The Boo thrives by banning what most clubs say is a must to survive
It has no pokies, no members and no sports competitions but this club in inner Brisbane, the oldest in Queensland, is thriving.
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It has no pokies, no members and no sports competitions but the oldest club in Queensland is thriving.
Newstead’s Booroodabin Community and Recreation Club — The Boo as it is affectionately known — just collected a swag of Clubs Queensland awards, including as a finalist in the Best Bowls Club and Best Social Club category. It was crowned the Best Dining — Small club for the third year in a row.
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Operations manager Adam Watson said The Boo, founded in 1888, was now “the only 100 per cent social bowling club in Queensland” — a strictly-for-fun, barefoot bowls-only venue.
Mr Watson said the club was on shot because it didn’t have gambling nor club competitions to prop up its balance sheet.
“It makes for a good atmosphere. There are no TVs playing sport, either. People have to talk to each other,” Mr Watson said.
“When a club has gaming and that sort of thing, people get lost in the equation. They can become more focused on gaming revenue than satisfying the needs of patrons. We don’t have gaming to pull us out of a ditch if we have a bad month. We have to rely on people to come back here.”
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He says as a result, the club had to radically rethink the traditional bowls club structure.
The Boo is often packed with walk-ins and diners, but its core business is functions, he said.
“At the back end of the year we do close to 10,000 people, who are all on a set package for Christmas parties and they all bowl,” he said. “We really bank on that — it’s make or break. We can book Fridays and Saturdays seven times over with the demand during that time. The majority of the rest of the year is birthday parties, corporate events and celebrations like buck’s parties. We still would have 300 people here on a Saturday, and then there’s after-work drinks for people, too.”
Menus were revised regularly to keep abreast of trends, he said, and everything was made in-house — except for bought in tomato and barbecue sauce — to control costs and food quality.
“We try to stay on top of trends without getting too fluffy about it. Wings and food truck style is the current scene,” he said.
But don’t expect regular bowls club fare.
“I’ve learned over 10 years that people have really low expectations of bowls clubs. We’ll never do a roast of the day. We don’t even do gravy. We do offer a really nice mushroom sauce made of beef jus — pretty extravagant but it’s what gets customers back.”
There were no uniforms for staff nor even name badges, and Mr Watson said the team deliberately worked to break down the front-of-house verse kitchen staff tension that could fester in hospitality venues.
“The team here is one big happy family,” he said. “Some of my staff members in the bar are coming up to nine years here, something unheard of in hospitality.”
He said because there were no bowls competitions, the greens were free for social players all week. And patrons could bowl and drink or eat at the same time, something never allowed in traditional bowling clubs where the greens are fiercely guarded against damage.
The Boo does not even have a social membership scheme, a common practice in sports clubs where a smaller fee is charged for people only wanting to use the clubhouse facilities.
“There’s no real value (in social memberships) for the member,” he said. “It’s not really giving them any incentive to come back other than giving them a plastic card and saying ‘Hey, you’re a member of a club’. We’d rather concentrate on enticing that patron to come back and spend more, rather than banking on 50 of the 80,0000 social members to turn up — that’s not sustainable.”
Next year, the club will aim to take out the best bowls club or social club categories. They can’t enter into the dining award next year, as after winning it three years in a row they will be inducted into Clubs Queensland’s Hall of Fame.
Clubs Queensland CEO Doug Flockhart said The Boo won the best small dining venue gong in the Keno & Clubs Queensland Awards for Excellence because the club “sticks to a traditional formula done well and with a modern twist”.
“Good food does not have to be complicated,” Mr Flockhart said.
“The Boo’s Chicken Snitty is still the most famous signature item on their menu with over 3200 being sold last year. Their customers travel from all over Brisbane to eat them! That’s truly astounding.
“The care that The Boo takes to keep the club relevant in the community and the focus on their food as a drawcard through the act of simply being fresh, tasty and consistently good impressed the Award’s judges.
“This type of care builds relationship with members and the community and is what makes community clubs so valuable.”
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