Hospitality Case Study.
A good kitchen does not fix an empty room, and no amount of Instagram posting does either. The question was never how to talk about Tuesday. It was what offering would give people a reason to come out on one.
A reason such as a Big Business Pub Quiz.
The best way to test an idea is at the greatest probability of success and the least possible risk. That meant one night, a fixed number of seats, and an audience we already had access to — rather than betting the venue on a new weekly fixture and hoping the general public would turn out.
So we did not start from nothing. GilbeyPink reached into its own comms list, its connections with Portsmouth City Council and local networking groups, and filled a sixty-seat room at £12 a head from networks that already existed.
The night itself was the second busiest Tuesday of the year, falling behind a World Cup England game and nothing else. Worth noting: it took more over the bar and the pass in one evening than our month’s retainer cost. The work had paid for itself before anything else went live, in month one.
Then came the unglamorous part. A large event is fun, a great one-off to show our skills, but it is rarely the bit that compounds. So with the retainer covered, we went after the less exciting parts of the business that make a difference over a year rather than an evening.
We sharpened the Google Business Profile, so the venue is correctly listed as a restaurant and a tap house rather than a food court. (Don’t ask.) We rewrote pages on the website that were hosted as .jpg files, so they read easily for both potential customers and AI search engines. Then we worked with the general manager on the review habit, to increase the reviews gathered by staff to an average of 50 a week.
With these changes made, Croxtons is now represented properly online, as the best place on Palmerston Road to get good food.
But we are still not done.
What happens next.
The quiz will be becoming a fixture. Not because we want it to (we do) but because that is what our data suggests should happen. The first general-public event runs in the opening week of November, and we are planning for another sell out.
Croxtons is currently on track to take the well deserved titles of highest-rated restaurant on Palmerston Road, and the top spot when googling “best burger in Portsmouth”, by early 2027.