The Elite approach

Since arriving from France, Martial Chaussy has built up the highly-

successful Elite Pubs company with three food-led outlets in the south of England. Joe Lutrario reports

My background

When I first came to the UK I worked in up-market hotels but did not enjoy the formal and corporate feel of it all - there was no room for innovation, no personality.

As a Frenchman living in England I really enjoy the pub - the atmosphere. It's more than just an eating or drinking place, it's part of the local community or an important part of a city's history. Beautiful old buildings and great characters hold a great deal of appeal for me.

I started researching, learning about leases and tenancies, and soon realised that a freehold pub was the only way for me. The restrictions on what you could sell, how you could run and design things were too great with a tenancy or leasehold.

I financed the first pub, the Great House, in Kent, by borrowing against the value of my house. At the time I also had a wine import business, so that gave me a cash flow to put into the work that needed to be carried out on the site. It was extremely run down, everything was bad, the toilets, the food, the décor, everything. We just started again.

My pubs

I have three freehold pubs in the south of England; two in Kent - the Great House, in Hawkhurst and the Farmhouse in West Malling, and the Gun in Chiddingly, East Sussex. My pub company is called Elite Pubs.

I always go to each pub two or three times a week to make sure that everything is all right. I've got an operational manager to ensure that standards are being maintained and dedicated managers for each site.

My staff

Over the three pubs in our estate we've got about 60 staff, the majority of whom are employed full-time. We accommodate at least 80% of our staff in houses near the pubs or we use the pubs' living accommodation.

I quickly found that the level of skill surrounding these rural pubs was pretty poor, so a lot of my staff come from France. There is a shortage of quality, committed hospitality staff in this country, but there are certainly some exceptions - I do have some excellent English staff. To be able to keep up standards and be better than the competition it's extremely important to have good staff.

Practically all of our kitchen staff are French and we employ a lot of Eastern European staff in front of house who are always very good.

I employ the best staff that I can and pay them a fair wage - it's as simple as that. All the tips they make are theirs and are shared out equally between all the staff on a given shift, from the manager to the kitchen porter. It's important to keep track of tips - they are a good indication of how happy the customers are.

My food

The pubs are all food led. We focus on quality and good value. Each site is individual, with a different head chef; I can't stand the word chain and we certainly don't want to be seen as one.

The Gun focuses on quality English food, alongside a specials board, which carries the more exotic dishes. At the Great House, which is more of a destination pub, the food is more restaurant orientated, more involved.

The Farmhouse is on the high street and the split is 60:40 in favour of dry. We have a menu that makes sense in a high-street situation where lots of people walk in for a quick meal or snack. It needs to be quick with a mix of good value and expensive choices.

That's something we try and do in all the sites, offer a mixture of good-value and more upmarket foods.

Red meats are very popular - duck and game are selling very well at the moment. We buy all our game from local shoots. We also use a lot of local suppliers and farmers.

My chefs are able to cook at all levels, from seared scallops right down to something as simple as a sandwich. Each head chef is briefed by myself and the operational manager on what we are looking for on the new menu every three months.

Once a menu is drawn up we sit down with the general manager and the chef to go through it.

My marketing

We do all our marketing ourselves and we feature in numerous guides. We advertise in parish council magazines, which is incred-

ibly good value and also helps the local community. Even if we weren't so successful we would still do it, just to have a presence in

those magazines.

We've got a very comprehensive website, www.elitepubs.com, which has all three pubs on it. I think it's important to have a website these days.

We run a premier-card membership with about 4,000 members. It started two years ago. People pay £10 up front and provide

their details, which are then entered into a database so we can keep them up to date with emails and newsletters, letting them know when we change the menus and about any events coming up.

My customer feedback

We have little cards with tick boxes and a space for additional comments that go into a box left on tables in each pub. Then the manager produces a feedback sheet on a monthly basis and we sit down and go through it. It's very important, customers are "it" in this business, without them we would not be here.

My community

Our pubs offer something as well as food and drink. All our pubs are community orientated. We have wireless internet and village-style shops in all our pubs.

The pub is there to deliver a service to the community, so you have to understand what they are looking for and what is a beneficial amenity for them.

We support the local schools; on each menu we have three dishes on which we collect 25p and every couple of months we deliver a cheque to the local primary schools. They can do whatever they want with it.

We do lots of local events and will support any suitable ones. They can use any of our facilities if the timing suits us.

The farm shops have been open for 12 months now and we stock local food, so you can have a quick shop when you finish eating. You can use the shop and the pub to attract two different types of clientele, but there will inevitably be a crossover which will be very good for business.

My business

Increasing the number of pubs would have made it harder and harder to control quality, so for the moment I have decided to concentrate on three. Rather than buying more pubs, I want to maximise each site so adding the shops was a logical choice which has worked out very well indeed.

Since we've concentrated on the three pubs, we've dramatically increased turnover. All of the pubs that we took on were in a very poor state. The turnover for the Gun, which we've had for about a year now has doubled from £300,000 to £600,000 and that figure is still increasing.

The Great House was turning over £158,000 when I brought it - now it's turning over a million and the Farmhouse is a similar story. It's not just about a good refurb, you must continually develop the business and offer quality.

COMPANY STATS

Turnover: Approximately £3m, not including the farm shops

Sites: three freehold pubs

Food GP: 73%

Drink GP: 72%

Staff costs: 28%