The Mardale Inn - a meeting of minds
"We would definitely recommend Tabology to other operators – and we have. The system is easy to use, and covers so many parts of the pub business.” Sue Goble, Management Committee
Concerned they could lose a vital community asset, the Bampton Valley Community Pub group bought the freehold of The Mardale Inn at St Patrick’s Well in 2022. Run by a combination of paid staff and local volunteers, The Mardale Inn has been using Tabology’s Pub EPOS system since it reopened in July 2022.
Bampton Valley, a linked community of small villages and hamlets in Cumbria, had seen both its local pubs close in recent years. During the lockdown, locals formed the Community Pub Group, and launched a share offer to buy the shut-down Mardale Inn. This raised more than £400,000, and more than 500 local people became shareholders in the business.
Sue Goble is on the management committee – a multi-skilled team of eleven – that oversees the pub on behalf of the community owners. “The pub had been empty for four years, but the owner still lived in the village, and was open to a sale,” says Sue. “The whole village volunteered to put the pub back on its feet, by painting and decorating and so on. We opened for drinks in July 2022, for food in November.”
In May 2024, they received an Eden grant to refurbish their rooms, which now run at 65% occupancy across the year, providing a valuable source of income to sustain the pub and restaurant, which typically run on tighter margins.
Staying in control
While none of the committee members has a professional pub background, both Sue and her partner Phil worked in software and had a good idea what The Mardale needed from an EPOS system. While on a cellar management course, Phil met a publican who was running the Tabology
Pub EPOS system at a pub in Kendal, and arranged a demonstration.
“That was why we chose Tabology initially. We wanted something cloud-based rather than an on-premise system, because various people need to be able to access the back office, and we want to be able to operate it remotely. The thing I initially liked most was that we immediately had control of the stock”.
“The integrated nature of the Tabology system means that as well as being a till, the back office functionality enables us to manage stock, and also to get our pricing right. We’ve seen incredible cost increases come though the supply chain, and we can make sure we’re charging at the right level, not making a loss, which has been really important.”
Sue is able to use the stock management feature to generate a list of the pub’s key products, check supplier prices, and move ordering from one wholesaler to another according to which has the best pricing.
With the addition of food, The Mardale Inn has introduced table ordering using an iPad, with food orders automatically routed to the kitchen, and drinks to the bar. “This has significantly improved our efficiency and speed, as the chef gets the orders immediately,” says Sue. “Staff and volunteers all use the till system, which they find easy to use. We’ve done some basic till training, and Tabology has screenshots of key tasks, which is helpful.“
Looking after locals
Despite being very popular with tourists, Tabology’s Loyalty options ensure The Inn can look after its locals too. They benefit from member prices, and locals who invested in the pub can earn dividends through loyalty points. “Our volunteers are also signed up to the loyalty scheme, and we give them discounts through their membership that they can spend in the pub, based on the hours they work, which we can top up through the EPOS,” Sue says.
The Gift Card option has also proved very popular. “We communicate a lot on social media, particularly as some of the people who invested in the pub have links with the area, but aren’t based locally. We were approached by a number asking if we could do gift cards which they could buy for relatives in the Valley,” say Sue.
A meeting of minds
The Mardale Inn has become more than just a customer. Phil describes his work with Ali, our commercial Director, as a ‘meeting of minds’. Together, they were able to set up an intricate system of automations using Tabology’s APIs that make running of the Inn much smoother.
Phil says, “Our estimate is that the various automations and use of APIs save us about 7-8 hours or so of manual ‘back office’ effort per week. That sits alongside the other benefits such as data accuracy, timeliness of response and overall customer experience (on booking, in venue and post visit).
Some examples of the smart systems Phil and Ali put on place include:
- Zapier automation where a room booked through Preno automatically sets up a dinner reservation in Tabology’s bookings system
- Daily cash-ups automatically exported to Sage accounting software
- A post-stay survey automatically sent to guests via Zapier
- Integration with Brevo for targeted marketing
“Embracing tech is about redirecting paid effort to more beneficial customer-facing activity. The human experience delivered by colleagues should be unique, with the machine doing the dull repetitive work in the background. The secondary benefits are about running a tighter ship with less opportunity for errors and revenue leakage etc - thus enabling the team to make better management decisions day to day.
Given our setup as a Community Benefit Society, we have a responsibility to our community and shareholders members to sustain The Mardale as a local hub for generations. Our profit motives are different to many operators - the adoption of tech is all about underwriting that positive future.”
A true partnership
Overall, says Sue, “the support from Tabology is brilliant. We have used it a number of times for help when we’ve started using new features such as ordering, and also if issues arise, such as when we needed help to understand the offline mode following an internet issue. Tabology has always responded incredibly quickly, even in the middle of a busy session like New Year’s Eve!
“We would definitely recommend Tabology to other operators – and we have. The system is easy to use, and covers so many parts of the pub business.”
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