Welcome back. It’s Stephen Hunt from Hunt Hospitality. Today we’re going to be talking about your knowledge of your industry, it’s really important for you to discuss with your investors and for them to have comfort that you have a thorough knowledge of your industry. And what I mean about knowledge of your industry. This is going back to your account and your financials, you need to know what you will be paying for products, I’ll give you a perfect example. So for instance, you’re a plumber, you need to know the market rate of what you should be paying your apprentices, you need to know what you should be paying for products. And most importantly, you need to know what you should be charging for your products, it’s really, really important to know those because that makes up your margin. So nailing those three is really important and for your investor to have comfort in you knowing your your product, or what you’re selling your products for is really, really important.
Secondly, it’s really important to know about compliance, significantly important compliance litigation in Australia at the moment around the world is off the charts. There’s so many people being sued for things they weren’t aware of back to our risks, certain unforeseen. So you have to be all over your compliance to protect yourself. Compliance, What comes with compliance is insurance. So please make sure you have your insurance up to date. And again, you need to be knowing what you should be paying for insurance in your particular industry. It depends on what industry you’re in, the higher the risk, the higher the insurance. Another really important thing about knowing your industry is social media. So how are you going to sell your product? How are you going to get people interested, you need to know the latest and greatest you need to know about YouTube, you need to know about LinkedIn, need to know about Facebook, Snapchat any medium that’s out there, you need to be on it, and you need to know about to be able to sell your product. And your investor needs to know that you have comfort in the ability to market your product. They’re investing in your company, they’re investing in you. And it doesn’t have to be specifically you. And we go back to saying investing in your company that you and your team. So one of your members of your team will have to be up to speed on compliance. I have great compliance with my team in the pubs. All of my general managers have a great working relationship with the local councils, with enforcement and with state authorities as well. So it’s really, really important to be all over your compliance.
Okay, so it’s really important to be all over the trends on your specific industry. I’m super passionate about hospitality. My wife’s Irish, we have many trips over to Europe, or we did pre COVID. And during those trips, we would look, every time we went out for a beer or for a meal with our kids, we’d be looking at the latest and greatest trends. I’ll give you a classic example. Many years ago in pubs, restaurants were a specific part of the business normally tucked away in the back of the hotel, and there wasn’t a lot of thought to them. We went on a trip to Ireland and Ireland is famous for its potatoes, as everyone knows, and it’s fantastic Irish stews. So we thought hang on a second, there’s a big focus, people are eating their meals wherever they can in the pub, they can order their meal at the bar that I have to go out of the back of the pub, they can literally order food from wherever they are. So when we came back home wife and I thought, let’s implement this in our pub. So we changed the structure of the pub, not spending too much on capital expenditure, but people could actually order their meals from any Scotland pub, and they feel comfortable eating anywhere. So that was a trend we picked up from overseas. And that was very, very profitable for us. In fact, within the first few months, there was 10s of 1000s of dollars worth of savings on labor, and increase in throughput food profitability. So please be all over your trends.
So when your looking at your margins, you need to know your wage percentages, you need to know your cost of goods, for your specific industry. The two most biggest costs in your business, generally speaking, will be those two things, cost of goods and wages. And you need to know those and to be monitoring them regularly. It’s super important to always be shopping around with your suppliers to find the best deal as you can. And we always work off best deal and best price for the product. So for instance, we were negotiating with the biggest supplier, we want to make sure that we’re getting the best product. You don’t want to be paying nothing for a shitty product because your customers will not certainly not appreciate it. So thanks very much, please contact me on the details provided.
