My Pub: Three B’s Micropub, Bridlington, East Yorkshire

The Bridlington pub that champions local beer and cider scooped the Campaign for Real Ale’s (CAMRA) Yorkshire Wolds’ Branch Pub of the Year and the Branch Cider Pub of the Year last week.

Branch secretary Jonquil Beynon presented the pub owners Mark and Cheryl Bates with the two awards certificates after they fought off competition from 67 other real ale pubs in the region.

Mark said: “It was a pleasure that we have been acknowledged with the awards, and that all the long hours in running the business was worth it, being paid off with such great recognition.”

Here, Mark tells us all about the pub in the seaside town.

The pub​

The Three B’s is a freehold building. It was formerly a sweet shop, which is quite common for micropub buildings with the concept being that sell drinks in a smaller area. It based right in the centre of Bridlington, East Yorkshire.

We bought the building as an empty site and converted it into the micropub it is now. There was no cellar so we had some work done to create that, a bar area and seating.

The cellar is not a traditional cellar because it is not underground. It has been created within the footprint of the building so is a flat cellar at the same level as the rest of the property.

We wanted somewhere where the ‘cellar’ could be built right behind the bar counter. In most cases I’m actually on my own at the bar so I didn’t want anywhere where I had to disappear for five minutes to change a cask, for example.

We’ve got a small outside sitting area at the front – that seats six people – and that was the one favour Covid did us. The regulations changed that allowed wet-only pubs to have a seating area outside.

We’ve got seating for 26 customers inside the pub so we can have 25 to 30 people indoors if some are standing and that’s a reasonable size for a micropub.

The publican​

I’d worked in the rail industry for 30 years. I’d never run a business before, and me and my wife were looking for something very different away from salaried work.

I’ve worked at CAMRA beer festivals for about 20 years and run them too so that’s where my interest and knowledge for cask beer comes from.

I did work one day a week for a large chain pub for a short time but that’s very different from a micropub but it did give me some insight into what happens behind the bar.

We run the pub and a bed and breakfast business in the town so, in essence, I run the pub and my wife runs the B&B, although she does do things like cooking food for the pub.

I am the licensee, the DPS, cellarman, toilet cleaner and everything else in between.

The trade​

The property is in Bridlington town centre and we have a wide range of customers.

The average customer for us is probably a retiree. Bridlington is a bit like a lot of seaside resorts and attracts a lot of people who have retired we also get people come with young families as well who are often visiting rather than living here.

It’s very seasonal and doesn’t happen so much in the winter but obviously we welcome all customers of drinking age but typically our customers are a little bit more, a little bit more discerning and who like a good-quality pint.

The team​

It’s pretty much just me but, as I said, my wife cooks some food for the pub.

We close Monday and Tuesdays and are open Wednesday to Sunday every day, all day. I do reduce the hours slightly by doing 1pm till 9pm in the winter, and 12pm to 10pm in the summer because it is incredibly seasonal in this seaside town.

The drink​

We serve four cask beers, one draught lager, 11 bag-in-box draught ciders, gins, wines and soft drinks. That’s all we sell because it’s a very small building.

Gin is the only spirit we do and we concentrate on supporting local independent businesses because we run two of our own.

The vast majority of our cask beers and over half our ciders come from producers within the Yorkshire region and not uncommon with other micropubs, a lot of the brewers we use are incredibly small.

It is quite often the brewer who delivers a beer. We buy on quality, not cost, and we don’t buy from anybody who is knowingly owned by someone else nor do we buy from any big brewery.

We concentrate on keep keeping it small and friendly, and we find the producers we use are incredibly passionate about what they do.

We never have the same beer twice ever, apart from Acorn Brewery’s Barnsley Bitter. It is a brilliant interpretation of a traditional Yorkshire bitter that is our only regular beer.

We’ve had nearly 800 different cask beers. The breweries we work with most regularly include Chin Chin Brewing in Wakefield and North Riding Brewery near Scarborough and I find the beers from those breweries are excellent. Yorkshire Dales Brewery is another favourite of ours. Last year, we used 40 different breweries in the pub.

Occasionally, we do get some beer from outside Yorkshire so try to spread the love around. We search around, we talk to customers about what they recommend too.

The food​

My wife is a great support for the pub and she makes sausage rolls and Parkin cake, which is a traditional Yorkshire cake for the pub. She comes across is very social with a lot of the customers.

Parkin is made with ginger and traditionally served around Bonfire Night, so we usually serve it for four or five months in the winter and it is definitely a lovely winter warmer and gives you a lovely glow from that ginger.

We also serve pie and peas. The pies come from the local butcher’s, which is literally backs on to the pub.

Again, we’re very strong on supporting local businesses and there’s two butcher’s in Bridlington. We buy all the stuff for the pub from one of them and use the other independent butcher’s for our bed and breakfast business.

The split is probably about 95% wet and 5% dry. And for the drinks, probably 80% is cask ale, cider is 15% and 5% will be kegged beer.

People do online searches on where to find craft beer or real ale and we’re the top-rated place in this area on Google and TripAdvisor so people find us that way and make a beeline for the pub.

The events​

We’ve tried events and they’re not particularly successful because people just come here for a really great beer.

We do an open mic, acoustic night month to month, where we have people from the local area playing but that’s about it.

People come for the beer and they aren’t fussed with events. We have tried like a few food themed nights in the past but it’s all about the beer and cider really.

The future​

The pub is very much landlocked with buildings all around so we couldn’t physically expand the size of it.

We would consider maybe having another site if the finances were right eventually but there’s currently no plans with that.

We’re happy with where we are at that moment but we’ll always look out for new opportunities and we’re probably more likely to think about new developments within the pub but we’re not doing at the moment.

We’ve just literally launched a loyalty scheme where you buy a pint and get a stamp and get a free pint but we’re happy where we are otherwise.