Bents launches new £700,000 colleague facility
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Bents Garden & Home has celebrated the start of 2017 with the opening of its new £700,000 colleague facility, making its back of house operations as high quality to its customer facing store.
Bents, which remains a family owned and run business, now employs over 300 colleagues whose previous facilities and offices were housed in a number portable cabins. The new facilities are located above the Centre’s £10m phase 2 development and include a combination of new office space and colleague amenities.
Says Matthew Bent, Managing Director at Bents Garden & Home: “Over the past few years we have invested a lot of time and money, creating the ultimate garden, home and leisure destination for our customers with new departments and dining areas, but now that these have become more established we have been able to focus on our colleagues and work with them to create this fantastic new space.”
A working group was put together in early 2016 with 10 colleagues representing the various Bents teams and who have worked alongside their colleagues in store and Matthew to mould and guide the new development.
Central to the new facilities is the Bents’ Bistro, a brand new dining area with relaxed seating, quiet zones and bar style seating with views over to the distant hills of Rivington and beyond. The Bistro is run by Bents’ in-house chefs who provide a variety of home-made meals including soups, salads, jacket potatoes and a range of breakfast options. The menu is soon to be expanded with further home made options planned for the future.
Investment has also gone in to providing new toilets, lockers, shower rooms as well as extensive new offices which include training facilities, casual meeting areas and hot desks. Small scale meeting pods are in the form of quirky internal sheds and larger meeting rooms have been named after Bents’ original founders Alfred and Margaret Bent with a third named after 95 year old garden centre consultant, Ernest Wertheim who has played a pivotal role in the development of Bents Garden & Home over the past 20 years.
Says Matthew: “We have always had a long term plan in place and our colleague facilities were always an integral part of that plan, creating a bright and modern working environment for our office colleagues and a warm and welcoming destination where everyone can spend their breaks.”
Future plans include the further transformation of the existing Centre, creating a larger contemporary retail space with a 2 storey high glazed atrium and escalators leading up to 3,800 sq m of retail, leisure and educational space.
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