Oasis in the City: the Coach & Horses
Giles Webster, licensee at the Coach & Horses in Clerkenwell, central London, tells Robyn Black how investing in the services of a PR company and developing an interesting wine offer is paying dividends.
About us
I am an exercise physiologist by trade and own a physiotherapy and orthopaedic practice, where I still work one day a week. Along with the day job, though, I have always had a love of food and cooking, and so about five years ago when some friends with restaurant experience approached me about opening a gastropub with them I went for it.
Four years on and it's just me left as the others have moved on. But it's going well and both my wife, Colette, and I are still enjoying it very much. Despite my continuing involvement with the practice I can still be very hands on at the pub as Colette is always there, and we live in the rooms above, so in fact it's rather hard not to see staff all the time and to know exactly what is going on. I'm also always on the phone or picking up emails — we're living in the electronic age now, after all, so there's less need to be there every second.
Retaining good staff
I guess a good description of my role in the pub would be managing director. I've tried to create a flat structure here — that sounds a bit official, but, actually, it's just panned out like that. We really just wanted to find a way to ensure everyone feels like they have a stake in things and that they are involved.
We have about 10 full-time staff, if I include myself, and a couple of part timers as well, depending on the season — we shut at weekends through the summer, for example, so need fewer staff then.
We do some formal training with all staff when they start and then we keep that going on a more informal basis as we go along.
We've been very lucky with staff and have a great team. When we recruit we spend a long time making sure we're getting the right people and then we try to get them involved in the business.
We do that by not just asking them for ideas, but also by implementing some of them; by asking them for their input when we need to change or add something to the business and by having that flat structure, so no one works for anyone else. It's not exactly a formal approach, but something that has evolved and really pays dividends for us in terms of keeping good staff, long-term.
How we market the pub
Even though we are in London, our location means we don't have very much passing traffic, so from the start we knew we were going to have to invest in marketing.
I really believe that the best form of marketing is word of mouth and so we don't do any form of advertising. Instead we used the marketing budget to employ the services of a PR company. It costs about the same per year as a junior member of staff and it's definitely been worth it for us.
They have all the right contacts and can dedicate the proper time needed to getting our name out there, something that is very time consuming, particularly when you are also dealing with the day-to-day running of a pub.
They have been able to get in influential food and drink journalists, who have then gone on to talk about us and recommend us in the media, and on things such as Twitter and Facebook, which has been great for business. They have also been able to target the food-blogger community, which is vast, though only some of them have any influence, and they are able to sort the wheat from the chaff, as it were.
We also run plenty of events and they are instrumental in highlighting those as well.
Making the most of events
Having a PR company has meant that instead of just hosting an event we can get companies to sponsor it or put up prizes, which reduces the costs, and we also get some quite high-profile names in to help promote it. Every couple of months we run our food quiz night, which has become very popular and we often get some famous food writers in for that.
You have to pay to enter a team of about four and then you get food thrown in. One of the key prizes is that your bar tab is paid off for the team if you win, which always goes down well.
We also do regular wine and whisky-tasting evenings. We organise those through our suppliers to keep costs down again and they are always received very well. In the future I'd like to start a wine club, but I want it to be informal — and a non-frightening way to learn about wine, rather than the traditional stuffy way. So I'll need to come up with another name for it.
Our drinks and food offer
About 60% of our business is wet, which is a ratio we are pleased with and intend to maintain. Keeping that wet side of the business is important as I want this place to very much be a pub, a place to come for a chat, to relax in and to just have a pleasant time. We play some background music, but there are no TVs and no games machines. Having said that, this isn't a heavy drinking pub either and nor would I want it to be, so you have to think carefully about how to achieve that.
Part of it is about offering better drinks; we would never stock alcopops, for example. About 45% of our wet sales are made up of wine and most of the rest is beer, though it's proper beer! We also stock 25 malt whiskies, which do well and also serve as a talking point.
The food side of the business is something we have developed in our time here and is one of the things of which we are most proud. We have won awards and have had some
great reviews, all of which helps.
I'd describe the menu as modern British. We offer the best Scotch eggs in London, so it is said, a charcuterie menu, very good cheese selection and main dishes such as roast skate, mussels, sea vegetables & Ratte potatoes, and Elwy Valley confit breast of lamb, baby onions, bacon, Baby Gem lettuce & summer beans.
Everything is as handmade as it can be, so we bake all the bread ourselves and make our own ice-cream. We buy in half a pig a week and use that for a variety of dishes, including making the sausage meat for the Scotch eggs. Of course, this approach really helps our GP, which on food is about 65%, but it's a tough battle as making everything from scratch is quite labour intensive, so you end up with quite high kitchen wages. It's something we are looking at the whole time.
We are also now looking to develop more business around weddings and functions. Currently, this is quite a small part of the business, around 20% of total turnover, but I think there's real potential for growth.
Our approach to wine
We recently won an award from Harpers Wine & Spirit magazine in their Drinking Out Excellence Awards. We won UK Wine Pub of the Year 2010, which we were delighted with.
My wife, Colette, deals with the wine side of things. She takes a very academic approach to it, though she is self taught.
Our motto is "we do not sell what we do not drink," and that's our first criteria for a wine, or any drink here — would we drink it? What we aim for is nothing complicated, just a wide choice and a decent price range; our cheapest still wine is £12.50 a bottle and the most expensive is £39.90. Our GP on wine is about 65%, but we work off a cash margin for the more expensive ones to make them more reasonable. Most of what we sell is around the £20 a bottle mark.
We also do 15 wines by the glass — six red, three rosé and six white — and we do them in two sizes, 175ml and 250ml. They go from £3.50 to £6.70 for a 175ml glass.
Our real innovation around wine has been in our tasting notes, which certainly aren't traditional here. We wanted them to be more accessible. As a result, we try to be more informal and jokey, describing a white Burgundy as "Buttery and luxuriant — second only to a hot bath", for example, and then if customers want to know more they can ask the staff for advice — they are all trained and get to do regular tastings, so they can help.
We also avoid doing wine and food pairings on the menu, which I know is really trendy right now, but I just think it is all too presc
