What Good Facilities Management Looks Like for Hospitality Venues

Your cellar's flooding. It's 6pm on a Friday. The queue's already forming outside, and your facilities management company has gone to voicemail. Again.

You leave a message. You know they won't hear it until Monday.

If you've run a pub, restaurant, or leisure venue for any length of time, you know how this feels. The slow realisation that the people looking after your building aren't really looking after it at all.

What changes when someone's paying attention

When facilities management works properly, you barely think about it. That's the point.

Your fire alarm service happens before it's due, not after you've had a panic about it. Your HVAC gets checked before it dies in the middle of a heatwave. Someone else is tracking what needs doing and when - so you're not lying awake wondering if your emergency lighting certificate has lapsed.

When something does go wrong, you get an answer on the first call. An engineer who turns up when they said they would. A proper fix, not a patch job. And an update afterwards without having to chase for it.

This shouldn't feel unusual. But for most venue operators, it does.

The compliance list nobody warns you about

Running a hospitality venue means juggling more legal requirements than most people realise:

Fire alarms - serviced every six months, tested weekly.
Emergency lighting - monthly checks, annual full-duration test.
Fixed wire testing - every five years, sometimes more.
PAT testing - every 6-12 months for kitchen equipment.
Fire risk assessments - reviewed regularly, updated when anything changes.

Miss one and you're looking at fines, invalidated insurance, or worse. Inspectors don't care that your contractor let you down.

A good facilities management provider tracks all of this. You get a call saying "we're coming Thursday" - not a cold sweat when you realise something expired two months ago.

Planned beats reactive. Every time.

Reactive maintenance feels cheaper. You only pay when something breaks. But emergency rates are higher. Downtime costs you money. And equipment that's run into the ground needs replacing years before it should.

Planned maintenance means fewer surprises. Your kit lasts longer. Your bills are predictable. And you stop dreading your phone ringing.

We've taken over venues where the previous provider did nothing but emergency callouts. Within a few months, those calls drop by half. The building runs better. The manager sleeps better.

Emergencies sorted, not escalated

Things break. What matters is what happens next.

When your cellar floods on a Sunday morning, your signage blows down in a storm, or debris starts falling from the building, you need someone who picks up the phone. Not a voicemail. Not a promise to call back. Someone who understands that this can't wait until Monday.

A 24-hour line only means something if a human answers it.

Repairs that stick

If the same fault keeps coming back, someone's cutting corners.

Good engineers would rather spend an extra half hour now than come back in three weeks for the same job. A pattern of repeat callouts is expensive. And every visit is another chunk out of your day. And every visit is another chunk out of your day.

What to ask before you sign anything

Do they track compliance? You shouldn't have to remember what's due when.

What are their response times? "As soon as possible" isn't an answer.

Will they update you without being chased? If you have to call to find out what happened, that's a red flag.

Is pricing clear upfront? Surprise invoices mean something's wrong.

Do they understand hospitality and leisure? A failed cellar cooler on a Friday night isn't the same as a dodgy socket in an office.

Your time back

When your facilities management is working, you're not thinking about it.

You're thinking about your customers. Your team. Your weekend service.

Your building just works.

Medlec Group has looked after pubs, restaurants, cinemas, and hospitality venues for over 17 years. We're based in Epsom and cover South London and Surrey - Wimbledon, Croydon, Kingston, Sutton, Carshalton, Guildford, and surrounding areas. We track your compliance, answer our phones, and fix things properly. Call us on 0333 344 5949 or drop us a message.