For most hospitality venues, now is the eye of the storm. The high energy of the World Cup has likely left your team exhausted but your
venue busy, and just as the flags and bunting are packed away, it’s the start of the Premier League and the school holidays.
In the hospitality sector, summer is a season of extremes. A terrace can transition from deserted to over-capacity in the space of a single weather forecast update. While we cannot control the clouds or the results on the pitch, we can control how our businesses react to them.
The Art of the Agile Rota
The greatest drain on summer profits isn’t usually a lack of customers, it’s the “cost of readiness.” Over-staffing on a rainy Tuesday is a quiet margin-killer, while under-staffing on a surprise sunny Friday results in lost revenue and stressed teams.
The most resilient operators are moving away from fixed “template” rotas. In 2026, the focus must be on agile deployment. This involves looking at various factors including: historical trends from previous summers, local event calendars (from music festivals to sporting finals), and real-time weather integration. By layering these factors, you move from “guessing” to “forecasting.”
This is where software like Polaris Data can help. It does the heavy lifting by suggesting average sales by analysing your historical sales patterns. It also provides weather forecasts so you can plan ahead . The goal is to provide intelligent guidance that ensures your team is scheduled to succeed, giving you the confidence to staff up when the data suggests a spike, and trim back when the clouds roll in..
The Human Element: Balancing the “Summer Dream”
Summer is peak season for your most valuable asset: your staff. However, it is also the time when they want to enjoy the sunshine themselves. Managing a flood of holiday requests during your busiest trading window is a delicate balance. Deny too many requests, and morale drops; approve too many, and your remaining team faces burnout.
The key to navigating this is transparency. Modern workforce management is no longer about a holiday calendar pinned to the office door; it’s about empowering the employee. By using a handy employee app, staff can check their own holiday accruals and submit requests instantly.
For the GM, having a Workforce Management tool like Polaris Data that centralises these requests in one place is transformative. It allows you to see the “big picture” of your labour availability against your forecasted needs, and also flag when there are clashes with leave. When you have intelligent guidance on staffing levels, you can approve leave with confidence, knowing you aren’t leaving your team stranded during a Wimbledon final.
Removing the Bottlenecks: Empowering Both Staff and Guest
In a packed beer garden, the physical distance between the customer and the bar is the biggest barrier to a second sale. If a guest looks at a long queue and decides against that next round, that is a lost margin that you cannot recover. You don’t necessarily need a massive influx of new staff to capture this hidden revenue; instead, you need to extend your service footprint and remove the friction of the transaction.
Modern technology achieves this by offering flexibility in how orders are taken. For a premium, staff-led experience, tools like mPay allow team members to take an order and accept payment immediately at the table using a single handheld device. The order is instantly sent to the bar, meaning the team can begin prepping the drinks without the server ever needing to walk back and forth to a static till point.
“mPay is really important for us. With so much going on in the venue, it’s a handheld version of what we have got on the tills. You can take their order, get on with something else, and the bar team are already aware and can make the drinks. The time spent is more efficient.”
Aiden, Assistant GM, Pins Social Club
Alternatively, for guests who prefer to manage their own time, order and pay services like Menu Connect provides a seamless QR code solution where they can scan, order, and pay from their seats, sending the ticket straight behind the bar.
Whether it is a customer scanning a code or a team member offering efficient table service, the result is the same: the average transaction value rises, table turnaround improves, and your floor team is liberated from the till.
Protecting the “Back End”: The Post-Game Analysis
When the sun is shining and the garden is full, it’s easy to get swept up in the high turnover. However, high volume can often mask micro-inefficiencies. Small errors in pouring, unrecorded wastage, or discrepancies in stock can quickly add up to a significant percentage of your margin.
The “Post-Game Analysis” is just as important for a publican as it is for a football manager. You need “one version of the truth” to understand exactly how your summer is performing. Using a system like Quantum for stock management allows for real-time oversight. If your premium cider is flying out of the cellar but your margins aren’t reflecting it, you need to know now, not at the end of the quarter.
Real-time data allows you to pivot your strategy mid-season. If you can see that certain spirits are trending during the tennis, you can adjust your displays and staff briefing notes to capitalise on that trend while the momentum is still high.
Enjoy the Sunshine
The Great British Summer will always be a gamble, but it doesn’t have to be a blind one. By leaning on data-driven forecasting, empowering your team with self-service tools, and removing the barriers to purchase in your outdoor spaces, you can reclaim your time.
At Polaris Elements, we believe the best hospitality happens when the “boring bits” – the admin, the scheduling, and the stock-taking-are handled by intelligent systems, leaving you free to do what you do best: running a fantastic venue.
Partnering for Success
As a proud partner of the BII, Polaris Elements is dedicated to helping operators simplify the complex. From Polaris Data’s forecasting to our Quantum, Menu Connect and mPay solutions, we provide the “essential intelligence” you need to thrive.
To learn more about how we can support your site this summer and beyond, get in touch with us:
