Community-run pub celebrates first anniversary

Lance Doughty, a shareholder of the Fleece Inn in Hillesley, Gloucestershire, told the Publican’s Morning Advertiser​ that there are many challenges to taking on your local.

“It’s been exhilarating but hard work,” he said. “It was more work than we appreciated.

“We did not have any track record in doing anything like this in the village and the general feeling was that there wouldn’t be a lot of interest. We thought we’d get about 50 investors, but we ended up getting 120 shareholders.”

'Drinking population'​

He advised others in a similar situation to make sure the board of directors has a range of people on it. “I’ve seen that other community-run pubs have the same leading lights who also sit on the parish council.

“But you need people who went to the pub before, so we were keen to get the drinking population involved.”

He added: “Getting the right manager was also a challenge. We had a good one but she was not comfortable working with 120 bosses, so we tried hard to channel it through the operations director.

“You need a bit of a thick skin as a manager — you have to take everyone’s opinion into account but you can’t please everyone.”

The group then hired a second manager, who Doughty said has come into the business “with his eyes open”.

Trial and error​

“Getting the food right — in terms of where you get it from — whether to offer pub grub or something interesting, getting all that right is a bit of trial and error.

“You do sometimes take a step forward and two steps back. It took nine months of operation for it to really settle down for us.”

The group is celebrating the anniversary by holding a festival from 26 to 28 July.