The secret of running a successful pub is simple, according to Ellie Sainty: “You have to tick all the boxes.” She owns the Old Badger Inn in the Gloucestershire village of Eastington and she had quite a few boxes to tick when she took over in June 2011.
It was called the Victoria Inn back then and it had been through several owners: Stroud Brewery, then Whitbread, on to Pubmaster and, finally, Punch Taverns. The pub had, Ellie says, “limped along for 20 years” and had been closed for 15 months when she arrived.
Ellie paid £175,000 for the pub and has spent the same sum on refurbishment. But she knew when she walked through the door that it had that indefinable quality known as “potential”. She has a good track record in spotting pubs with potential. In 1993 she and her husband, Ric Sainty, bought the Fox & Hounds in Dursley, Gloucestershire, turned it into the Old Spot — named after a famous local breed of pig — and had such success there that it was named National Pub of the Year by the Campaign for Real Ale in 2007.
“It was tatty,” she recalls. “We took it back to basics, really. There was no food and no lager at first. We did each room up, one at a time, then gradually introduced lager and lunchtime food.”
Ric, with his rubicund face and flowing white beard, looked like an Old Testament prophet. He was a legend in the pub trade and it came as a profound shock when he dropped dead of a heart attack in 2008. “I was devastated,” Ellie says. “I moped around for two years and then looked for a new site.”
Safe hands
She has a good grounding in running pubs. Ric Sainty came from Cambridge and was a town planner. His work took him to Pandy in Wales, where he met and married Ellie, who is originally from Wimbledon. Ric was a passionate real-ale drinker and keen to run a pub, so they took on the Pandy Inn in 1987. From there, they moved to the West Country and ran a famous local hostelry, the New Inn at Waterley Bottom in Gloucestershire, before moving to the Old Spot.
Ellie Sainty still owns the Old Spot, but it’s in the safe hands of husband-and-wife managers Steve and Belinda Herbert. When she looked for a new pub, the name of the Victoria kept coming up. The pub was boarded up and needed a new roof, but Ellie spotted that famous potential.
“I don’t like changing pub names for the sake it, but the Victoria needed to live again,” she says. She’s an animal lover and the Old Badger is now dog-friendly. There are many badger pictures and mementoes in the pub, which has not endeared her to everyone in the local farming community. She also closed the popular skittle alley, which raised a few hackles, but it was, she says, in a poor condition and it had to make way for better loos, essential for what is “a destination pub”.
The Old Badger now has a disabled entrance, a large back garden, old settles and stone fireplaces. There’s a good community feel: a function room can be used free as a playroom by local parents.
Ellie (pictured left with business partner Julie Gilberson) has installed a modern cellar on the ground floor, so the beers have a short run to the long bar that commands the main room as you enter. She started with just three cask beers, but now there are six handpumps, one of which is set aside for a local cider.
“When we opened the doors, we wondered if anyone would come, but people immediately came for the beer,” she says. It took her four to five months to install a kitchen, but now food is served lunchtime and evening. “Eating is informal,” she says. “There’s no cutlery on the tables — we tell people to just grab a table.”
Popular pub
The Old Badger is a busy pub and Ellie has been joined by Julie Gilborson as a partner. Ellie allows the Herberts to run the Old Spot without interference, but she has monthly meetings with them to make sure the pub is ticking over well.
At the Old Badger, the array of old beer and brewery prints on the walls and the hops hanging from the ceiling confirm that it’s a pub popular with cask ale drinkers.
Ellie draws her beers from local producers, including the Cottage Brewing Company, Bath Ales, Moles Brewery and Severn Valley Brewery. Carlsberg is her “cooking lager” and she has two beers from Czech Budweiser Budvar, the golden Original and the recently introduced Yeast Beer, a rare example of an unfiltered and unpasteurised lager.
Food includes coq au vin, beer-battered haddock, that Belgian speciality moules frites — mussels and chips — seafood fettucini, mushroom rarebit, and tomato, basil & mozzarella and tuna mayonnaise sandwiches.
Good beer and good grub — that ticks all the boxes. As far as Ellie Sainty is concerned, badgers, both old and young, are here to stay.