At the Pandora, our aim is to ensure every customer has an enjoyable and memorable experience. While the food and drink are crucial parts of what we do, our staff are really the key.
We work hard to retain a motivated team that can deliver excellent service, quality food and high standards throughout the day-to-day running of the Pandora. Managers Catherine and Lester Croft are totally ‘hands-on’ and always happy to answer any queries on anything from identifying a gluten-free meal, highlighting an organic wine, or telling you the time of the next high tide!
All new members of staff have induction training including product knowledge, customer service, fire, health and safety. New dishes on the menu are regularly sampled by team members so that they know what’s on offer and can discuss options with customers.
To help ensure you find the right wine to accompany your meal, our waiting staff all receive wine training and, yes, they get to taste all 17 wines sold by the glass! “The staff at the Pandora are always so enthusiastic, it’s great to see and makes my job more rewarding,” said Ruth Carter from our wine merchant, Walter Hicks, who runs the wine training. “We discuss the different grape types and they get to smell and taste the wines and it’s interesting to see their reactions and which wines they do and don’t like.”
On-going training includes fire marshal training – which includes setting off extinguishers and tackling a blaze (carefully set up outside!), obviously training that is very dear to our hearts here at the Pandora… Our staff also receive training in product knowledge, coffee training, customer serving and good practice on beer and wine.
We also hold regular team meetings, run staff newsletters and have a communication diary for messages, key training points and staff suggestions.
While we employ lots of students over the busy summer season, they all receive full induction training as a matter of course. Our permanent staff tend to stay which is, of course, rewarding for all concerned and 100% of the staff we employ live within 12 miles of the pub, with over 50% living within walking distance, which dramatically reduces our carbon footprint.
As you can see, we really do take ‘keeping it local’ very seriously!