A Message from our Board of Governors
July 18, 2022
Fellow Members:
As I write to you, I hope that you are all enjoying a great summer and finding ways to beat the heat. I wanted to take a moment to give a mid-year update on where we stand as a Club.
From an activity standpoint, the Club is seeing tremendous use by Members both from a traditional, à la carte (breakfast, lunch, dinner and bar) perspective and from the perspective of private events as well. It is not uncommon to have an evening with a Wedding or Rehearsal Dinner occurring upstairs while a the Grill and Bar are full of members downstairs.
Our wonderful staff has handled this increase in activity with their usual poise and grace. We are pleased to have welcomed several new members to the team and they are melding into the culture of the City Club quite nicely. It should be noted that we have made adjustments to hourly and salary wage rates so as to be competitive in the increasingly challenging marketplace for talent and so as to retain and build our staff.
Behind the scenes, we have made investments in the form of a new broiler, new friers, new coolers, a smoker, replacement of pots and pans, and new banquet tables. Many of these items had been the subject of deferred maintenance, particularly during the pandemic period when economic prospects were so uncertain.
From an infrastructure standpoint, many of you will have noticed, through the presence of now-removed scaffolding, that we conducted and completed the 2nd phase of our two-part roof and masonry project around the Club. This badly needed project should end the water intrusion we were seeing at the Club. This project, broken into two phases so as to control the disbursement of finite Club funds, should eliminate and prevent this problem well into the future. We can now make the minor cosmetic fixes to plaster and paint, etc. that were rendered in need of repair by the aforementioned water intrusion.
On the member-facing front, Zafer and his team have worked diligently to make strategic investments to upgrade our service offerings and to improve the member experience at the Club. Many of you will have noticed our new stemware, glassware, china and serving trays or our new wood banquet-service bar and accompanying bar top tables. At the same time, Josh has led the overhaul and expansion of the wine list (both by-the-bottle and by-the-glass). We have made great strides with our bar program thanks, in large part, to the addition of our immediately popular mixologist, Ken Milo. Chef Jaime has been busily making creative additions and changes in the kitchen via his menu expansion, enhanced food offerings, increased use of farm-fresh products and through the introduction of his very popular multi-course chef’s choice tasting menus on Saturday nights. We are even considering an experiment to expand our hours of operation regarding Friday evening dinner service…stay tuned on that front.
While many of the improvements listed above have driven excitement and enhanced activity at the Club, they obviously do not come without a cost. Financially, we are seeing significant year-on-year top line revenue increases driven by the uptick in activity and Club usage. Despite the marked increase in revenue, we are seeing margin erosion occur due to increased operating costs, stemming from rising input costs but particularly evident in rising labor costs. As is true everywhere in 2022, costs are rising at a dramatic rate and the City Club is no exception.
Faced with this situation, we could make the decision to do things like cut back on quality, reduce food portion sizes, and cut staffing levels. Given our goal, however, of providing the best fine dining experience in town along with top-flight service, we don’t think that heading in the direction of cutting corners makes sense at this point. To be sure, you can expect and demand that management will be watching expenditures closely, releasing any idle staff early on slow-nights, etc. and doing all of the things that running a tight-ship requires. However, we don’t think it makes sense at this point to try to cut our way to prosperity given the type of high-quality experience that our membership seek and deserve.
We had hoped to avoid any type of dues increase in fiscal 2022 given the economic roller coaster that many of our members faced during the pandemic. Unfortunately, at this point, we no longer think that avoiding a dues increase in 2022 is advisable. We have held dues constant, with no increases, since the beginning of 2020, before the pandemic began. In early September, when you receive your August statement, you will notice a very modest $10.00 per month dues increase. We hope that you will find that this slight increase in expense is more than justified by the experience that your membership provides. You can expect that, in early 2023, we will return to the practice of moderate annual dues increases to keep pace with what we hope to be a more normal inflationary environment.
Thank you as always for your continued membership. I look forward to seeing you at the Club.
Chip McAlpin
2022 President, Board of Governors
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For over 60 years, City Club has been downtown Baton Rouge’s private member premier dining club. Members represent all business sectors, generations, and fields of expertise. United by a common lifelong pursuit of personal & professional excellence. To find out more information about membership or get a tour, call 225.387.5657.