shift the way we purchase, support local, and drive top-line revenue. The Corporate Supplier Trap: Branded Fridges vs. Real Margins For too long, independent hospitality businesses have faced a frustrating double standard. Large national suppliers and supermarket owned hotel groups command massive rebates, rock-bottom tier pricing, and dedicated account management. For independents, corporate supplier "support" often looks very different: Off-the-shelf pricing with zero negotiating leverage. Locked-in pouring contracts that ...

                                                   Steele at a Glance | Levelling the Playing Field with Collective Tech In our first post, we touched on a reality facing hospitality operators everywhere: the way venues compete is changing. Rising costs, labour pressure, tighter margins and changing customer expectations are forcing operators to rethink some of the traditional ways they do business. For smaller clubs, boutique hotels and independent venues, that challenge is often made harder by scale. Large hospitality groups can spread the cost of technology, marketing, procurement and data systems across dozens of venues. Independents usually cannot. But independence does not necessarily have to mean operating alone. So, what could a more collective approach actually look like? The Power of Shared Loyalty Networks Customer loyalty is one example. For a sta...

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