Understanding Your Club's Food & Bev Problem with Surprising Data

Food and beverage is the heartbeat of your member experience, but then you already know that, right? According to Club Benchmarking, Food and Beverage is the number one driver of member satisfaction. That may not surprise you either, but you do know it's the thing members talk about the most. It's also what turns an occasional member into a mainstay in the dining room and around the club. And yet, year after year, you and the board find yourself sitting in meetings discussing it.

The board wants to know why F&B isn't profitable. A well-meaning committee member brings up the Italian place downtown that is “killing it”. A board member boasts that their business is profitable, and suggests the club should view dining as a profit center. Someone suggests raising menu prices. Someone else wonders aloud whether the club could "do more with less" in the kitchen.

You've had this meeting. Probably more than once. But here's the thing: the conversation itself isn’t the problem, it's how your leadership is viewing the underlying value of food and beverage service. Most importantly, there's data now that can help you change it.

The F&B Trap

The trap that clubs fall into is evaluating F&B through a profitability lens, thinking it’s like a for-profit restaurant. It sounds logical, but it isn't. And the consequences of staying in that trap will lead your club into underinvesting in the amenity that matters most.

The 2025 Club Benchmarking Food & Beverage Whitepaper puts hard data behind what’s driving the real pain in your club. Using regression analysis across tens of thousands of member survey responses, Club Benchmarking found that F&B satisfaction carries a correlation coefficient of 0.47 with Overall Member Satisfaction. In plain English, this is saying that F&B is a massive driver of member satisfaction. For context, golf course satisfaction sits at 0.27, nowhere close to food and beverage. F&B has nearly double the influence on how members feel about their club. Here's what often gets lost in the debate about F&B margins: food and beverage is the single most powerful amenity a club has for driving overall member satisfaction. More than the golf course. More than the pool. More than tennis, pickleball, or any other amenity on the property.

And yet, it's consistently the lowest-rated amenity in private clubs. And clubs wonder why their members are choosing to eat elsewhere. What's more, that gap between importance and performance is where member goodwill erodes and leadership can't figure out why the surveys and net promoter scores are sucking wind.

Stop Trying to Make Money

The question "why can't we make money on F&B like a restaurant?" comes up in clubs so often that Club Benchmarking has a name for it: the F&B Trap. The logic behind making dining a profit center sounds reasonable on the surface, after all, restaurants can do it, right? They’re asking the wrong question.

Let's start with this. Your club, though business-like, is not a business. It's a nonprofit funded by member dues. Think about this, in the 501(c)7 nonprofit world, 100% of clubs subsidize their golf department. Every single one. No board member demands that the golf course turn a profit the way a daily fee golf course might. Golf is understood as a dues-subsidized amenity. The only reason F&B gets treated differently is that board members eat at restaurants outside the club and unconsciously apply that lens.

The 2025 Club Benchmarking report found that only 8% of clubs report a surplus in F&B, down from 20% before the pandemic. And here’s the kicker - the clubs that turn a profit on F&B rank among the financially weakest in the industry. Think about that: the clubs that would seemingly be the most successful on a P&L are actually the weakest when it comes to member satisfaction! Meanwhile, the clubs with the highest F&B subsidies consistently show stronger member equity, higher initiation fees, more capital, and larger memberships. The clubs investing most in F&B are winning by the financial metrics that actually matter for long-term club health. It's counterintuitive but the numbers back it up.

The Kitchen Problem Nobody Talks About

Club Benchmarking took this a step further and broke down what actually drives F&B satisfaction. The top four factors are all back of house: preparation consistency, food quality, menu variety, and menu rotation. Preparation consistency ranks first, and it's the hardest to deliver without two things: reliable equipment and a stable culinary team.

A lot of clubs are trying to deliver on both with kitchens that are well past their useful life. Three of eight burners working on a Friday night. A walk-in cooler that's undersized for the volume. A hood system pushing kitchen temperatures above 100 degrees. In those conditions, it isn't a personnel problem, it's an infrastructure problem that's been underfunded and, likely, underperformed for years.

Let's go further down the rabbit hole. The pattern Club Benchmarking is seeing in their Fixed Asset Register research is striking: clubs with modern, well-maintained kitchens have significantly higher F&B satisfaction scores. That shouldn’t be a surprise. What's worth noting is how often the kitchen gets deprioritized in capital planning conversations simply because members never see it. Out of sight, out of mind until satisfaction scores come back and everyone wonders what happened. Let's go back to the golf example. What if your superintendent was left to use equipment that was not up to par, broke down and was technologically behind the times? Would members and the people on your golf or greens committee put up with that? Top performing clubs need the right tools to become, and stay, the best in class. Period.

A New Perspective

An important practical suggestion from the Club Benchmarking whitepaper is a terminology shift: stop using the word "loss" when talking about F&B and start using "subsidy."

Words matter. It's a small change, and it has a real effect. As they say, "Loss" implies something went wrong. "Subsidy" implies a choice. F&B subsidies are a choice, the same kind clubs have to make every year when they fund the course, the pool, and the fitness center through dues. Reframing the conversation around that choice rather than around profitability can open up a more strategic dialogue with board members who are otherwise stuck in the wrong frame.

The question worth bringing to your finance committee isn't whether F&B turned a profit. It's whether your members are proud of it, using it more, and whether it's contributing to the kind of satisfaction scores that keep your club culture healthy.

Take the Next Step

A lot of you GMs are in a tough spot on F&B. You see the member satisfaction data. You understand the operational realities. You know what it would take to make the dining experience something members genuinely brag about. But making that case to a board that's running on conventional business instincts, and doing it repeatedly as board members cycle in and out, is exhausting. It's also scary when you ask yourself if it's a battle you want to fight that you fear could cost you your job.

So, here's the deal. If your board has been scratching its collective head for years wondering why people don't eat at the club and everything else has failed to this point, share the 2025 Club Benchmarking whitepaper on F&B with them. It's not the cure, but it’s a strong starting point. The data in it is credible, specific, and built for these conversations. Once you get them to buy in, then the work starts - making sure you've got a team that can deliver the experience members actually crave.