Support for pubs

Customer service

We aim to give all of our customers and hotel guests the best experience we can. To help us to do this, we have a head-office customer service team – on hand to support our pubs in providing this service and also to answer any questions which our customers may have.

Delivery and distribution

The distribution department is responsible for managing the performance of our logistics partners to ensure that all products arrive to our entire estate – in full, on time and to specification – across 6,000+ weekly deliveries.

The purchasing department sources the best-possible products (whether food and drinks or other items, known as non-consumables) for the best-possible price, purchasing products in line with our environmentally responsible buying policies.

Finance

Wetherspoon is a fast-paced, dynamic business – and the finance team is no exception…

We strive to maintain and improve strong financial control throughout the business constantly, from ensuring that we comply with various standards and legislation to supporting and challenging the rest of the business to make sound financial decisions.

Each team in the department plays an important role in the company’s success, for example our accounts payable team ensures that our thousands of suppliers are paid accurately and on time – and our operations finance team supports the pubs, along with regional teams, in the day-to-day running of the business.

IT and EPOS

The IT team provides support for our pubs, head-office and field-based teams, for all of their technology needs, ranging from PCs and tills to applications and information.

The team makes use of lots of new and exciting technology to help our teams to become more efficient – and partners with market-leading suppliers to design and deliver smart solutions to business challenges. To achieve this, the IT team provides excellent training and career-development opportunities. All of the team is extremely customer focused and has great organisational and communications skills.

Kitchen/food

The food-development team ensures that our menu is fresh and innovative, giving a wide range of choice and, ultimately, the best-quality, great-value pub food.

Legal

Wetherspoon is a fast-moving business; therefore, providing accurate and up-to-date legal advice is crucial. Our in-house legal team works closely with every part of the business in ensuring that all areas are carried out with minimal risk and in compliance with an ever-growing amount of legislation.

The legal team deals with a wide range of areas, including licensing and regulatory, litigation, planning, property, contracts, commercial, data protection, company secretarial and, finally, health and safety. No problem is too big or small – and the team helps colleagues across all areas of the business to find a way to do what they want to do, whether that’s a written agreement, some advice, representation at a meeting or just a second opinion. Colleagues across the business approach and involve the legal team in almost anything involving risk, where the team then has the role to mitigate that risk, offering commercial, as well as legal, advice.

Marketing

The marketing department is responsible for the communications and promotions in our pubs and hotels. Whether by traditional printed media or through digital methods, like our website and the Wetherspoon app, it’s the marketing department’s role to ensure that customers are aware of all of our groovy products and promotions.

Operations

The operations team’s number-one focus is to support the pub teams in achieving their goals and objectives, focused primarily on what we believe to be always number-one – the customer.

Each of our area managers has several pubs to visit regularly, helping to develop each one. At Wetherspoon, it really is ‘a people thing’. All of our area managers will have come from managing one or more of our pubs themselves, but we are always keen to welcome into the company talented people from other businesses, bringing with them new and groovy ideas.

People operations

Our people operations team plays a key part in delivering the company’s vision and values to our staff at the Wethercentre and our pubs/hotels. The team looks after personnel, training, recruitment and support, making our values come alive by providing our people with the leadership and development necessary, so that Wetherspoon is recognised continually as a great place to work.

This is achieved by recruiting the right people, with the right attitude, providing top-quality training and keeping everyone engaged and focused, through excellent communications and career opportunities.

We are really proud of our achievements which include being certified as one of the UK’s Top Employers for the last 18 years. We regularly seek feedback from all of our teams and encourage everyone to send in suggestions about how we can improve continually.

Property and maintenance

The property department is responsible for the management of Wetherspoon’s property portfolio, from finding, buying and developing new pubs to maintaining our current estate.

The acquisitions team is working constantly on sourcing the best locations for new sites, while the development team ensures that these are developed into great-looking pubs. Over the years, our designs and approaches have won us numerous design awards.

Our estates team ensures the smooth daily management of our properties, regarding rates, rents, staff accommodation and the many other factors involved in running commercial properties. This includes liaising with councils and local authorities on issues affecting our pubs and ensuring that these are resolved quickly and efficiently.

In the area of maintenance, both our field-based and office-based teams work closely with maintenance contractors to ensure that issues are resolved quickly and to a high standard.

Other responsibilities include the management of our refurbishment projects and also ensuring that our regular planned maintenance works are carried out when due, so that our pubs and hotels are always safe and compliant.

Retail audit

The retail auditors visit each of our pubs to support the company objective of running a clean, safe and profitable business. They assess how effective our pubs’ controls are, in relation to stock management, cash control, health and safety, food safety and people standards, as well as ensuring that we adhere to all relevant legislation.

The auditors also help with pub managers’ training, delivering stock management training and compliance and systems courses, as well as a food safety course for all kitchen managers attending our catering academy – part of our award-winning training programme. They also assist with all new pub and hotel openings, by visiting the site on the opening day to ensure that the pub or hotel is ready to trade. A support day is also completed at any pub with a newly appointed pub manager.