Business Ideas - Enterprising Spirit

In our regular series, Mark Taylor looks at some more money-making ideas from pubs around the country that could be used to boost your pub's income.

Refuelling with meal vouchers

Where: The Haymaker Inn, Wadeford, Somerset

How it works: Run with a local Esso petrol station, where customers who spend £20 on fuel are given a voucher offering them "two steak dinners and a bottle of Australian wine for £20 at the Somerset Pub of the Year".

The idea was dreamed up by chef/proprietor Tim Whitehead, who has turned the pub from a run-down rural boozer into Somerset Life magazine's Country Pub of the Year 2005. He

also won the magazine's Chef of the Year award, but it's his former marketing career that helped him come up with ingenious ways of increasing trade at the Haymaker.

The voucher entitles two people to a steak dinner (10oz sirloin or rib-eye each) with roasted tomatoes, mushrooms, onion rings, chips, a mixed leaf salad and 75cl bottle of Australian red or white wine, all for £20.

Tim got the idea after advertising in local papers didn't work as well as he had hoped.

"We normally run a voucher to measure the value of the advert. We tried advertising in our main local paper and over the course of two months, we only got 84 vouchers back. It was £50 per advert per week, so that sort of return

wasn't very good. One of our regulars was the manager of a local Esso garage and I asked him about the adverts on the petrol pumps, which have two ads, one above and one below the gauge. The one below is usually a corporate one, but the one above can be used by local businesses. I asked him what the average spend on fuel was and it was £14.62, which is

quite low because they have a lot of kids on scooters refuelling and people buying petrol for their lawnmowers.

"We had to produce laminated advertising panels for the pumps, which cost £40 each. We had six made and 10,000 vouchers printed. So far, we've had 400 vouchers back in eight weeks. Even though it's a low average spend, the actual spend on the deal is higher because we often sell starters and desserts on top of the £20 offer.

We only make a 20% GP on these meals, but it's already getting people back. It's been an incredibly successful promotion.

"It's cost me about £750-£800 in total, but as we've had 400 vouchers back already and the promotion has only just started, we've covered our costs already. The garage is happy because £20 of fuel is higher than the usual average

spend." Tim says the voucher promotion at the pub has been such a success that the manager of the Esso station has now bought his own petrol station and is already running a similar deal with another pub.

Homemade dressings

Where: The Black Bear Inn, Usk, Monmouthshire

How it works: Chef/proprietor Stephen Molyneux has developed a sideline by bottling the pub's homemade dressings and putting them on sale.

"Everybody comments on our dressings so I started to realise there was potentially a big market for me to make them to sell in the pub for people to take home," says Stephen.

The first of these dressings is a basil flavoured one, which now sells in the pub for £5 per bottle. They are also on sale in a local shop and were available at the Abergavenny

Food Festival.

Stephen makes the dressing in the pub kitchen when it's quiet, often using herbs he grows himself, which he blends with a good quality oil. He has sold more than 150 already.

"They sell like hot cakes," says Stephen. "I make a good profit from it and, because the bottles have some really attractive labels, it's also good advertising for the pub."

Pub meals to take away

Where: The Bell, Buckland Dinham, Somerset

How it works: When locals at the Somerset pub used to fancy a takeaway meal, they had to drive miles into the nearest town, park, wait and drive home again.

This has all changed thanks to landlord Jeremy Westcott, who has introduced a takeaway menu at the pub. The Bell now has a selection of dishes available to take away, each served in a reheatable container.

"We're a small rural village with no takeaway shops or anything like that, so we spotted a gap in the market," says Jeremy. "People now come to the pub, have a drink and order their takeaway meal while they wait. "All of our food is cooked to order so people know they may have to wait a bit longer during our busy times, but they can have anything from fish and chips or chicken curry with rice to steak

and ale pie with new potatoes and vegetables.

Our biggest selling dish to take away is the cottage pie with vegetables. "At the end of the day, we're a business in a local community so if somebody just wants to come in for a pudding, that's fine with us. In fact we had a lady here recently who came in just for puddings to take away for a dinner party."