If you’ve ever spent your Monday morning commute daydreaming about starting afresh with your career, this feature is for you. Each Monday we’ll be speaking to someone from a different profession to discover what it’s really like.
This week we chat to publican Luke Bavester, 29, from The Sheaf Inn in West Haddon, Northampton…
People think my job is… You get out of bed late, roll downstairs, serve some beers, go to bed and have a few beers on the way. That’s quite a common misconception that it’s like having a social with your mates every day. It’s not like that, especially if you want to do your job well. We have been recognised by CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, after an extraordinary amount of work in the cellar, looking after our beer and cultivating our clients.
A normal starting salary is… Zero, if you’re a landlord and owner. That’s why people live above the pub for a while. It’s not an overly lucrative career, especially if you own the businesses – you are not going to make millions, you have to keep an eye on the purse strings.
I work about… 70 to 80 hours a week, sometimes more, sometimes less.
The best perks are… The hours, for me. I can pick my daughter up from school every day. I can go out for breakfast if I want to with my friends or wife. But for a lot of people, the hours can be quite antisocial. Also in this industry, you find real friends, people you can really chat to, and that’s quite a big part of it. You also often get fed – there is a move towards feeding staff nice, healthy dinners, which I think is important.
The most important skill to do the job well is… Resilience is a key factor. When you do have days that are a bit quieter, not losing the plot and thinking the world is going to end, and knowing you are going to be busy again. Keep the focus on serving the people who are there really well and don’t let it go off the boil because it’s quiet.
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The biggest mistake I’ve made is… Not investing time in how to cash-flow a business before I took one on. I went into the business thinking I’d be really good at it and then the finances would just work out. You often see people who are amazing at their job but it doesn’t work out financially. I wish I had some business qualifications beforehand.
My worst day in the job was… A time I caught a member of my staff doing drugs at work. I loved him dearly – I get a bit too close to my staff. And I had to sack him on the spot, and that broke my heart. It’s pretty rare, but unfortunately not that rare in hospitality.
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The best day was… The first Friday night when the pub was absolutely heaving with people, and different people from all works of life mingling and enjoying themselves. My goal had always been to put a pub back at the heart of the village because it was shut for five years.
Training… If you want to enter from the food angle, it’s really handy to have a set of formal qualifications as that gives you a good foundation knowledge. On the drink side, there are not so many formal qualifications you can get, most of it is hands-on experience and time working in the industry. So find a pub that you really like and get to work, that’s the best way to learn how to do it. I agree with the principle that you need to 10,000 hours to be a master of something.
I manage to save… A couple of hundred quid a month into a private pension, but most of my savings are going into bricks and mortar.
I’m hoping to retire when… I’m around 50. I’m 29 now. I’ve got aspirations of being a granddad, so not too young but not too old either. At the moment I am using any money that I save to buy houses so I can set my daughter and wife up so that when we are old we can live off the rental income.
