Last year's severe weather in December was estimated to have caused a £500m-750m loss in sales for the on trade market. With this year's cold snap again hitting the hospitality industry the importance of controlling labour and food costs becomes even more critical when sales are down. With this in mind Success will be running the Budgets, Wage Targets and Labour Reporting workshop at the beginning of April to help businesses hit their labour targets. Also in April Success will be running its popular FnB reporting workshop to cover the numerous reports within FNB to help you fully understand your food costs further. To register your interest in either of these sessions then please follow the links in the get involved section.

David Heath,
Customer Success Team

Success story

Boparan Ventures is the investment arm of Ranjit Boparan. In 2008, Boparan Ventures acquired 5 Fishworks restaurants and has since expanded with the acquisition of Harry Ramsden's chain of restaurants in the UK. Success was asked to help Boparan extract more detailed information out of the system to help them make sensible business decisions. The holiday functionality, document management and labour reporting were areas of focus.

Our people

Hi, I'm Michael Hordern and I am Product Manager at Fourth Hospitality.

I was part of the original team that designed and built the first version of the trade simple platform over ten years ago. I then moved into a Consultant/Project Management role and was involved in most major trade simple implementations, in the UK and abroad, up until the end of 2010. Working with a diverse range of customers and suppliers over that time has given me a deep insight into how our industry works, particularly purchasing, invoicing, and supply chain management.

I'm really lucky in my current role as it combines business, technical, and user-experience aspects: Business, in that it's my job to make sure the product is ready to achieve Fourth's strategic goals, while maximising our return on investment; Technical, in that it's important to understand how the product is built, and what's involved in making changes to it; and User Experience in that the Product Manager is a key voice for the user inside Fourth - testing the product, listening to customers, prospects, and others to get that first hand feedback.

The most rewarding thing is seeing real users working with the product and getting real benefit out of all the fantastic work that Fourth Hospitality has put into making and supporting it.

Michael Hordern MA (Oxon)
Product Manager

Get involved

Success workshops

Best practice

When adding a supplier to site ensure you have set up the organisation specific information first.

Tick which delivery days the supplier will deliver on to ensure effective dates for the orders are accurate, enter any cut off times the supplier may have and these will also be accounted for.

You can enter any minimum order quantities or values the supplier may have, if you want to block orders below these then don't forget to tick the box 'Block orders below minimum'. If you want to control how much sites can spend with a given supplier then enter a maximum order amount and again tick the box to block orders above this value.

Top tips

people system
You can set up fixed costs to be added into your rota for items such as security, cleaners or even costs such as papers or staff lunches. These can either be fixed or variable dependant on the type.

fnb manager
Swap your managers around when possible for stock counting so that they audit each other and also learn the different areas of your business should the occasion arise that they need to work in that area.

trade simple
If you are a supplier, you can log onto hospitality.tradesimple.net and click on 'Supplier Guide' under 'Documentation' on the far right of the screen to learn more on how to use trade simple for example creating invoices, sending order confirmation and so on.

star chef
If you offer any sort of menu where the customer is in control of what is taken, star chef has a menu model that allows you to cost the whole production and generate a GP% based on the number of covers and price per person. Use the 'Buffet Menu' option. This works really well costing Buffet Breakfasts too!

Legal corner

How should HR plan for the Olympics?

The Olympic and Paralympic Games take place between 27 July 2012 and 9 September 2012.

Whilst the Olympics may bring commercial opportunities and the prospect of boosting staff morale, employers undoubtedly have their concerns. Most employers anticipate the severe travel disruptions the Olympics will cause, however, they will also need to turn their mind to workplace implications that may ensue. For example, for employees who want to volunteer; consider 'throwing a sickie'; or want to watch the Games during working hours.

To avoid workplace conflict it is recommended that employers plan, implement appropriate policies and clearly communicate them, so that everyone knows what is expected of them.

For further advice and details of specific business and HR issues which may need to be considered, please read this article.

Fourth Hospitality is the leading provider of Software-as-a-Service solutions for the hospitality industry for core cost control of labour, payroll, stock and purchasing.