GBPA Best Pub for Rooms: The Knife & Cleaver

Its accommodation offer has been an integral part of this rebirth, with recently refurbished rooms linking with key revenue drivers such as food and weddings. A function marquee and attractive garden help to sell the pub as a wedding location.

The pub’s nine guest rooms have been equipped to a very high standard with quirky takes on design that fit in with the feel through the pub as a whole, where Dolly Parton wall art and retro furniture rub up seamlessly against more traditional country pub tropes. Room rates are competitive as the Knife & Cleaver’s inland location means it has to work hard to be a destination venue. It’s an all-day operation, kicking off with breakfast from 8am, through to lunch and dinner, with good quality produce and premium drinks driving its gastropub positioning.

Hard work pays off

Numerous aspects of the offering are advertised on boards as guests enter the building, just one facet of the hard work the team puts into marketing to drive its various revenue streams.

“We’ve worked really hard over the last 18 months to get the pub to where it is,” says manager Georgie Stimpson. “Our rooms are important to us. They bring extra revenue into the business. Nine times out of 10, if people stay with us they eat with us, and if they don’t eat with us, they drink with us.”

During lockdown the pub’s rooms stayed open, primarily for travelling key workers, with reduced room rates and in-room breakfast boxes in a move which kept revenue coming into the business and helped the Knife & Cleaver stay connected to the local community.

Overall, it’s a professional, vibrant and dynamic operation with lots of visual appeal, a pub that hasn’t forgotten that conveying a sense of fun can be an important part in making customers feel at home.