Oakman reports record Christmas Day, with like-for-like sales for December only 1.9% behind 2019: Oakman Group, the Dermot King-led pub-restaurant operator, reported sales for December of £6.7m, 9.5% up on 2019, with like-for-like sales only 1.9% behind the same period two years ago, Propel has learned. Sales for Christmas Day stood at £361k – a record sales day for the 36-strong group. The performance in December came despite its Woburn site not re-opening fully until 13 December following investment in an extensive refurbishment and extension of the restaurant there. The business said it remained committed to its growth programme, with work on two new sites to open early in 2022 (Grand Junction in Buckingham and Grand Junction Arms in Bulbourne, Tring) on track and management teams appointed to take over these sites and get them ready for spring trading. The company also said it had been “very encouraged” by the initial response to its latest fundraise with over 240 new shareholders being “added to the Oakman family in the past three weeks which is well ahead of the 80 we added in the same period last year”. King said: “The team re-focused our efforts on retaining existing bookings by reminding our customers of the measures that we had put in place to be covid secure. These measures, included but are not limited to, CO2 monitoring across our estate to measure air quality and ventilation in our venues. I think that this strategy paid off because our Christmas trading was much better that we had anticipated (on 8 December). Even though most company-booked pre-Christmas office parties cancelled in the run up to the festive break, these were compensated by late walk-in business and smaller family groups that were easier to manage and allowed us to turn over tables quicker.” King said that managing team absenteeism due to covid was the biggest operational challenge. He said: “But we have not had to close any of our venues – and that reflects the strength of our management team. Our customer quality scores did not suffer either as we maintained all key measurements above 4.0 (marked out of 5.0) on our ‘Feed It Back’ scoring scale. Although, as a consequence of team shortages, ‘Speed of Service’ was our lowest score (4.1), overall, our ‘Quality Scores’ remain the most pleasing aspect of our update. The Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For survey results for 2022 were announced this week and I am pleased to say that we retained our three-star status again. Team retention is a key (if not the key) part of our strategy. If we can retain our employee engagement standards in this very volatile environment, we have a very strong foundation to on which to build a successful 2022.”