A STAR PERFORMER

Middlesbrough’s Beechwood Easterside & District Social Club is the ultimate club. It makes a shed load of money, has a very strong committee, plenty of members and very little to worry about. MATTHEW MOGGRIDGE finds out why

Travelling North East to Darlington and then on to Middlesbrough, the weather began to improve. The persistent rain that had dogged Club Mirror’s visit to Doncaster gradually cleared and by Wednesday morning - the day when cab driver Derrick Bird ran amok in Whitehaven, Cumbria - the sun was out and the skies were blue.

In fact, as the killing spree began, Club Mirror, oblivious to the horrors unfolding on England’s West Coast, was making its way to the Beechwood Easterside & District Social Club to meet club secretary Mick Smith and president Nick Fairless.

The Beechwood is a big club, visible from a distance. It’s a single-storey building surrounded by green fields and hemmed in by a huge car park - and on a good day, it’s a nice place to be.

Unlike a lot of clubs, the Beechwood has very little in the way of problems: no brewery loans, no threat of imminent closure, no problem with the smoking ban and, to be honest, not a care in the world about supermarkets and cut-price booze.

Alright, perhaps the club is a little concerned about the latter, but to give you some idea of how the Beechwood tends to take most things in its stride, when I asked how things were going in terms of preparation for the World Cup, the main concern of Mick and Nick was whether there was enough of a window to fit in the global football tournament.

Whereas for most clubs, the World Cup is a muchneeded shot in the arm (as long as England stays the course), for the Beechwood, it’s almost a bit annoying - in the same way that bank holidays can be irritating for busy people who just want to crack on.

It was a relief in many ways not to be walking into a club with a sympathetic ear for the smoking ban or the supermarket situation or to nod knowingly about brewery pricing or whether or not the club was going to close. The Beechwood, in other words, was a text book club; a living embodiment of what a club should be and proof that if things are done properly, money can be made from running a club.

Who says that on-trade beer sales are declining? Not at the Beechwood. In five months, the club has taken £467,000 over the bar alone. On the day prior to Club Mirror’s visit, the club made just over £2,000 and the takings for the year look like exceeding the £1 million marker and should come in at around £1.2 million – if not more.

Like all clubs, the Beechwood has had its fair share of ups and downs. It did once have brewery loans and there were times when the finances were not good because of them, but these were rectified, according to former boxer and bar steward, Brian Graham, who explained how once, in the distant past, the club took a bank loan to pay off its brewery loan and then renegotiated supply contracts with healthy discounts. The club hasn’t looked back since and Graham said it was all about discounts.

The club was established in 1973 but the building was built in 1972. There’s a new roof that is 20 years old and the ground on which the club rests used to be a mix of allotments and farmland.

The club’s founder members literally knocked on doors in and around the Marton area of Middlesbrough asking for a shilling membership and, along with brewery funding, had enough money to build the club. One of the Beechwood’s founders, Billy Golden, still visits the club, which is CIU affiliated.

There are 3,000 male members and an additional 1,400 female and the club has just signed up a further 150. Leaflet drops are employed to bolster club membership and with a new housing estate in the process of construction, another leaflet drop is being planned.

The club is close to 5,000 members but a membership limit has not been set, and while this is a big place, there might be problems if all the members turned up en masse.

The concert hall is massive and seats 500, the lounge bar accommodates 120 and the main bar takes between 200 and 300 people. There are four snooker tables in the main bar plus two pool tables and a darts area with two boards.

But we were outside in the sunshine in a space that must be the envy of all club managers when it comes to smoking areas. There are the regulation all-in-one wooden ‘beer garden’ tables, but there are also individually heated wooden seating pods with straw roofing, which make the whole idea of going outside for a cigarette an enjoyable experience - especially if its raining! In fact, talking of smoking areas, the Beechwood has two of them, one much smaller than the other and featuring just the one wooden pod.

Mick points to what are now the club football team’s changing rooms. “That was how you accessed the car park,” he said, explaining how the changing rooms were built in the 1980s and that the club’s roof used to be flat.

Over the years a lot of work has been done to the club. There was a bar extension, the football changing rooms, an extension to the concert hall and the committee room and the club has just spent £11,000 on new lighting for the concert hall, switching to a low-energy system to save money. There’s also some new flooring in the foyer area.

“We’ve got a big budget for repairs,” Mick said, explaining how £60,000 is always set aside every year, thanks to a huge turnover. The aforementioned £1.2 million was for the bar alone. Add bingo and the figure goes up to £1.65 million.

It all begs the question, Why is the club so successful? Why is it that even members of other clubs in the locality often drop in to enjoy the hospitable environment offered by the Beechwood? Perhaps that is it: a hospitable environment. There is plenty going on. On the day of Club Mirror’s visit there was a raffle the following day with a top prize of £10,000. There is bingo six nights a week, lucky balls on four nights (Thursday to Sunday) and Key to the Fortune on Mondays and Tuesdays. Wednesday is Show Night and this slot is available to anyone who wants to book a fundraising evening. There’s dancing on Saturday nights with live bands and singers, and Mick says that Wednesdays are booked for the next four weeks. And then there is Show of the Month, an all-ticket event, and a members’ night with free entertainment and free pie and peas.

But the key to the club’s success, according to Mick and Nick, is more than just a hospitable environment. What about the committee? While a lot of clubs tend to moan about their committees, claiming that they hinder rather than help the club, the Beechwood adopts a more positive attitude. Yes, the club has its ups and downs, but the committee is made up of people from different walks of life and ultimately they are working for the common good of the club. Sounds like a bit of a cliché? Maybe, but it’s true. And let’s not forget that Nick, the president, has been on the committee for 24 years and a member of the club from the very beginning. And then there’s Brian Graham, the former boxer and now club steward. “He sorts out our discounts,” said Nick, explaining how Graham has been with the club for 18 years and knows how to run a bar.

The committee all tend to work in the club and of course they can be voted out every 12 months. “One got voted off six months ago and now he’s back on again and one was voted off after 14 years. The members know what’s going on,” said Nick.

Brian Graham, who had been circling the club in his black four-by-four, dropped in to discuss the bar. The club is supplied by Coors and Carlsberg and sells Carling Black Label and Extra Cold, Coors Light, Tetley and Worthington. He said that Carling was the club’s biggest seller followed by Worthington. There is no cask offering and while Tetley Imperial is big in the region, it’s not big at the Beechwood, which has always been a ‘Bass’ club. “The brewers know that and the members want Bass, that’s the way it’s always been,” Graham said.

In fact, Carling Black Label accounts for 57 per cent of wet sales with 25 per cent going to Worthington. On the spirits front, vodka is ‘massive’, said Graham.

Functions – when there’s time!

With so much going on at the club, there is little time at the Beechwood for what most clubs regard as their bread and butter - functions. According to Mick, the club permits them on Saturdays, but not after 5pm, or on Wednesdays if the club isn’t already booked for a show night or being used by the committee. Funerals, however, are big business and can take place at any time during the day.

While the Beechwood opens at lunch time, it’s a bit hit and miss, according to Mick. On the day of Club Mirror’s visit, for example, there were a few guys in playing snooker including committee member Gary Whetter who, along with Mick and Nick, posed for photographs later. The only time it does get busy during the day is over the weekend when, of course, there is plenty of sport to be watched on the club’s televisions, not forgetting a huge screen in the concert hall, which might well be used to screen movies if the club gets around to showing children’s movies instead of paying for the kids to visit the local picture house.

While a lot of clubs are phasing out their days out for members and their families, the Beechwood carries on regardless, forking out for its older members to have a day out at Thirsk on the last Friday of July every year. “We put on buses and give them each £30 to get in,” said Mick, adding that the club pays their entrance fee too - and the event attracts up to 260 people.

The pensioners also get a three-course Christmas dinner plus a goodie bag, a free raffle, free beer and free whisky. And then there are the kids; they get a summer trip to Flamingo Land, a local theme park, and are transported there and back.

The message from Beechwood Easterside’s management is simple: if you don’t run it [the club] the way they [the members] want it, they won’t come in. Back in the 1990s, people did stop using the Beechwood because the management of the time cut back on the live entertainment and hired cheaper acts in an economy drive. Today, those days are long gone as the club spends £130,000 on live bands alone, according to Mick.

Between them, Harry Dunne, a club trustee, and Lol Green, the club’s master of ceremonies, run the Beechwood’s entertainment programme. The key to success, it seems, is not to charge a fortune on the door. Don’t forget that the Beechwood makes over £1 million across the bar. It also makes an additional £650,000 through what it calls ‘special efforts’, such as bingo and raffles.

“We never recoup on the door. We never say it costs this so the entry fee is X, it’s either 75p or £1.50. We get them through the door cheaply and then we sell them bingo books [20p to 30p each] and raffle tickets,” said Mick. “We keep costs low. In other places it costs a tenner just to get in, but we make our money on the booze,” he said.

The Beechwood tries to keep beer prices under £2 (currently, lager is £1.99 and beer £1.87). The club used to offer half price beer on Saturdays, but not any more.

The Beechwood committee is 18-strong and there are many people who want to be a part of it. Included on the committee is a sports secretary who is responsible for overseeing the club’s wide variety of sports. The club football team is claimed to be the best in the area, having been top of the Teesside League for the past three years and this year winning the double. The club also boasts darts, snooker, billiards, dominoes and whist teams, all of which bring people in. There are two indoor bowls teams playing on Saturdays.

There is still a men-only bar at the club that will cease when the law changes, but for now it exists and, according to Mick and Nick, there is little in the way of animosity towards it from women. Why? Because the women know where their men are and they know they’re not chatting up other women!

A franchised food offering is also available through Graham Senn who makes Mick’s favourite Chicken Parmo. In last month’s 20 Questions (see Club Mirror May 2010) Mick said that if he was on death row his last meal would be one of Graham’s Chicken Parmos, basically breadcrumbed chicken or pork with white sauce and Cheddar cheese - it used to be Parmesan cheese but Cheddar is more readily available.

Food has always been available

Food has been available at the club for a while with Graham taking over from Geoff Johns, who makes Chicken Parmos and sells them to ASDA - they must be good!

Graham will offer food when the football is on and it is always available nightly. The club offers good old staple meals like pie, peas and chips as well as sandwiches and other traditional favourites. Food brings in the punters and probably keeps them in the club for longer than if no food was available.

Where marketing is concerned, the Beechwood has its own website and it advertises its entertainments programme in the local newspaper. Outside of that it’s down to word-ofmouth - all of which seems to be working, as the club is so busy it is having trouble fitting in the World Cup.

A recent addition to the club’s armoury of attractions is a four-metre screen that has been installed in the concert hall. The screen is of cinematic proportions and allows the club to advertise forthcoming events to members as well as screen movies (something the club is considering, especially for children) and, of course, the World Cup - at the time of writing, two days away.

According to Mick, World Cup matches in the afternoon will be fine, but at other times might present problems for the club’s big screen. There are, however, plenty of televisions dotted around the place, according to Mick, so those coming to the Beechwood for football won’t be disappointed.