After a busy few weeks of Welcome Events, the Venues Team and I are happy to be getting settled down into regular activities. Our returning students may have noticed a few changes around our Venues compared to last year! Since 2019, the Union has seen a period of progression with our Back to Basics strategy. Unfortunately, this wasn’t always seen throughout our Venues, especially due to the impact of COVID. This year we are dedicated to getting our Venues Back to Basics, and building our team to be bigger, better, and stronger than ever before. If you would like any further information on the changes listed below, or would like to raise any questions or concerns, you can contact me at dpfs@imperial.ac.uk.
Price Increases
Starting with the bad news!
The Union’s financial model categorises our venues and events as ‘core, self-funded’, which means, while we believe they are one of our vital services, they must be self-sustaining financially. The Venues do not intend to make a profit from our sales beyond paying our staff and financing essential maintenance for the venues. This does however mean that we must respond to increasing costs to ensure we break-even.
As a result, due to price increases from cost of living and other national and global factors, the prices of our food & drinks have been increased this year. We have however revamped our food menu to offer more affordable options, as discussed below, and are always looking into different ways to keep our prices steady.
New Kitchen Menu
The 568 menu has had a small refresh over Summer! This was both to make the menu more manageable for our kitchen to supply, and to offer cheaper items like our new toastie range to accommodate for price increases of our staple items. We are looking to completely refresh our food offering this academic year, so stay tuned for an opportunity to have your say!
Security Review & Safety in our Venues
As an outcome to a Security Review held last year, the Union Venues have hired a new security firm TMS for all our locations. You can spot them wearing light blue hi-vis vests. The tender process for hiring involved a student panel to present various scenarios, and the company was chosen due to their prioritisation of student welfare in our venues.
During this review, our members have told us that they want to be treated with less suspicion when entering our venues and expect that the enforcement of the rules should focus on dealing with those that break them, rather than blanket policies that affect everyone. Therefore, whilst we will retain bag searches for our busiest night, we will no longer be asking people to pour away water to enter the building.
We hope that all our members will treat our venues and each other with respect. ICU Venues have a Code of Conduct that makes clear the expectations we have of our customers, and in return what you can expect from us. In any circumstances where the Code of Conduct is breached, these will be investigated under the ICU Licencing Disciplinary Investigation Process, which can result in bans from our venues of up to a month, or referral to other College / ICU processes for the most serious cases.
We hope that all of this will create a safer environment at our Venues. Our lids and bottle caps for spiking prevention; spiking test strips; and Ask for Angela are still available at all our Venues. If you ever feel unsafe or like you need help, any member of Venues staff or security will be happy to help you.
h-bar and Reynolds
For our ICSMSU and post-grads, or anyone else who frequents h-bar or Reynolds, you’ll know our opening times last year were rocky at best. This year, h-bar will be open Monday to Friday evenings and Reynolds Tuesday to Friday evenings all year. Even better, Tuesday nights see the return of the h-bar Postgrad Pub Quiz! Keep your eyes peeled for future events hitting these venues.
Join our Team
Our Venues Team has recently seen some changes, with our new Venues Operating Manager starting today and Deputy Venues Manager (Food & Beverage) in a few weeks. With this, we will soon be reopening applications for student casual workers to join our team! Check out our current vacancies and keep an eye out for more openings in the upcoming weeks.