Mark Taylor reports on some simple but effective ideas that could give your business the edge over your competitors.
Wine and food evenings
Where: The Walpole Arms, Itteringham, Norfolk
How it works: The landlord of the award winning Walpole Arms, Richard Bryan, is a man who takes his food and wine so seriously that he launched a series of themed wine and food
evenings at the pub last year. The former producer of BBC's Masterchef show says: "My partner in the pub is a wine merchant and he arranges for somebody to come to the pub and
talk about and introduce a range of wines. We've had people from New Zealand and Burgundy recently.
Andy Parle, our head chef, who used to work for Alastair Little in London, matches the food to the wines and the countries. He's enjoying the challenge, and especially enjoyed finding recipes for the New Zealand evening we had.
The wines are supplied by the winemakers. They come to talk about them for nothing, so we are able to price the evening very competitively at around £35 per head. That includes tasters of about 10 wines so it's very good value. We started doing them towards the end of last year and they've become a great success.
We make our normal return on the food and the wines are supplied on the basis that the winemakers and suppliers will get more business from us. If we had to pay for the wines, the cost would obviously go up. Quite a lot of our locals are wine buffs and they see these events as very interesting and extraordinarily good value. They now look forward to them with great pleasure and as soon as the events are announced, the tables get fully booked straightaway. It's got quite a clubby feel now because we tend to get the same people each time and we fill our restaurant for each event with between 35 and 40 people."
Lunchtime meal deal
Where: The Leather Bottle, Blackmore, Essex
How it works: As well as running the usual à la carte menus at the Leather Bottle, the pub's head chef, Simon Moore, has introduced special meal deals. At lunchtime, there is now a two course menu for £8.95 and in the evenings the pub has just started a two-course dinner for £10, which is proving equally successful.
Simon says the offers have been introduced to encourage more people to eat at the pub and also to show people what sort of food they do.
He says: "It's also an opportunity to trial new dishes, and it's just about giving people more of a choice." The lunchtime meal-deal offers customers a choice of six starters (including wild boar and apple sausages with red onion marmalade; wild mushroom and lemon thyme soup; and pan-fried kidneys with chutney) and six main courses, including breast of chicken with smoked bacon mash or grilled red mullet salad with balsamic dressing. The Leather Bottle also offers a snack menu and an à la carte menu.
Simon says: "The majority of people go for the lunchtime meal deal - and we get an average of 20 to 30 for lunch so it's good business. We still reach our GP on this because
we go to the markets ourselves, so we're cutting out the middle man."
The Pie Club
Where: The Rising Sun, Ashburton, Devon
How it works: More than 25 years since she started gaining a reputation for the homemade pies at her previous pub, Heather Humphreys has continued the tradition at the Rising Sun.
On the first Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of each month, she holds pie evenings, which attract between 50 and 60 people each time. Customers pay £12 for a choice of savoury
pie, a pudding, a glass of wine and coffee. Heather makes all the pies on the premises and they include steak and Jail Ale (made using beer from the local Princetown brewery), lamb and apricot, chicken and leek, game when in season and fish pie.
As well as the monthly pie evenings, Heather also has a Pie Club with more than 800 members. Members receive a quarterly newsletter, which lists events and special offers and they get a 10% discount on the pie evenings. Heather says the Pie Club is also a handy way of building up a database of her customers. The pub makes about 200 pies a week. Heather says: "They're on the menu all the time, alongside our normal menu. They usually cost £8.95 so the pie evenings are seen as good value and they keep the regulars coming back."
Bring in three and the driver drinks free
Where: The Swan, Little Totham, Essex
How it works: As a way of discouraging drink-driving, free non-alcoholic drinks are given to the driver in any group of four adults drinking at the Swan in Little Totham. Landlord
John Pascoe says: "We call it 'Bring In three and the driver drinks free'. If four people drink in our pub on a regular basis, a lot of them tend to rotate who's going to be the driver for the night. The driver can then have a choice of
soft drinks for nothing.
When we get four people coming into the pub who we don't know and one of them orders a soft drink we ask if it's for the driver and then tell them it's free. It's an idea that works well in pubs that are in a rural situation like we are, with very little public transport. It's proved a popular idea and we get a number of people taking advantage of it each week."