RedCape plan brings patrons back to pubs
Pub landlord RedCape Hotel Group is looking to bring back customers to its Sydney-heavy network of venues in the wake of the pandemic lockdowns.
The company said the first wave lockdowns had a significant impact on the company‘s bottom line with closures stemming the first wave of coronavirus cases from late March into early June driving a 21.2% fall in distributable earnings for the full financial year.
All of the group‘s 32 venues in NSW and Queensland have now reopened. While there is significant volatility around the general economic and health outlook, RedCape CEO Dan Brady said the group’s job now is to ensure customers can trust pubs and hotels are safe, particularly as several of the venues under its umbrella are located in the South West Sydney hotspot suburbs.
“There have been some very good operators who have just been the unfortunate victims of those sorts of clusters. There have been other operators that haven’t done the right thing,” Brady said.
“We‘ve got the right foundation. That is, being suburban we know that local communities are the cornerstone, we’re not reliant on tourism. So, what we focus on is having pubs in well located strategic spots … which we see as being quite strong and ensuring that we are operating to the optimal customer experience.
“We‘re talking about removing hassles and reconnecting customers to their communities, in a very safe way. That’s really one of that purposes of creating a trust environment and we’re able to do that with our customers with our staff,” he said.
