How do I make race days and Civic Week pay in my Kelso pub?

Carlton Scott | Scottish Borders Business | 19 October 2026

Plan each one as its own trading day, a week ahead, on a single sheet: a shortened menu of your best earners, stock ordered for the crowd, a rota built for the peak hours and prices set for the occasion. A well-run pub keeps 10% to 15% net, and a surge served off an ordinary night’s setup never gets near it. You end up over-ordered on some lines and dry on others, and the margin’s gone.

The calendar does half the work for you. Kelso Racecourse runs National Hunt racing between September and the end of May, and the crowds want feeding and watering on the way home. The Border Union Show brings the farming county into town each summer and Civic Week fills July, while Floors Castle’s grounds and gardens send day visitors into the Square. The rest of the year, one of the handsomest squares in Scotland keeps a steady local trade going past the door.

What is a good profit margin for a pub in the UK?

Whito’s July 2026 pub data report puts net profit at 10% to 15% for a well-run pub, on gross margins of 70% to 80% on drinks. Those are the ends of a wide range, and where a pub sits inside it comes down to its own arithmetic: what each of the top ten lines earns after the brewery or wholesaler price, wastage and card fees. Pubs that know that figure by line hold their prices with confidence. Pubs that don’t know it tend to underprice the lager that pays the bills, then wonder why a full bar leaves nothing behind.

How can I cut labour costs by 5% to 10% without wrecking service?

By moving the hours about and keeping the people you’ve got. Stop copying Saturday across the week and build the rota from each day’s takings by hour: later starts on the quiet days, staggered finishes, kitchen prep on the slow afternoon, and the good staff paid properly so you keep them. On a race day you want more hands than usual, and on the Tuesday after you want fewer. A rota that reflects both takes ten hours a week out of the wage bill without a single customer noticing.

In Borders pubs, we usually see a rota built for Saturday and then run all week, and a drinks margin that’s only ever checked across the whole bar, never line by line. Between them, those two explain most busy pubs that end the month with nothing, and you can fix both without touching the prices on the board.

What should my pub’s staff costs be as a percentage of turnover?

Between 22% and 28% of sales for a wet-led pub, on WorkSchedule’s 2026 UK hospitality labour benchmarks, and higher once food is most of the trade. Above that band the cause is nearly always the same: a rota written for the busiest night and copied across the week. Build each day from that day’s takings by hour, start the quiet shifts later, stagger the finishes, and move the kitchen prep to the slow afternoon. Cutting ten staff hours a week saves more than 500 hours a year, and nobody at the bar notices the difference.

Why is my rates bill going up when English pubs got a cut?

Because rates are devolved and Scotland went its own way. Pubs in England moved to a lower multiplier from April 2026, while Scotland’s 2026 revaluation raised many pub valuations. In response, the Budget deal in March 2026 gave licensed premises 40% relief, which the Scottish Beer and Pub Association still calls a worse deal than south of the border. Check your rateable value and claim every relief you qualify for. Then look inside the pub, because the bigger money is usually in there.

How much does a business coach cost in the Scottish Borders?

Between £500 and £3,500 a month plus VAT for one-to-one coaching, depending on the coach’s experience, according to Alan Wick’s May 2026 guide to UK coaching fees. The bill runs for as long as the coaching does. The price of any advice comes down to how much of the work the adviser does for you: coaching talks you through it, and a fixed-fee diagnose-and-fix piece of work goes through the numbers with you and makes the changes. The Profit Clarity Framework is the second kind: a fixed £1,495 + VAT for 30 days on your pub’s real numbers, with nothing to pay after that.

For a Kelso pub the 30 days nearly always start with the surge days, because they’re the days with the biggest gap between what the till shows and what the week actually earned.

Where can a Kelso pub owner get help with the numbers?

Carlton Scott’s Profit Clarity Framework™ is a 30-day diagnose-and-fix process on your real numbers at the fixed fee above. It’s built for owners who are behind the bar every night, and it leaves you with a more profitable pub. We’ve set out how it works for the town’s pubs on our Kelso pub page, including how little of your time it takes and what we’d need to start. There’s also an overview of the framework for pubs. For the same numbers at work in a commuter town, read our Galashiels café article, and for a business across the street, our Kelso holiday let article. Most clients who commit to the framework and follow our recommendations see a full return on the fee within 90 days.

Photo © Jennifer Petrie, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Geograph (geograph.org.uk/photo/7873019)