The Oakman Group

The first Oakman Inn opened its doors in 2007, and has since established itself as a group of modern public houses, that offer a contemporary setting, high-quality food and drink and exceptional service.

It has 35 sites across the South East, the Home Counties and the Midlands, and like many operators in the last few years, it’s faced several operational challenges that have threatened its market position.

The Oakman Group tasked 125 to help with its goal of delivering the ‘perfect Sunday Roast’ as a key part of improving the customer experience overall.

Challenges

There were three key challenges being faced by Oakman Inns and the operational team: identifying opportunity for sales growth (especially on key day parts), inconsistent product quality (particularly with the Sunday roast meat and roast potatoes) and static NPS remaining flat.

Solution

Working in partnership with 125, the Oakman Inns team became obsessed with perfecting the Sunday Roast. The focus was targeted on:

• Product Offering including a reduced and simplified menu to help streamline operations and a full re-design to focus on best sellers
• Quality Control obsessing over the perfect, crispy, roast potato
• Team Engagement through talking up the new focus on quality and products

Results

In addition to average food score increasing from 4.26 to 4.40, average speed score from 4.12 to 4.27 and Sunday roast scores increasing from 75% to 83%.

“Our journey with 125 to deliver the perfect Sunday Roast and improve the overall customer experience has been a real eye-opener in terms of how valuable it is for us as a business to have tangible, real-time and insightful data on our guest performance at our fingertips. Working with us as a partner on this project, we are already starting to look at the next area of the business to improve”

Kelly Beard, Head of Marketing

Implementation of the Casual Excellence programme

Alongside the Sunday Roast initiative, Oakman’s operations team spearheaded a ‘Casual Excellence’ project to address a lack of hospitality mindset experience in more junior employees with trainers playing a crucial role in translating data into actionable strategies.

Using 125 data, operations teams focussed on four key areas:

• The Welcome, ensuring it was warm and engaging and helped set the scene for the meal
• Product Knowledge, ensuring the team were confident in what they were selling and proud of the changes that had been made
• Drinks were a key focus to help drive sales but also the guest experience
• Upselling specifically across sides, desserts and coffees to drive further sales

“Casual Excellence, at its core, was designed to initiate and is just the beginning of a renewed focus on what great service and hospitality should look like for the next generation of hospitality leaders. This has become increasingly important considering the challenges brought about by global events and the widely reported recruitment crisis across the UK”

Kelly Beard, Head of Marketing