The eating and drinking out sector needs to speak with one voice if it is to get its message across to politicians and the public. So says Kate Nicholls, the new chief executive of the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers, who tells James Wallin about her vision for the ALMR.
For Kate Nicholls there are many challenges facing the eating and drinking out sector, and one of the most pressing is to get to a stage where it passes the ‘mum test’.
The new chief executive of the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers explains: “When your son or daughter comes to you and says ‘I don’t want to go university anymore, I’m going to do an apprenticeship in a pub instead’, what is the reaction? You have to counteract the parent’s perception that their chid is going into a dead end job.
“We don’t need to be apologetic about the fact that for a lot of people this will be a short-term career option, because in that period they are learning valuable life lessons about people skills, handling money, team work, time management and so on.
“But, we also have to shout about what a vibrant industry we are part of and inspire other people to want to join us.”
Tackling misconceptions about the trade among the public and the media is one of the many targets for Nicholls, who stepped up to replace David McHattie after more than a decade in various roles at the association.
For the moment she is juggling the twin responsibilities of being strategic affairs director and chief executive. The demands on her time were neatly illustrated when she had to rush from giving evidence to the Small Business, Enterprise & Employment Bill at Westminster to travel to Manchester, arriving just in time to take to the stage to close the ALMR Autumn Debate. She described the day as “me doing a Phil Collins – performing in London and Manchester”.
She says the recruitment process for her replacement is still ongoing and that she is “looking at doing things differently”, adding “We wouldn’t necessarily go out and recruit an exact replica of me because we’ve got me”.
Nicholls says she will take her time to find a structure that is right for an organisation that she says is in “rude health”, with year-on-year growth in membership numbers and value of 30% over the last two years and the expectation that this year’s figure will be similar.
One of her principal goals is to strengthen the ALMR’s presence in the casual-dining sector. She says: “We’d like to go after the other casual dining brands on the high street and bring them together so that we have one voice for licensed hospitality. That’s the way you get the most effective results from a lobbying point of view. As long as you have one company standing to one side, Government can always accuse you of not representing everyone.
“If you look at what we achieved with the beer duty campaigns, we spent two years bringing together the big players in our industry to talk with one voice to say the same thing. That is far more compelling and it’s something the supermarkets have been very good at – using their trade bodies for different things and coming together as a big four to lobby Government. We had never really done that until recently.”
Asked if the ALMR’s diversification ran the risk of the organisation spreading itself too thin, Nicholls insisted there were far more issues uniting the eating and drinking out sectors than dividing them.
She said: “The big issue when you talk to casual dining operators is high-street property and rent and the cost of property. It is the same if you talk to pub operators. Once you remove the nuances of the pubco debate, everyone is worried about the cost of property. Those costs are higher if you are a casual dining operator because you tend to be larger, you tend to be in a high street location but they are the same concerns. It’s not a different battle but it is a more nuanced approach.”
Nicholls stressed her experiences in lobbying had taught her that governments respond most proactively when any industry presents its concerns as a way to solve wider problems.
She said: “We can focus on the details such as personal licences, and that’s not to say they aren’t important, but we need to make sure we are putting forward arguments that it is in the Government’s interest to listen to. At the moment there is a lot of debate about the minimum wage and living wage and pushing that responsibility onto the employer. We need to steer that debate into a conversation around employment allowances, National Insurance contributions, PAYE and about that whole burden and how we can align that.
Getting MPs on your side
As part of its drive to lobby Government on all fronts in the run-up to the election, the ALMR is launching a website to help individual licensees approach their MP.
Nicholls said the as yet unnamed website, including constituency maps, is set to go live later this year to capitalise on the “most receptive period” for MPs and help pubs and restaurants promote themselves. She said: “There’s no doubt that the most compelling thing for an MP is to come into a local business and see it at first hand and find out what is happening on the ground.
“We have done numerous site visits with MPs where you can see the scales falling from their eyes as they see what this industry can achieve. There is still this thinking that pubs are £5,000-a-week operations, whereas we can show them a million-pound business being run by a 25-year-old because of the training they have received. Then they start listening.
“The next six months are going to be the most receptive period when it comes to MPs. Some of them will go to the opening of an envelope to generate the headlines they need for their campaign. If we don’t provide that opportunity then you can bet the local factory or shop will step in.”
