Interesting to see that one of those “serial entrepreneur” types, Luke Johnson, paid a visit to the pub industry last week. He appeared as guest speaker at the BII’s annual luncheon to impart his wisdom on customer service.

Famous for establishing the Pizza Express chain back in 1993 it was funny that he couldn’t hack it at one of his own restaurants when he appeared in the BBC’s “Back to the floor” programme. He was asked to do shifts as a waiter, chef and front-of-house manager at his then restaurant chain, Belgo. He was told off for leaving menus on the table, forgetting to give customers their bread and being too slow. He threw the ultimate TV strop and walked off the “floor”.

This was precisely the sort of bad service that he railed about in his speech when he pointed out that two thirds of people complain about service. He stressed that training staff is key to ensuring outstanding service. Now that apprenticeships in the sector are helping to improve professionalism perhaps clear career choice and progression in the service industries is a real possibility.

We were out for dinner last week for my ten year old son’s birthday. He specifically requested that we go to the (now also famous) Bull’s Head at Repton in Derbyshire – owned and run by Licensees of the Year 2010, Richard and Lauren Pope.

He only chose the pub because they do a certain pizza with barbecue sauce on the base. When this pizza ‘nirvana’ arrived he was immediately disappointed as the sauce did not taste like barbecue sauce. When the waitress did her customary check two minutes later we explained the problem. She said that the pizza was definitely made with the right sauce but quick as a flash, she offered to bring extra barbecue sauce in a bowl to the table. Cue one very happy boy and two relaxed and impressed parents.

It’s a shame about the endless “Happy Birthday” moments with loud music, a cake with a sparkler and a cheesy American-style birthday message delivered in a South Derbyshire accent booming out through the speakers every ten minutes. Ah well, not everyone likes the same toppings do they?

The news that two barmen were acquitted of the manslaughter of a customer who died from acute alcohol intoxication must have been greeted with a sigh of relief throughout the pub industry.

Aidan Dalton and Gary Wright had both denied the manslaughter of 26-year-old Graham Parish from East Lancashire, who died following a night of heavy drinking at Hayes Hotel in County Tipperary, on June 30th in 2008.

It was alleged that Dalton and Wright were guilty of “gross negligence” in allowing Graham Parish to be served a single drink containing at least eight measures of spirits. The two men, it emerged in the trial last week, were not trained on the potential dangers of fatal doses of alcohol.

The hotel manager, Gerry McGovern also told court that bar staff at the hotel were supposed to follow a number of unwritten rules, including not to serve alcohol to those considered by staff as having had too much to drink. He also admitted that the job descriptions for the two men, which were supposed to have been read and signed by the two accused when they started working at the hotel, could not be located.

Both the hotel management and the two men seem to have had a lucky escape and will perhaps have learned a few lessons in training, due diligence and more accurate record-keeping.

It’s a shame they’re not in the UK and able to take advantage of CPL’s e-learning courses in health & safety and the award in underage sales prevention as well as APLH, which is coming soon, and all of which include training in the care of employees and customers and serving drunks. Prices range from just £25 - £35 and can be completed by anyone with access to the internet.

Let’s hope they’ve also had a salutary lesson in morality too.

Another year, another raft of reality TV shows. Can we take any more?

This January though sees the arrival of two programmes which specifically point the spotlight on customer service, both in hospitality and retail.

Michel Roux Jr., fresh from his ‘Masterchef’ season, heads up ‘Service’, an eight-part BBC2 programme which aims to take eight youngsters through the rigours of front of house training. For reasons unknown, the Brits don't rate “waiting on” as a career. Valued in France, Italy, America and virtually everywhere else, we tend to confuse service with servitude. But Michel Roux wants to try and set all that straight, so expect lots of scenes about manners, attitude and personal grooming.

"We know about the passion and glory of chefs on television," says Roux. "Front of house requires equal passion and gives equal rewards. You can travel the world and get personal satisfaction out of providing great service." The two top performers will win six-month scholarships with the Academy of Food & Wine to train as a maître d' and sommelier.

Meanwhile, Mary Portas, self-styled retail guru and ‘Queen of Shops’ dons her high heels again and goes undercover in Channel 4’s ‘Secret Shopper’ to reveal the shocking service in Britain’s high street shops. It’s a similar story to the first one, as our nation’s shop assistants hit the floor with little training, poor leadership and even worse manners.

Why are we prepared to put up with this rubbish? Why do big brand chains continue to dish out shoddy service, with badly motivated staff who, at best, try hard without the proper training and at worst seem to just get away with it? What does it take to instil pride and passion in every job?

These are two reality TV shows that I’ll definitely be watching.

As the major amore capital of the world, the Italians might find the news that a quasi Italian restaurant chain is teaching waiting staff the art of flirting somewhat bizzarro!

Pizza Express is attracting quite a lot of attention at the moment from its “living lab” experimental restaurant in Richmond. Here, the 380-strong restaurant chain is trialling just about everything, from design and acoustics to service and food. Their mission they say is: “Not simply to continue to serve great pizza, but to help feed great conversations, something we believe has always been at the heart of our brand.”

Subsequent news stories have reported that waiting staff are being encouraged to flirt with customers in a bid to give diners a more personalised service and to make them feel special.

There’s something slightly squirm-inducing about teaching frontline staff how to interact, even flirt with customers. There is such a fine line between being over-friendly and offering just the right level of service. Having never visited the restaurant, I am not qualified to comment – perhaps the training is all about the subtlety of good service – however, I remain to be convinced.

The new approach to staff training involves recruitment based on personality rather than experience, a trip to Italy and dialogue training. All very meaningful and worthy but are they trying a bit too hard to inject a faux passion and enthusiasm in the brand? They claim to be successful so far and are rolling the training out to a further four branches in the New Year.

I shouldn’t be cynical, it’s not over until the fat lady sings….maybe they will hold her back for the Christmas break.

A hotel in Cheshire was fined £75,000 this week for breaching fire regulations after a routine visit by Fire Safety Officers in 2008 closed down the hotel immediately.

They found faulty smoke detectors and substandard fire exits and the third floor failed to have a single working fire alarm. Staff had not been properly trained in fire safety.

The 160 bedroom hotel was given permission to reopen four days later after fixing fire safety problems and installing the required equipment but there are no mentions in the new reports about how they rectified their staff training.

At CPL Training there are two easy options for training employees in Fire Safety:

The first one is to take a one-day face-to-face training course, the Fire Marshal Award. This is a non-incendiary course designed to equip any employee with the knowledge required to enforce fire regulations within the workplace.

The course includes skills such as basic fire-fighting, emergency and evacuation procedures and the correct use of extinguishers through to full-blown fire risk assessments and fire science. The course can be run in-house and on a 24/7 basis. For example. CPL Training have run courses for hotel shift workers in the middle of the night to fit in with their working times.

The second and even more accessible option is to take the online version of the course through the CPL E-Learning website (www.cple-learning.co.uk). This course is available to anyone for just £30 (+ vat) and is filled with images, graphics and tasks to complete with the on screen avatar.

I appreciate this has been a blatant advert for CPL Training but this news story highlights the duty placed on the employee or operator to carry out and continue to monitor fire safety provision. The penalties in this case included a £25k fine for each of the three offences and £53k in cost. Had anyone died or been injured as a result of a fire, the hotel owners could have faced charges under the Corporate Manslaughter legislation with even higher fines.

I hope I’ve sparked your interest in some fire safety training

I was lucky enough to get myself onto a guided tour of the 2012 Olympic site at the weekend. I was even luckier to discover that our tour guide was David Higgins, the Chief Executive of the Olympic Delivery Authority.

The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) is the public body responsible for developing and building the new venues and infrastructure for the Games and their use after 2012. So our guide was well placed to offer lots of insight into the politics, the decisions and sheer magnitude of the incredibly complex build and its schedule.

The scale and design of the main stadia that we’ve all seen in the media is only part of the story. The infrastructure to support the event is equally impressive: The Olympic park site has its own Energy Centre, Primary Substation and Pumping Station; the media centre is almost as big as the main stadium and will use enough power for a small city; there is a hotel on site as well as, what will be, Europe’s largest shopping centre. And don’t forget the Olympic village to house 16,000 athletes.

The great news is that they’re on schedule. The park will be ready for summer 2011 and a year of testing and refining the stadia will follow.

The ultimate challenge for the games themselves will be the people. The people involved in delivering the experience to the athletes, the sports fans, the tourists, the customers of the games.

Will the UK stand up to scrutiny in delivering the standard of customer service that our visitors will expect? Will the hospitality industry be ready to embrace the millions of people visiting the UK, London and the rest of the Olympic sites? With an estimated £2 billion boost to the industry it’s clear that the opportunities will be huge, but are we making the right investment in training and development now?

Back in 2005 when London first won the bid there was a lot of talk about whether we could develop the service culture we need to welcome the world. From Heathrow, to the transport systems, hotels and restaurants, the UK has to pull its collective socks up.

We’re less than two years away now and I wonder whether we’re any nearer to achieving an Olympic standard in hospitality?

I was talking recently to a supervisor in a factory that makes cardboard boxes. He’d been working there since he left school for over 20 years. He had worked hard and consistently and had moved his way up into his current position, responsible for a team of 86 people.

A couple of years ago, a new manager responsible for the factory had joined the business and realised that his team felt pretty under valued. He decided to embark on a programme of NVQs – National Vocational Qualifications – a pretty brave step given that it would involve some paperwork and the buy-in of his key managers in a sector that didn’t traditionally embrace this type of learning.

NVQs are a 'competence-based' qualification which means employees learn practical, work-related tasks designed to help them develop their skills and knowledge to do a job effectively. They are government funded through the Learning and Skills Council and funds are allocated through regional providers.

Working with CPL Training since March 2010, around 30 of the factory employees began their Level 2 NVQs in Team Leadership and Level 3 NVQ in Management. Regular visits from a CPL Training assessor followed and slowly but surely the group began to realise the value of their experience and knowledge. By the time they had completed their NVQs in the summer they had visibly grown in confidence and pride. The NVQs validated the skills and experience that they already had through doing their jobs but it was a smart move commercially too - once someone is skilled there is anecdotal evidence that they stay longer and perform better for their company. And right now, there couldn’t be a happier, more motivated bunch of people at that factory.

We’re going to take some photos and chat to the team in October, so keep an eye on the web news stories. Meanwhile, have a look at what CPL Training are doing with NVQs at this link: http://www.cpltraining.co.uk/training/nvq/nvq.aspx

This week we’ve all breathed a big sigh of relief. For now anyway.

The emergency budget on Tuesday did not have a direct impact on alcohol with a freeze on duty but the Chancellor promised to review this again in September – particularly with regard to alcohol most related to binge drinking. So is that the 18-25 age group drinking lager and RTDs in towns and cities each weekend or middle England with their over reliance on a bottle or two of wine a day? Who knows? Apparently a joint review into taxation and pricing will be carried out by the Treasury, Home Office and Department of Health. Meanwhile, we have 6 months before the Vat rise kicks in and the public sector workers begin to feel the pain.

A Chief Constable from Durham was in the news this week with, a "suck it and see" policy on the Government's proposal to overhaul the Licensing Act. He remains to be convinced on the link between minimum pricing and violent crime reduction but was complementary about the role that pubs and bars play in managing risk and that they are definitely socially responsible. It seems that all that NCPLH, SCPLH, underage sales, drugs awareness and door security training seems to have paid off for the industry and someone has recognised it! Let's hope that his views are shared among his colleagues.

Also a possible reprieve on the idea from Sir Peter North that blood alcohol limits for drink driving should be cut from 80mg to 50mg per 100ml of blood. The Transport Secretary, Philip Hammond has promised to consider carefully the economic and public service impact of such a change on pubs. This would undoubtedly hit rural pubs that are often the only commercial enterprises in many villages these days. Let’s hope that the economic argument wins through.

Lastly, we all breathed a sign of relief as England went through the group stages of the World Cup. Let's hope they keep going for a little bit longer too.....

I was impressed with the story this week that pubco giant, Punch Taverns is to offer all of their tenants a say on their new code of practice for tenancy agreements. It has already been accredited in principle by the BII but Punch is giving tenants the chance to provide feedback and comment on the 63-page document.

The chances are that most busy licensees won't have chance to go over the document thoroughly but it's good that they have at least been given the chance. I hope that this is more than just another PR gesture but they have promised to consider all feedback before finalising anything.

Of course, the smaller family-owned brewers and pub owning businesses have been running their own version of consultation for years. For them it means talking to their licensees on a regular basis, visiting their pubs and knowing them all by name, something that has gone by the wayside with the large national pubcos.

Let's hope that these codes of practice are workable and not too daunting for new entrants to the trade. 63-pages seems like the perfect antidote for insomnia!

A 17 year old girl has been arrested for using a false id to buy alcohol in a bar in Chelmsford, Essex. The arrest follows the launch of a Home Office poster campaign earlier in the year targeting underage drinkers and makes use of the 2006 Fraud Act. It is thought to be the first time that it has been used for this purpose.

It’s rare to see the underage person who has attempted to buy alcohol punished like this. It has been so much easier to target the licensee who has sold the alcohol and punish them and their business for the actions of one person.

Just last week I studied the CitizenCard photo of five young people (see below) to try and guess which one was underage. I can’t tell you which ones are because they form part of the questions in the new Age Verification course, a joint venture between CPL and CitizenCard. Suffice to say, I got it completely wrong.

This, of course is what licensees have to deal with everyday so due diligence is order of the day with staff training, systems and an underage prevention policy. All this and more is available through the Age Verification course through our E-Learning website very soon with an accompanying handbook.

I doubt that the young lady’s arrest for fraud by false representation marks a substantial change in the enforcement of this issue but it’s good to see some balance occasionally.