Red Lion in Yardley, Hastings: a quiet revolution
In just one year licensee Diane Hill and her husband Mark have increased weekly turnover at the Red Lion in Yardley Hastings, from £3,000 to £5,000. Sonya Hook finds out how they did it.
How we got here
We took on the pub on 5 August 2009. We had managed a pub in Nottingham before that, the Peacock Inn, also a Charles Wells leasehold, though on that occasion I was just managing it for another couple. I did that job for three years and my husband, Mark, also worked there — the Peacock had 10 guest rooms and Mark looked after that side of things.
I was made redundant from that job in May last year, so I spoke to Charles Wells and shortly after we started on our journey here. Charles Wells was brilliant from the word
go and we have a really good relationship — it was a scary time when I was made redundant but we had a couple of meetings and discussed the Red Lion tenancy. It was a pretty smooth transition.
The female touch
The pub has always had a good reputation, but had started to seem a bit neglected and was suffering as a result. We took it on just as it was starting to dip.
It needed a bit of love and care from the start and that's what we brought. We have decorated throughout, managing to keep open apart from just the three days when we redecorated the whole of the downstairs. We also turned our upstairs back room — previously part of the private living quarters — into an extension of the restaurant. This has turned out to be one of our best decisions.
In addition we renovated the toilets and changed the colour scheme. According to our regulars, it needed a bit of a female touch. Basically we cleaned it up and got it looking nice again.
The total refurbishment cost around £15,000, split between us and Charles Wells, though we contributed most of it because we also ripped out the entire upstairs area where we now live. It all needed doing — new carpets, plus a new bathroom and kitchen.
Proper pub grub
One of the most important changes we started with was the menu — it needed a complete revamp. It was quite gastropub-like and we didn't think it was right for this pub. We reined it in and started offering traditional home-cooked British pub food. It's all fresh produce, but it focuses on simple classic dishes.
Mark is the full-time chef and there is also a full-time cook who works with him, doing lunches and dinners. We don't open on Mondays or do food on Sunday evenings, but apart from that they are kept busy. We have about 20 covers in the pub restaurant but we've also managed to get 16 extra covers from the top room we created and there are another 10 in the bar area if necessary.
We've done some themed evenings such as our festival of fish at Easter, which was really popular. We did an Italian themed meal for the last bank holiday, and for the August bank holiday we created a pizza menu.
Meet and greet
We're in a beautiful village and most of our customers tend to drive — we are on one of the main roads between Bedford and Northampton, so we get some passing trade. Generally people come from the neighbouring villages and some groups meet here.
We get a lot of families in now. It wasn't family friendly at all before we came on board, but I have kids of my own so I know what people want, and it's easy to cater for families now that there's no smoking in pubs. We have a high chair and we offer smaller portions from the menu. There is also space for pushchairs — I'd love to be able to set up a kid's play area, but there's no-where really suitable here. We have a fairly large beer garden though, so often families will get involved in impromptu football matches.
There is also a big field behind the pub where I've organised a popular vintage vehicle event, for example. The car park is spacious, so I've used it for marquees too.
The Red Lion is a country pub so we want to cater for anyone who drops by — walking groups and the Rambling Association meet here sometimes, plus ladies who lunch and the Women's Institute. And we're happy to allow dogs in the bar.
The upstairs room is perfect for meetings. The local school has used it for its committee meetings while the Young Farmers group meets here once a month and they used the blank wall in there to project slides. I'd like to make better use of that function room.
Friendly competition
Our games room has skittles — quite a big thing for the pub, and we're part of a skittles league, which we won last year. Every Tuesday the inter-pub league keeps the place pretty busy.
When we have the play-offs here, each team brings supporters and they all have food and drink, plus we have a big presentation evening.
Live music is one of the other areas that attracts a big crowd. We tend to book something in for every six weeks, and I've currently booked entertainment right through to Christmas.
I tend to choose local bands because I'm keen to keep building the pub's community links. We do all sorts of things with the community, including a football match with the other pub in the village. It's a popular event — all the villagers came to watch last time, and they had food afterwards in the pub.
I'm also trying to build stronger links with the local school as it's so close to us, and my youngest child goes there.
Shout all about it
My biggest marketing success has been linking up with The Best Of magazine, a local quarterly magazine for Northampton. Advertising there has done me the world of good, and the pub even won The Best of Northampton award, voted for by my customers. The website for The Best Of has also been effective and 200 testimonials for the pub have been posted on it. I also got involved with a magazine called Taste, but otherwise it's all been word of mouth.
Looking forward I just want to maintain what we are doing at the moment but it would be nice to establish more of a pattern. It's been hard to predict busy days — the sun doesn't always drive people into pub gardens, for example. And I started to take Wednesdays off because they were so quiet, but recently they've been so busy I've been called in to help.
Diane Hill's top tips
Don't think running a pub is easy — it's a 24/7 experience. If you can work in a pub before taking one on, it's really useful. Even though I managed a pub for three years, having one of my own is so different — the phone still rings on my day off.
Saying that, having my own place has been much better. I can make decisions and not have to run them past someone.
Running a pub with a family isn't easy, but it is ideal in some ways. I don't always see my family in the evenings if the pub's busy, but I have managed to spend regular daytimes with them in the school holidays, so that's been a good thing.
Facts 'n' stats
Landlord: Charles Wells
Turnover in 2009: £3,000 per week
Turnover now: £5,000 per week
Wet:dry split in 2009: 70:30
Wet:dry split now: 50:50
Staff: three full-time, three part-time
Covers: 46
Cost of refurbishment: £15,000
