Golf club food and beverage survey: questions that lift spend

By Brannan Coady, Director · 8 min read · Last updated 14 July 2026

Catering is where members spend the money they don't have to spend — and where they form the strongest opinions. A dedicated food and beverage survey tells you exactly where the bar and kitchen are winning, and where they're leaving money on the table.

Key takeaways

Give catering its own survey — a single "food and drink" score hides more than it reveals.
Measure quality, value for money and menu range as three separate questions, not one.
Ask whether members were offered a drink at the turn and after the round — the upsell is where the revenue is.
Cover opening hours, cleanliness and event catering, since each protects a different slice of spend.
Read the survey next to POS data so you can tie feedback directly to spend per head.
Send the F&B scorecard to whoever runs catering and agree the action — feedback only lifts spend when someone owns it.

Why survey food and beverage on its own

Most member surveys give catering a single line — "How would you rate the food and drink?" — buried between the course and the pro shop. That one score tells you almost nothing you can act on. Food quality, value for money, menu range, service speed and whether anyone bothered to offer a second drink are five different problems with five different owners, and lumping them together hides all of them behind one blurred number.

There's a commercial reason to break it out too. The bar and kitchen are where members spend discretionary money — the money they choose to part with, not the subscription they've already committed. A better dining experience directly lifts covers, average spend and event bookings, so a golf club food and beverage survey is one of the few pieces of feedback that pays for itself. Treat catering as its own product with its own scorecard, and you can hand the results straight to the person who runs it.

F&B is discretionary spend — small improvements move revenue, not just satisfaction.
One combined "food and drink" score hides quality, value, service and range behind a single number.
The bar, kitchen and events sit with different people — separate scores point to the right owner.
Members hold strong, specific opinions about catering and will tell you if you ask properly.

Start with the plate itself. Quality and value are related but not the same — a member can rate the food highly and still feel it's overpriced, and that gap is worth knowing about because it's the single biggest driver of whether they eat in or go home. Ask about range separately again: a good kitchen with a tired, unchanging menu loses regulars who've simply eaten everything on it.

Keep every question to a quick 1–5 rating or a yes/no so members answer without thinking twice. Where you want detail, tie it to a specific occasion — the halfway house, a society day, the Sunday carvery — rather than asking about "the food" in the abstract.

How would you rate the quality of the food today? (1–5)
How would you rate value for money on food? (1–5)
How would you rate value for money on drinks? (1–5)
Was there enough choice on the menu for you? (yes/no)
Does the menu change often enough to keep it interesting? (yes/no)
Were dietary options (vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free) well catered for? (yes/no)
How would you rate the food at the halfway house or on-course kiosk? (1–5)

Service, speed and the upsell

Speed and attentiveness make or break the bar, especially in the crush after a shotgun start or a busy Saturday morning. A slow round followed by a slow bar is the fastest way to send a thirsty fourball straight to the car park. But the questions that most directly affect revenue are about the upsell — whether a member was actually offered a drink at the turn, a second round after the game, or anything beyond what they walked up and asked for.

This is the part most clubs never measure, and it's where the money is. A member who is offered a coffee and a bacon roll at the turn will often say yes; a member who has to flag someone down usually won't bother. Asking "were you offered" turns a vague sense that the bar is under-trading into a hard number the bar manager can coach against.

Was service at the bar prompt? (1–5)
Was service at the restaurant or dining room prompt? (1–5)
Were staff friendly and attentive? (1–5)
Were you offered a drink or refreshment at the turn? (yes/no)
Were you offered another round or a coffee after your game? (yes/no)
Did staff tell you about any specials, deals or events? (yes/no)

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Opening hours, cleanliness and events

The bar and café can serve the best food in the county and still lose custom if they're shut when members want them or grubby when members arrive. Opening hours are a genuine source of quiet frustration — the winter fourball that finishes to find the kitchen closed rarely complains, they just stop expecting to eat at the club. Ask directly whether the hours suit them.

Cleanliness of the dining areas, the bar and the toilets sits alongside this as a basic expectation that's cheap to get right and expensive to get wrong. And because societies, corporate days and member functions are the highest-margin catering a club does, it's worth a specific question for anyone who has booked or attended one — that feedback protects your most valuable bookings.

Do the bar and café opening hours suit when you want to use them? (yes/no)
How clean and comfortable was the dining area? (1–5)
How clean was the bar area? (1–5)
If you've attended a society or event here, how was the catering? (1–5)
Would you recommend the club as a venue for a function or society day? (yes/no)
Is there anything that would make you eat or drink here more often? (optional free text)

Linking F&B feedback to spend per head

A food and beverage survey earns its keep when you read it next to the till. Your point-of-sale system already knows covers, average spend per head and the split between food and drink; the survey tells you why those numbers are what they are. When "were you offered a drink after your round?" runs at 40% yes, that's not a satisfaction problem, it's a revenue problem with a named cause — and it usually moves after a single team briefing.

The pattern to watch for is a high food-quality score sitting next to a low value-for-money score, or strong ratings paired with flat spend. That combination almost always means the offer is right but the upsell is missing: members are happy with what they buy but nobody is prompting them to buy more. Because catering feedback tracks so closely to money, it's the survey topic where acting on results shows up fastest in the accounts.

Read survey scores beside POS data — covers, spend per head, food-versus-drink split.
Low "offered a drink" rates are lost revenue, not a satisfaction gripe.
High quality plus low value usually means pricing perception, not the food itself.
Good scores with flat spend point to a missing upsell, not a missing menu.

How GoodGreens scores it and how to act on it

GoodGreens runs the catering questions as a short QR-code survey members complete in the clubhouse or after their round, so responses land while the meal or the missed second pint is still fresh. Each rating and yes/no feeds a standards-met percentage for food and beverage — a single figure for how often the bar and kitchen are hitting the mark — and every question trends over time, so you can see the effect of a menu change or a new bar manager in the numbers rather than guessing. Because the question set is per-club, you can add the dishes, the society packages and the opening hours that actually apply to you and drop anything that doesn't.

The point of scoring it, though, is to act on it. Route the food and beverage results straight to whoever runs catering — the in-house caterer, the franchise or the bar team — with the same regularity you'd send the greens team course feedback. A monthly F&B scorecard in the caterer's hands makes the survey a working tool rather than a report that gets filed. When the upsell numbers are weak, that's a team briefing; when value-for-money is soft, that's a menu-pricing conversation; when a dish is consistently marked down, take it off. Feedback only lifts spend when someone owns the follow-through.

Run catering questions as a QR survey so feedback arrives while it's fresh.
A standards-met % gives the bar and kitchen one clear target to move.
Per-club questions let you name your own dishes, packages and hours.
Send an F&B scorecard to the caterer or bar team on a regular cadence and agree the fix.

Frequently asked questions

What questions should a golf club food and beverage survey include?

Cover five areas separately: food quality, value for money, menu range and choice, service speed, and whether staff offered members a drink at the turn or after the round. Add opening hours, cleanliness of the dining areas and a question on event or society catering. Keep each to a quick 1–5 rating or yes/no so members finish it.

How does catering feedback affect golf club revenue?

Food and drink is discretionary spend, so small improvements move the accounts directly. The biggest lever is the upsell — members who are offered a coffee at the turn or a second round after their game usually say yes, while those who have to flag someone down don't bother. Measuring "were you offered" turns under-trading at the bar into a number you can coach against.

How often should we survey members about food and beverage?

Run a short set of catering questions continuously rather than once a year — a QR-code survey in GoodGreens collects responses while the meal or the missed second drink is still fresh. Review the standards-met percentage monthly with the caterer or bar team so the survey stays a working tool rather than an annual report.

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