A good catch

The Laughing Fish is Andy and Linda Brooks' first foray into the trade. But in a short time they have turned it into a Pub to be Proud of, as Adam Benzine explains.

Working as a manager for Marks & Spencer for 20 years might not seem the most obvious route into being a publican, but for Andy Brooks it made perfect sense. After two decades in retail, Andy decided to pack in the day job and, with the help of his wife Linda, try his hand at the pub trade.

"We are both enthusiastic pub-goers and we were keen to start our own business," says Andy. "I particularly wanted to break away from being part of a huge corporate conglomerate."

But while customers often express surprise at Andy's change in career, he says that the principles of running a pub and a shop are essentially the same, adding that he has adopted the retailer's mantra for the Laughing Fish.

"Marks & Spencer's slogan is simply 'quality, value, service', and I think you can apply that to any customer-facing business, whatever field you're in," says Andy. "If you can deliver those three things then you're almost all the way to running a successful business.

"Service defines individual pubs like this more than anything else. If you visit pubs regularly, you usually get a feeling and an impression within minutes of walking in as to whether you're going to like the place or not. The most important factor is the greeting you get from whoever happens to be behind the bar. First impressions count tremendously when you've never been to a pub before."

Giving customers what they want​

Andy adds that it's not just a case of engaging customers in conversation, but identifying whether a customer wants to have a chat or be left alone. "Some want to come in here and light a pipe and sit by the corner and read a paper, which is great," he says. "Others want to come in and have a chat, and that's fine too."

The Laughing Fish is situated in Isfield - a small town between Lewes and Uckfield in East Sussex - and has been a pub since 1870. It was called the Station Hotel until 1956, when the publican installed an engraved fish window at the front of the pub and changed the name.

Once Andy and Linda had decided to take the plunge and take over the pub, they set about researching the industry in the simplest terms possible - by visiting lots of outlets to evaluate the market. "We went to as many pubs as we possibly could with a notebook in our pockets," says Andy. "Every time we went into a new pub and there was something there that either impressed us or was unimpressive, we made a note of it. We used that as our basis for our business plan."

Andy recounts a few horror stories from his visits, including one pub, which will remain nameless, in which he managed to order and pay for a pint without a single word of communication from the barman.

"Getting the right staff behind the bar is one of the biggest challenges," Andy says. "An awful lot of people who want to come and work in pubs are students and younger people and they're not always as confident at being friendly and open and chatty as maybe older people are. Having said that, an older person who's not outgoing and friendly is never going to be."

As the Brooks' hunt for a pub progressed, the couple spoke with as many brewers and owners as possible, including Punch Taverns, Enterprise Inns and Greene King Pub Partners. "We spoke to anybody we could come across, and we were already subscribing to The Publican at this point," recalls Andy.

The couple eventually agreed a deal with Greene King and were offered the Laughing Fish. Although confident of their business plan, it quickly became apparent that the pub needed a lot of work.

Getting to work ​

"When we moved in we didn't realise quite how run down it had become," recalls Andy. "Not a lot of investment had gone into either the building or the business in the previous two years, and there was plenty of work to do."

Over the next two years the pub lost money, but in the third year it made a small profit. It is now seeing a healthy growth, and has seen turnover increase 90 per cent over the four-year period. For 2006, the couple are hoping to refurbish and extend the interior, taking the business even further in the right direction.

"We were able to ride those first couple of years of loss-making because we could see that turnover was growing and that the customer base was growing. The bottom line was that we were going in the right direction, so we had a reasonable amount of confidence to continue to grow the business," explains Andy.

"But it takes an awfully long time to get people to visit a pub which they perhaps feel is not a very good one. We've all probably got examples of pubs we went to 10 years ago that we haven't been to since, regardless of the fact that the pub has probably changed hands no end of times since then."

Hard work and good old-fashioned values have made the Laughing Fish a pub to be proud of. Andy and his team have taken on a struggling pub and turned it around.

Andy thinks that the family is probably too settled now to consider taking on a different pub. A lot of effort has been put into the Laughing Fish and the thought of doing it all again seems more hassle than it's worth.

"Besides," he reflects, "I think there's a long way to go yet before the Fish reaches its peak."

Andy on smoking​

"I think a total ban is inevitable. If they're going to do it in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, how can they not do it here?

"In terms of a partial ban - which would be the worst of both worlds and devastating for the trade - we'd continue with the food. But running a restaurant is not what we want to be doing - we want to run a community pub - but we have realised that the growth during our time here has come almost totally from people who have come here to eat."

Pub:​ The Laughing FishLocation:​ Isfield, East SussexLicensee:​ Andy and Linda Brooks

A small village tenancy which has seen its fortunes turn after Linda Brooks and her husband, former M&S manager Andy Brooks, took over in 2001. Employing good old-fashioned principles such as value for money and friendly customer service has seen profits shoot up.