Meet the exciting people behind our member businesses.
Name: Adrian Gomes
Company: 10 Dollar Shake
Job title: Managing Director
Give us the elevator pitch for your business.
10 Dollar Shake is a bar operator and event service provider, primarily based in the Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire area. Founded in 2010, nowadays we're a multi-faceted hospitality business involved in everything from venue operations and retail/wholesale to event staffing and whisky experiences. Our strategic aim is to evolve into a hospitality and tourism ecosystem with many over-lapping revenue streams.
Who are your customers?
We have distinct guest demographics for each of our venues, but all of them feed into our events business, which is designed to be more accessible. A growing portion of our revenue is B2B such as tourism (whisky tastings / drinks catering) and ad-hoc staffing for other hospitality and event businesses. We've slowly developed a diversified strategy, which is working for us (and protecting us, to a certain extent).
What is the biggest challenge and opportunity your organisation is facing right now?
Non-domestic rate re-evaluations for hospitality makes it very difficult to accurately forecast, given that the appeals can take years. A lot of hospitality businesses can fold during this time. Incremental rises in the minimum wage rate, along with the related pension and employer NI costs, is slowly eroding profit margins for all hospitality businesses. It's very difficult to have a conversation about minimum wage, because it sounds like businesses are complaining about paying people fairly, but there's no denying the impact that higher labour costs have had on our industry as a whole.
What is your word of advice for fellow Chamber members?
I'm not sure I'm in a position to mete out advice to my fellow Chamber members, however I might use this opportunity to advocate for supporting your local pubs, bars and restaurants. Choose sitting-in over home-deliveries, go out for dinner/drinks during the week instead of the weekend and tip your friendly servers.
What is the best thing about being a Chamber member?
Personally, I think the Morning Bulletin is invaluable, as are the overall member benefits. Like many members, we're probably guilty of under-utilising these. That changes with this piece!