JERSEY’S hospitality industry needs to ‘reinvent itself’ – becoming ‘more productive and less reliant on staff’ – if it is to survive in a world of rising costs, according to a leading restaurateur.
In an interview in The Business supplement, JPRestaurants director Dominic Jones said that his firm had made better use of technology and had reviewed opening hours to become more efficient.
The industry is one of many facing increasing pressures from staff shortages and the rising cost of living.
‘We need to start thinking pretty boldly about how we change and adapt our sector to enable it to flourish,’ said Mr Jones in the interview, which is published on pages 30 and 31.
‘The challenges we have with recruitment and input costs mean that we need to find ways of becoming more productive and changing the offering.
‘We have done that at JPRestaurants, using technology and reviewing areas such as process and opening hours to reduce the number of staff we need and to make ourselves as efficient as possible.
‘And we are not the only business embracing technology. If you look at Premier Inn, which has recently opened its second hotel in the Island, you will see automated check-in processes and customers paying for hotel rooms in advance, concepts which, ten years ago, people would have laughed at.
‘While some businesses may be reluctant to change, we need to break away from a lot of our habits and received wisdom of how hospitality works and reinvent it if it is to succeed in the future.’
Mr Jones, whose business operates Banjo, Jersey Crab Shack, Oyster Box and Café Ubé, also defended recent price rises in the sector, saying that the increases were not indicative of a ‘rip-off’ culture within the industry.
He said that customers ‘are paying the price for the high input costs’, which he said had risen by about 20% since Covid.
