(Jan. 26, 2017) It’s now no secret that New Year’s Eve did not go well at the Ocean Pines Yacht Club.
The facility has struggled with finding its identity and turning a reasonable profit since the new building opened in 2014. Many in the community believe both of those issues date back to the previous club, which never achieved what most people saw as its potential.
Under new leadership and with a new marketing team in place, the club was recently rebranded as “Mumford’s Landing.” What’s more, a major shakeup in staff took place last month.
Interim General Manager Brett Hill spoke discussed those changes with the Gazette last Thursday.
“We have a lot of fun and excitement going on over at Mumford’s Landing,” Hill said. “We’re gearing up for our official grand reopening just ahead of Valentine’s Day weekend and working through a lot of change over there to make sure we’re coming into 2017 with the best experience for customers.”
Hill admitted there were “a lot of moving parts” at the club during the last several weeks, including the dismissal of then-manager Jerry Lewis and virtually all of the wait and bar staff. Interior renovations have also taken place, including the addition of Tuffy’s Tavern bar inside the main entrance, where carryout sales of beer and wine are allowed and quick drinks made available to customers as they wait to be seated.
“We’d had some transitions,” Hill said. “When I came in here [in August], I knew myself in the GM role and the board had a lot of challenges ahead of us. I think you can see we’ve taken an approach of trying to get in here and fix the problems.”
He said the board had allocated about $500,000 toward renovations at the country club and agreed in principal to earmark another $400,000 in the next fiscal year budget to revitalize that building.
Hill credited Director Cheryl Jacobs with reallocating $55,000 previously set aside for a food truck for helping to fund cosmetic improvements at Mumford’s.
“We’ve been trying to take fairly aggressive steps in enhancing the facility with the resources we had,” he said. “We’re really excited about adding the new bar into the first-floor level and the opportunity that’s bringing us, and we have a truckload of furniture coming in on Monday that we ordered at the end of November. We got some great deals on Black Friday.”
A 75-inch, 4-K television was installed on the first floor, Hill said, and preparations for a major Super Bowl event were already underway.
“The reaction of everybody that’s walked through and seen this is, ‘holy cow, that’s the biggest TV I’ve ever seen,” Hill said. “We’re going to have, hopefully, the best picture on the shore during the big game.”
A new sound system was also installed, which Hill said was “a project almost four years in the making.” Six high-end Polk Audio speakers were connected to the DirecTV feed.
“It’s pretty exciting to see a lot of unfinished projects come to fruition,” Hill said. “While I think change scares some people, the fact that we’ve had this opportunity to really dig into the operation and look at how we’re doing things, we found a lot of room for improvement and ways that we could be doing things better.”
Also a boon to the club, Hill said, is that new Finance Director Mary Bozack will work with outgoing director Art Carmine for the next several months.
“While we have two very strong financial individuals in the house, Mary’s been focusing a lot of her time starting out in how we’re doing things across the entire association,” Hill said. “In the void that was left in food and beverage, Mary has been able to step into our systems and our processes and offer some good guidance and documentation that was never there, and help us structure a better way to run our cash-based amenities – not just our Mumford’s facility.”
Hill said one of the biggest issues – community wide – is that the association had not adequately addressed its growing pains, and that Carmine had essentially been forced to play catch up for the last 32 years. Systems across the association were behind the times.
“With Art’s input and in areas where Art just hasn’t had the resources to help grow things, it’s not just a transition, but we’re really setting a roadmap for the future,” Hill said. “We’re really excited for where the next 32 years of the association can go.”
As for the management situation at Mumford’s Landing, Hill said Lewis would be replaced by a food and beverage director, who would oversee operations not just there, but also at the beach club and country club restaurants, as well as revisit food options at the swim and racquet club and in other Ocean Pines facilities.
“Jerry and I started going down that road and we just had to move [in] a different path,” Hill said. “That was a path I started four or five months ago and I want to see it through. Collaboration of resources and efficiencies and operations really are important if we want to be able to maintain a level of service and economy.”
Hill said other staff at Mumford’s had been asked to balance multiple roles – waiters doubling as shift managers, for instance – and that that would come to an end. He budgeted for three floor managers to work at the club under the food and beverage director.
Point of sales systems were also being updated. Hill said servers previously had to wade through a computer system that included menus for restaurants that no longer existed.
He said those systems dated back at least to the days of former manager Joe Reinhart, who was let go in 2012.
“The way we’ve handed off managers in various transition, you have an issue where the staff knew the system much better than the management,” Hill said. “How can you effectively manage an employee if they know your management tool better than you do?”
On New Year’s Eve, the computer system finally crashed. In the kitchen, the only dishwasher at the facility sliced his hand open early into the evening, and the executive chef had to leave to take him to the hospital.
Other problems rippled throughout the building and most of the staff was subsequently let go.
“I think we hit kind of a breaking point where everything just kind of burst at the same time,” Hill said. “All I can say is thank goodness it’s January. If this was June, the cost to the association would be unimaginable. Right now, we’re at the point where at least most of our competition’s closed. We’re in a really good time to regroup and get things moving forward.”
Since then, Hill said 14 new employees were hired at Mumford’s Landing and that hours had been trimmed drastically during a period of extensive training and interior maintenance. The club will continue to run during limited hours for the next two weeks, and will officially reopen only about a month after the association cleaned house.
Closing completely was apparently never an option.
“At the end of the day, [that] does nothing to get it moving forward,” Hill said. “If we don’t have an environment where we have customers coming and we’re turning food through the kitchen and we’re running our systems, there’s no way to know whether we’re fixing something or we just have a great idea.”
He said he didn’t fault any of his predecessors or previous employees at the club, but that the board and the community often put an “overwhelming burden on the limited resources” there.
“I think the general population believes that there’s an infinite number of little people working behind the scenes that can make everything happen yesterday, and the reality is they’ve run a very lean budget and it’s been a lean staff and they’ve done the best they can,” he said. “We’re almost at the 50th anniversary [of Ocean Pines], so it got us pretty far, but to make it another 50 years we have to realize what we’ve become. We’re not the association we were 10, 20, 25 years ago or when we started.”
Hill said a fresh set of eyes – people such as Bozack and newly hired Marketing Director Denise Sawyer – were necessary to make change happen.
“I hope the rest of the board is behind me – they seem to be,” he said. “We’ve had a very good year so far, and we went into this year [trying] to refocus everyone’s goals and get it done.”
A soft opening, invitation only, has been scheduled for the first week of February. At that point Hill hopes to have an all-new staff in place, trained, and ready to reboot the yacht club 2.0 as Mumford’s Landing.
“That soft opening weekend, that’s our stress test,” Hill said. “I want to see the kitchen slammed and the peak amount of orders go through at once. We’re going to stress them out, we’re going to see that we know how to work through the kinks and, before anyone comes in and we have a consumer that had a bad experience, we’re going to run through so the odds of that happening are slim.
“We’re still in the off-season and if it takes us two months to get into 110-percent running on all cylinders, we have the time,” he continued. “[In] April or May when our seasonal residents start to return, we’re going to be running better than anybody on the other side of the bay.”
If all goes well, the staff at Mumford’s could then help employees at the beach club, where Hill is planning extended hours that reach both into summer evenings and the shoulder seasons.
“If we have a day that we’re slammed over there and we need to pull staff, they’re all working on the same computer system under the same process. They know how we’re working internally, what the policies are and it’s conceivably a well-oiled machine that’s running well,” he said.
“We’ve had individual amenities run well in the past, but we’ve never been able to get everybody working together and everything working right at the same time. I think we have a plan to get there,” Hill continued.
“I know Mary and I have invested a lot of time in it and we’re continuing to do so over the coming weeks. It should be an exciting time for the residents in knowing what value is going to come back into the neighborhood for them and what opportunities are going to be there for both dining and carryout service in the coming season.”
The facility has struggled with finding its identity and turning a reasonable profit since the new building opened in 2014. Many in the community believe both of those issues date back to the previous club, which never achieved what most people saw as its potential.
Under new leadership and with a new marketing team in place, the club was recently rebranded as “Mumford’s Landing.” What’s more, a major shakeup in staff took place last month.
Interim General Manager Brett Hill spoke discussed those changes with the Gazette last Thursday.
“We have a lot of fun and excitement going on over at Mumford’s Landing,” Hill said. “We’re gearing up for our official grand reopening just ahead of Valentine’s Day weekend and working through a lot of change over there to make sure we’re coming into 2017 with the best experience for customers.”
Hill admitted there were “a lot of moving parts” at the club during the last several weeks, including the dismissal of then-manager Jerry Lewis and virtually all of the wait and bar staff. Interior renovations have also taken place, including the addition of Tuffy’s Tavern bar inside the main entrance, where carryout sales of beer and wine are allowed and quick drinks made available to customers as they wait to be seated.
“We’d had some transitions,” Hill said. “When I came in here [in August], I knew myself in the GM role and the board had a lot of challenges ahead of us. I think you can see we’ve taken an approach of trying to get in here and fix the problems.”
He said the board had allocated about $500,000 toward renovations at the country club and agreed in principal to earmark another $400,000 in the next fiscal year budget to revitalize that building.
Hill credited Director Cheryl Jacobs with reallocating $55,000 previously set aside for a food truck for helping to fund cosmetic improvements at Mumford’s.
“We’ve been trying to take fairly aggressive steps in enhancing the facility with the resources we had,” he said. “We’re really excited about adding the new bar into the first-floor level and the opportunity that’s bringing us, and we have a truckload of furniture coming in on Monday that we ordered at the end of November. We got some great deals on Black Friday.”
A 75-inch, 4-K television was installed on the first floor, Hill said, and preparations for a major Super Bowl event were already underway.
“The reaction of everybody that’s walked through and seen this is, ‘holy cow, that’s the biggest TV I’ve ever seen,” Hill said. “We’re going to have, hopefully, the best picture on the shore during the big game.”
A new sound system was also installed, which Hill said was “a project almost four years in the making.” Six high-end Polk Audio speakers were connected to the DirecTV feed.
“It’s pretty exciting to see a lot of unfinished projects come to fruition,” Hill said. “While I think change scares some people, the fact that we’ve had this opportunity to really dig into the operation and look at how we’re doing things, we found a lot of room for improvement and ways that we could be doing things better.”
Also a boon to the club, Hill said, is that new Finance Director Mary Bozack will work with outgoing director Art Carmine for the next several months.
“While we have two very strong financial individuals in the house, Mary’s been focusing a lot of her time starting out in how we’re doing things across the entire association,” Hill said. “In the void that was left in food and beverage, Mary has been able to step into our systems and our processes and offer some good guidance and documentation that was never there, and help us structure a better way to run our cash-based amenities – not just our Mumford’s facility.”
Hill said one of the biggest issues – community wide – is that the association had not adequately addressed its growing pains, and that Carmine had essentially been forced to play catch up for the last 32 years. Systems across the association were behind the times.
“With Art’s input and in areas where Art just hasn’t had the resources to help grow things, it’s not just a transition, but we’re really setting a roadmap for the future,” Hill said. “We’re really excited for where the next 32 years of the association can go.”
As for the management situation at Mumford’s Landing, Hill said Lewis would be replaced by a food and beverage director, who would oversee operations not just there, but also at the beach club and country club restaurants, as well as revisit food options at the swim and racquet club and in other Ocean Pines facilities.
“Jerry and I started going down that road and we just had to move [in] a different path,” Hill said. “That was a path I started four or five months ago and I want to see it through. Collaboration of resources and efficiencies and operations really are important if we want to be able to maintain a level of service and economy.”
Hill said other staff at Mumford’s had been asked to balance multiple roles – waiters doubling as shift managers, for instance – and that that would come to an end. He budgeted for three floor managers to work at the club under the food and beverage director.
Point of sales systems were also being updated. Hill said servers previously had to wade through a computer system that included menus for restaurants that no longer existed.
He said those systems dated back at least to the days of former manager Joe Reinhart, who was let go in 2012.
“The way we’ve handed off managers in various transition, you have an issue where the staff knew the system much better than the management,” Hill said. “How can you effectively manage an employee if they know your management tool better than you do?”
On New Year’s Eve, the computer system finally crashed. In the kitchen, the only dishwasher at the facility sliced his hand open early into the evening, and the executive chef had to leave to take him to the hospital.
Other problems rippled throughout the building and most of the staff was subsequently let go.
“I think we hit kind of a breaking point where everything just kind of burst at the same time,” Hill said. “All I can say is thank goodness it’s January. If this was June, the cost to the association would be unimaginable. Right now, we’re at the point where at least most of our competition’s closed. We’re in a really good time to regroup and get things moving forward.”
Since then, Hill said 14 new employees were hired at Mumford’s Landing and that hours had been trimmed drastically during a period of extensive training and interior maintenance. The club will continue to run during limited hours for the next two weeks, and will officially reopen only about a month after the association cleaned house.
Closing completely was apparently never an option.
“At the end of the day, [that] does nothing to get it moving forward,” Hill said. “If we don’t have an environment where we have customers coming and we’re turning food through the kitchen and we’re running our systems, there’s no way to know whether we’re fixing something or we just have a great idea.”
He said he didn’t fault any of his predecessors or previous employees at the club, but that the board and the community often put an “overwhelming burden on the limited resources” there.
“I think the general population believes that there’s an infinite number of little people working behind the scenes that can make everything happen yesterday, and the reality is they’ve run a very lean budget and it’s been a lean staff and they’ve done the best they can,” he said. “We’re almost at the 50th anniversary [of Ocean Pines], so it got us pretty far, but to make it another 50 years we have to realize what we’ve become. We’re not the association we were 10, 20, 25 years ago or when we started.”
Hill said a fresh set of eyes – people such as Bozack and newly hired Marketing Director Denise Sawyer – were necessary to make change happen.
“I hope the rest of the board is behind me – they seem to be,” he said. “We’ve had a very good year so far, and we went into this year [trying] to refocus everyone’s goals and get it done.”
A soft opening, invitation only, has been scheduled for the first week of February. At that point Hill hopes to have an all-new staff in place, trained, and ready to reboot the yacht club 2.0 as Mumford’s Landing.
“That soft opening weekend, that’s our stress test,” Hill said. “I want to see the kitchen slammed and the peak amount of orders go through at once. We’re going to stress them out, we’re going to see that we know how to work through the kinks and, before anyone comes in and we have a consumer that had a bad experience, we’re going to run through so the odds of that happening are slim.
“We’re still in the off-season and if it takes us two months to get into 110-percent running on all cylinders, we have the time,” he continued. “[In] April or May when our seasonal residents start to return, we’re going to be running better than anybody on the other side of the bay.”
If all goes well, the staff at Mumford’s could then help employees at the beach club, where Hill is planning extended hours that reach both into summer evenings and the shoulder seasons.
“If we have a day that we’re slammed over there and we need to pull staff, they’re all working on the same computer system under the same process. They know how we’re working internally, what the policies are and it’s conceivably a well-oiled machine that’s running well,” he said.
“We’ve had individual amenities run well in the past, but we’ve never been able to get everybody working together and everything working right at the same time. I think we have a plan to get there,” Hill continued.
“I know Mary and I have invested a lot of time in it and we’re continuing to do so over the coming weeks. It should be an exciting time for the residents in knowing what value is going to come back into the neighborhood for them and what opportunities are going to be there for both dining and carryout service in the coming season.”