Food for thought
Next year's smoking ban in England could have dire consequences for wet-led pubs, says Derbyshire licensee Clive MacIntyre. But he has a solution - introduce a quality food offering.
A "Ram burger" for Derby supporters was just one of the ideas to keep hungry customers from leaving Derbyshire pub the Hawk and Buckle in search of food elsewhere.
Over the past six years, Clive and Cheryl MacIntyre have gradually built up a successful food offer in their community pub - the first they have run - in the village of Etwall.
"When Cheryl and I took it over, there was no food at all, and for the first couple of years we focused on beer," said Clive.
"But we were conscious that our customers were leaving the pub to get something to eat and I wanted that business to stay here. After our first revamp we started offering sandwiches and baguettes; later we moved on to burgers.
"Our pub has always attracted Derby supporters on match days. They would get their pints in and then go off to the football, where they would get something to eat.
"I discussed this with Union Pub Company catering development manager Ben Bartlett and he came up with a new 'Ram Burger' for the fans. We sold it with chips for £2.50 and the supporters started eating here instead of at the stadium.
"Then we had our second refurb and put in catering facilities. As we had no experience of commercial food, we decided to start slowly. Cheryl wanted the opportunity to grow her experience with the business. We knew that if we bit off more than we could chew we were quite likely to give our customers a bad experience.
"Once we got the hang of one side of the business, we would be able to move on to the next stage.
"We were offering about eight dishes plus a full range of sandwiches and only serving a little evening food when we decided to get rid of Sky, as their prices were going up, and started doing Sunday lunches instead. That move was very significant - it immediately paid off for us.
"Eventually we reached the point where Cheryl wouldn't have any time off if we wanted to grow and one of our biggest decisions was to hire a chef. That was a year and a half ago and the results have been great - we've started running theme nights after a Valentine's night sold out immediately and we enjoy organising monthly gourmet evenings.
"We charge £32.95 for five courses with three drinks for these evenings, and tickets sell out three months in advance. We're making a GP of 72% and customers are still trying to blackmail us to move up the waiting list!
"We make sure we still finish serving at 8.30pm as we don't want to damage demand for drinks - there's no point in just swapping like-for-like sales."
Clive believes the smoking ban will be a big issue when it is introduced in England, especially if a pub relies on wet sales alone, and is keen to encourage other licensees to build business by introducing food.
