Watford land £5.6m from The Lindley Group's catering and hospitality deal

7:11pm Thursday 6th September 2012 in Sport

The Lindley Group will pay Watford £5.6m over the course of four years as part of an agreement which will see the company look after not only the club’s catering but their hospitality and events departments.

The Watford Observer revealed last month that the Hornets were no longer planning to use their in-house catering company and had switched to Lindley Venue Catering – which is part of the Lindley Group.

And it has since been disclosed that Lindley will also provide sales and marketing services aimed at increasing the use of facilities at Vicarage Road on non-match days.

This has led to some members of staff ceasing to be employees of the club and they now work for Lindley.

Hornets chief executive Scott Duxbury, pictured, claims having a specialist catering and marketing company will help the club improve it’s revenue potential.

He said: “We have been looking at all aspects of the club and felt that catering and hospitality was an area where we could benefit from the expertise and experience of a specialist.

“I’ve worked with contract caterers in the past, so I knew what I was looking for – a business with a fresh approach and new ideas, one which could really engage with us and help us to make a major step change in terms of enhancing the match-day experience and proactively bringing non-match day business to the club.

“I invited Lindley Venue Catering to put forward their ideas for how they could work with us on developing the match-day catering and events business at Vicarage Road over the next four seasons, and we were impressed with their professionalism and their vision for how we can maximise the revenue potential from catering to invest back into the club.”

Lindley Venue Catering is based in Stoke and has agreed deals with a number of football clubs this summer.

Among those are Premier League side Tottenham Hotspur and Football League outfits Millwall, Notts County and Rotherham United.

Comments(32)

buckler says...
7:27pm Thu 6 Sep 12

Pukka Pies on the way!

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lutondown says...
7:35pm Thu 6 Sep 12

buckler wrote:
Pukka Pies on the way!
Can't beat a pukka me old mukka!
Cornet, roll over its now a ryhming war

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buckler says...
8:06pm Thu 6 Sep 12

Wont be selling family sized ones to eat!

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lutondown says...
8:08pm Thu 6 Sep 12

buckler wrote:
Wont be selling family sized ones to eat!
So I'll buy four small ones
#greedypig!

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The Rover says...
8:29pm Thu 6 Sep 12

My concern is that the easiest way to recoup the £5.6m is to charge ridiculous prices for food and drink on match days. £6 for a pukka pie anyone?

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CreteJoe says...
8:33pm Thu 6 Sep 12

If the Lindley Group think it is worth paying out £5.6m to the club it is because they expect to make more than £5.6m over the next four years. Money which will not go to the club, looks like bad business acumen to me.

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lutondown says...
8:38pm Thu 6 Sep 12

CreteJoe wrote:
If the Lindley Group think it is worth paying out £5.6m to the club it is because they expect to make more than £5.6m over the next four years. Money which will not go to the club, looks like bad business acumen to me.
Mein Gott, unbelievable negativity and I think it's you business acumen that's suspect

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miked2006 says...
9:02pm Thu 6 Sep 12

CreteJoe wrote:
If the Lindley Group think it is worth paying out £5.6m to the club it is because they expect to make more than £5.6m over the next four years. Money which will not go to the club, looks like bad business acumen to me.
Do you really think the Pozzo's would agree to this if the club made over 5.6 million over the previous 5 years. The money to the club is guaranteed and therefore at no risk to us, the pressure is on them to improve the catering to a sufficient standard so that they earn their money back.

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Hornofplenty says...
9:05pm Thu 6 Sep 12

CreteJoe wrote:
If the Lindley Group think it is worth paying out £5.6m to the club it is because they expect to make more than £5.6m over the next four years. Money which will not go to the club, looks like bad business acumen to me.
We don't have the details of the terms of the agreement. There will likely be a number of facets to the contract that will likely include % of revenue comes back to club, targets etc around the non match day piece and I would presume that this fee is actually a reasonable return if they have properly sold the concept of our return to premiership plan within the next 2-3 years. Duxbury is no fool and I would expect all sorts of protections and claw backs in the deal if not... I am available for consultancy....

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D.unstable says...
9:07pm Thu 6 Sep 12

Lovely jubely, 5.6m towards the new stand.

Good job Bas didn't have this idea, it would have been signed up and out of the country by now.

I wonder if he ever got his deposit back on the other big screen?

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RebelIan says...
9:10pm Thu 6 Sep 12

It also means we are guaranteed the £5.6m whereas Lindley have to take the risk on ensuring they sell enough to recoup their outlay and make some profit. If we're clever we will have built in a percentage over and above a certain level of sales. Good business sense and means we don't have to manage it.

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Jan Lohman says...
9:28pm Thu 6 Sep 12

CreteJoe wrote:
If the Lindley Group think it is worth paying out £5.6m to the club it is because they expect to make more than £5.6m over the next four years. Money which will not go to the club, looks like bad business acumen to me.
Joezo, best sign up for The Apprentice young man....you're what the producers are looking for!!

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Holly68 says...
11:03pm Thu 6 Sep 12

£1 .4M a year over 4 years ! Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Bas only get £1.3M for advance of the season ticket money for this season !?

Sounds like a good deal, that should cover the "Gap" in the accounts

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a1derek says...
11:22pm Thu 6 Sep 12

If they put a few more decent beers in to entice people to drink in the ground before the game...that would go a long way to increasing match day revenue for a start! The lager this season has been worse than normal - and that's saying something!

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Reginald Dwight says...
11:31pm Thu 6 Sep 12

I think Duxbury is bigging himself up here. A figure of £5.6m might just be the total turnover for four years, not the profit donation to the club. If the club sees more than £1m from these new caterers over that spell that will be a miracle especially with the egg chasers moving on.

I stand corrected if i'm wrong but am sure the catering net profit was around £150k a year in the annual accounts so this story is spin from both sides to make it look something it isn't.

One thing is for sure - us fans will be the ones paying the price. The last few years saw the catering improve immensely with huge variation on offer. I would imagine as their tenure unfolds it will be the usual football club trash charged at twice the price served by disengaged jobsworths!

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londomollari says...
1:53am Fri 7 Sep 12

H.mmm. How much control does Duxbury have over such deals? Does he have to gain approval from the pozzos for this level of contract? Can he make such deals independantly of the Pozzos?
The amount quoted seems startlingly high! Either Duxbury is a genius or, as said previously, there is some exaggeration or spin. To remotely justify such a large payment Lindleys will need to generate high profit margins and a high volume of functions and events.
Without a doubt matchday food and drink charges will rise steeply---or quality will plummet.

Personally, I suspect a strong element of spin

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londomollari says...
1:56am Fri 7 Sep 12

I should have added after 'plummet' "or most probably both"

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andyhooked says...
7:16am Fri 7 Sep 12

I asume that the figure of £5.6m comes from a WFC press release so that is the value of the contract to Watford ove the period. Staff wages, N.I. savings, although I do not know for how many ex-WFC employees and I assume other admin cost savings as well. Increased use of the ground facities is a driver here. As for the quality of the food and variety of offerings and how well the beer is kept only time will tell. Enough outlets around th gound so this should keep Lindley on their toes.

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Chris the Vic says...
9:12am Fri 7 Sep 12

Poor business acumen...I think not. Before we barely made anything...now we swap risk for reward. If we are sensible we will look and learn and decide in three years if we can do better and then start planning.

As I suggested a few weeks back it appears no tender situation existed and whether we may have done better is open to conjecture.

Even with losing Raj we have to be happy and as long as we get the money we should congratulate Scott for a job well done.

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Dr,Oftaw says...
9:40am Fri 7 Sep 12

brilliant rover, you completely make up your own fantasy price for a pie and then come on here moan about it!

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Casterbridge says...
9:55am Fri 7 Sep 12

a1derek wrote:
If they put a few more decent beers in to entice people to drink in the ground before the game...that would go a long way to increasing match day revenue for a start! The lager this season has been worse than normal - and that's saying something!
And the Squirrel should be cooled (but not chilled) before it goes out on the counter. But at least it's real ale.

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Harrydownunder says...
10:03am Fri 7 Sep 12

Duxbury would have a level of authority with which to work within, anything higher than that would more than likely need approval. How high that is wouldf be anyones guess.
This is a good business move (certainly not bad business acumen! Can't believe that negative comment) as it provides guaranteed annuity revenue for 4 years!

Why do people on this site always look for negatives. It is so depressing people.

Can we start banning the negative people from this forum? I for one do not want to read it.

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londomollari says...
10:19am Fri 7 Sep 12

Negative? Not really. Unless you feel that adding 2 to 2 and not totalling 56 is negative.
Lindley are to pay 1.4 million a year to Watford. If Watford made a profit of 150 thousand last year, then Lindley will, in effect need to make a profit of 1.55 million to make their payment.
We need to consider where this level of profit comes from---or if the quoted figures are correct. If correct, then either Watford were criminally incompetent in their business, or Lindley are miracle workers.
How many extra events/functions will be needed to generate this profit? (remember, profit, not income). How many price increases?
You don't need to be Stephen Hawking or Alan Sugar to work this out. In fact, the Chuckle Brothers could see this dosn't work out.

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Watford Man says...
10:32am Fri 7 Sep 12

When is a new East Stand going to be built - Think of the Catering, Hospitality and Event management that could house. And when is the half built corner going to be finished.

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watford1881 says...
10:35am Fri 7 Sep 12

I'm glad we now have owners who know business.. Sounds a good deal.. Who-ever we have we will still get ripped off...

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stevyweavy says...
12:53pm Fri 7 Sep 12

Can't see what all the fuss is about. If we were only making £150k profit from it a year up until now there is little danger of any deal ending up with us being worse off.

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Manic_ says...
11:04pm Fri 7 Sep 12

a1derek wrote:
If they put a few more decent beers in to entice people to drink in the ground before the game...that would go a long way to increasing match day revenue for a start! The lager this season has been worse than normal - and that's saying something!
The Vbar needs some work done on it: More seating & tables & it is very cold in winter. Bitter has been pretty good, a decent lager would be nice but the main prob is that if the want people in earlier the then improve the locality.

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corbindallas says...
9:39am Sat 8 Sep 12

All those moaning about price increases have only to not buy to put forward their unhappiness towards such surcharges. At the end of the day this is good business as the pressure is off the club to worry about this side of operations and concentrate on more important factors like the football. If we get into the Premiership and we sort our stadium out this could turn out to be a good deal for both parties.

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davbat says...
10:42am Sat 8 Sep 12

Duxbury invited Lindley Venue Cetering to put forward some ideas but surely it would have been better to at least approach a few other organisations and test the market a bit before committing to the first and only bidder!
How do we know we got the best deal?

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There was only one Scully says...
11:08am Sat 8 Sep 12

Just to add to all the hurrah for these new caterers, many of the existing staff they have inherited have not been paid to date!
Not a happy ship still, behind the scenes with this and job losses.

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lutondown says...
11:47am Sat 8 Sep 12

There was only one Scully wrote:
Just to add to all the hurrah for these new caterers, many of the existing staff they have inherited have not been paid to date!
Not a happy ship still, behind the scenes with this and job losses.
Ah here comes the Scotty dog with his usual lack cloud and unwagging tail.

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Paul Gadd says...
8:51pm Sun 9 Sep 12

Good news but was kind of hoping Delia's company would take over, only to see her drunk, staggering on the pitch at the Vic slurring 'let's be havin' you' as the Horns hammer Norwich in the Prem!

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