When an inspector calls the shots

The receptionist's voice on the phone has a familiar ring. I explain my train has been cancelled and I need to get a message to Ruth Watson as I will be late.

"This is Ruth. Are you the journalist lady?" the voice barks.

Watson has sent ripples of terror through parts of the hospitality industry as the forthright saviour of failing hotels and badly-run country houses with her TV shows The Hotel Inspector and Country House Rescue.

She is now turning her attention to the pub trade, as part of a deal she has signed with Carlsberg, which is why I find myself in Suffolk on the way to interview her at the pub she owns with her husband David — the Crown & Castle in Orford.

For a woman with so much on her plate I wasn't honestly expecting her to be acting as receptionist. "I'm very hands-on still," Watson says when I finally arrive.

"I'm not here every day, obviously, but I do the marketing, writing, food, interiors. I am involved in the drinks selection and staff management. I answer the phone — as you know — and book rooms.

"I don't do shifts in the kitchen any more and I'm not involved in account management, though I still see them every month."

Watson has always had an interest in food, but her hospitality career didn't begin until 1983 when she and her husband bought Hintlesham Hall, near Ipswich, Suffolk, from the chef Robert Carrier.

They had just sold a computer company and when the opportunity came up, "David said to me, 'either we buy this or you can never say you want a restaurant again'." So they took the plunge.

"It was a big learning curve, as we didn't know anything about the industry but we did understand business principles. We did understand marketing.

"There are more similarities between running a hospitality business and one that makes ball bearings than there are differences and that's where so many people go wrong. This is a business, not a lifestyle. It's not wafting around talking to people."

Following Hintlesham Hall, which the couple sold in 1990, Watson opened one of the first gastropubs in the country, the Fox & Goose in Fressingfield, the same year, which she followed in 1999 with the Crown & Castle in Orford, both in Suffolk, an 18-bedroom pub and restaurant.

She is passionate about pubs, particularly those in the countryside. "There's a huge difference between a village that has a pub and one that does not.

"The pub is where people go to meet, eat and drink. Pubs aren't about beer, they're about a place's DNA, having a focal point, a centre and they are at the heart of a village. That sounds really corny, I know."

This is partly why, she says, she agreed to team up with Carlsberg for its We Deliver More strategy.

As part of this, she appears on the website, hosts sessions for licensees, will get involved with the food-led part of the initiative, with quarterly newsletters including case studies of her own experiences as well as recipes (she was head chef at the Fox & Goose and has written three cookbooks) and plans to get out there and promote Carlsberg's Eight Steps to Success.

"Obviously I am getting paid for this," she says candidly. "But I am constantly being offered things I turn down because I don't believe in them. I was very impressed with Carlsberg's presentation to me and what it is trying to do with We Deliver More, which is essentially to act as a head office for individual licensees. My role will be to get out there and say to licensees, 'you should take advantage of this'."

Running a pub, she says, is really about "adding value to beer". "It's about making a great evening, from a friendly welcome, a warm atmosphere and a great experience. What I see when I go into a good pub is smiling staff who are welcoming and put you at ease. Basically, you are your staff. No more, no less."

Staff success​

Watson can claim some success with staff, having an impressive retention rate — the head chef has stuck around for 11 years, the head housekeeper six and the restaurant manager a decade — but her approach can be seen as somewhat unorthodox.

"You should talk about an exit strategy at the successful interview stage," she says.

"It is just as important to know what is going to happen at the end of the relationship as it is at the start. So I always say, 'we will run out of opportunities for you eventually, you will need to move on and we will help you with that'.

"Twenty-five years ago I felt people were disloyal when they left, but people need to move on and it's unreasonable to expect them to stay forever."

When recruiting, Watson says she looks for a "nice nature" and a "brain" and says she spends far more time on staff than on customers. "If you have happy staff you have happy customers, it's a wonderful cycle."

Challenges of the trade​

She admits that, for independent licensees, motivating staff through training and career development can be tough.

"Running a pub you have to do everything, so how do you find time to train staff, particularly when you don't have access to an HR department or training structure?

"But half an hour a week is better than nothing, even if it's just a sit-down with the team to discuss the service. What went wrong last week? What was right? How can we improve it?

"Here we do it on a more individual basis, also asking staff what they think they are good at, tell them what you see, ask where they see themselves in a few years and try to help them with that."

It all sounds very satisfactory but I am under no illusion that working for Watson would be anything but demanding (not that this is a bad thing).

In my time with her, both a new cup and glass have to be brought — once when a fly lands on my tea cup and once when she accidentally pours still instead of sparkling water into my glass — and someone is dispatched to sort out a blind that isn't sitting properly. Her attention to detail, whether for my benefit or not, is pretty terrifying.

"You have to look at every detail," she exclaims. "From the flower baskets on the outside of your pub to the cushions. The image of a place reflects what you do.

"Licensees often forget that you are marketing your pub, even when it is closed, so a dusty exterior and dead flowers aren't going to cut it."

This knowledge of branding and marketing is a key part of what Watson is able to bring to the trade.

"Look at the likes of Kellogg's, Carlsberg and Heinz. These are household names and yet still they have to spend millions on marketing because otherwise people forget. If businesses of that stature are still having to promote themselves all the time, then you really should."

She estimates a licensee should be spending between 5% and 8% of a venue's turnover on marketing. "And if you are struggling at the moment then sending out emails costs nothing," she adds.

"The more basic thing — the most basic — is to remember that whatever it is that you think people know about your pub, it is in reality about 0.5% of that," she says.

"Licensees think they can just do a new menu or a new website and suddenly the whole world knows about it, but you have to keep talking, telling people time and time again."

Which is exactly, of course, what Watson is really, really good at — hopefully we in the pub trade will listen.

Ruth Watson at a glance​

1983 Buys Hintlesham Hall, Hintlesham, Suffolk

1990 Buys the Fox & Goose, Fressingfield, Suffolk

1994 Becomes contributing food editor on Sainsbury's Magazine. Later becomes food editor of the Daily Mail's Weekend magazine

1999 Buys the Crown & Castle, Orford, Suffolk.

2000 Publishes The Really Helpful Cookbook

2002 Publishes Something for the Weekend

2003 Publishes Fat Girl Slim

2005 Signs up for The Hotel Inspector, Channel five

2007 Begins Country House Rescue, Channel 4

2009 Ruth Watson's Hotel Rescue, Channel 4

Food trends​

"I think that the whole concept of smaller plates, sharing platters and lots of things on the table has a lot more mileage yet, and the whole Italian food thing isn'