GBPA winner's hope for increased trade over festive period

The Morning Advertiser​ spoke to owner, Philip Cutter to gauge how trade has fared for the site since the awards and to hear about any upcoming future plans for the pub.

Previous trade success

Speaking on previous trading performance, Cutter said: “Last year’s figures were really good with the Rugby World Cup semi finals. We were reflecting on them in comparison to this year and unfortunately, we haven’t experienced the same results so far. Last year, we saw a lot of really good fixtures, at good times.”

“Trade has been ill so far but we have had a good couple of weeks… it has just been unusually quiet for us.” In contrast to recent decrease in trade figures, Cutter explained that throughout the initial period after the awards, the pub saw a significant boost.

He stated: “We had a lot of regular customers engaging with the pub after the awards, with loads of people coming in to congratulate us.” Attributing a large amount of this success to social media exposure, Cutter explained the social media circulation of the pub’s win also helped to bring students to the site, reaching and engaging with a younger target audience.

Emphasising the positive effects of being a well-established, well-known site, Cutter added: “we've been here for a long time and we've established ourselves as a really good venue, which helps us. The new influx of students from Norwich have also helped to drive our sales.” He stressed: “The interactions we’ve seen with social media have also been massive since our award win, and we've seen a lot more inquiries about the site.”

Cutter also detailed plans for the upcoming festive period. Outlining hopes for an increase in trade due to events such as the upcoming Tyson Fury v Oleksandr Usyk boxing match expected to be held on December 21. Also addressing other sporting events such as football matches, he continued: “We've got a lot of Norwich home games coming up as well, which should hopefully drive football engagement, but we've been so lucky over the years you know being in the city centre… we've always done really well over Christmas.”

Cutter explained that throughout the previous festive period, the site saw trade up 8% from the year before, he said: “Almost the most successful Christmas in the 37 years that I’ve been at the Gardeners Arms.”

Financial ramifications 

He explained the “difficult hospitality market” may also have an effect on any imminent trade for the site, however he hopes to “be even better than last year.” Touching on financial issues in the current climate, he added: “A lot of young people at the moment haven’t got a load of money. Because of this, we always make a conscious effort to reduce our prices as much as we can.” He continued: “With the Budget as well, they’re taking money off the price of a draught, but basically everything else has gone up.”

Cutter stressed, that the financial ramifications of the recent Budget announced in the House of Commons on Wednesday 30 October, were felt significant by the site. He stated: “I've looked at the figures and I think it’s probably cost us between £30,000 and £40,000 after [the] Budget.”

He further detailed the issues of potential future lack of funds for the site, and possible worries for the upcoming months: “We've invested quite heavily over this year. We spent probably about £65,000 on improvements to the pub this year alone.” The operator continued: “If we haven't got the money coming in to be able to invest that in the future… that's going to be ever so much more difficult to do going forward so.”

Touching on increased weekend trade, Cutter also indicated the need to turn people away on Saturdays due to the pub being “completely at capacity”, attributing weekend trade increase to Great British Pub Award success.

Further emphasising the effect social media has had on the site and boosting it's engagement, he stated: “Especially for situations like sporting events and things like that, sometimes all it takes is a bit of social media engagement from customers and then trade obviously increases.” He continued: "Christmas should pick up and I hope that is the case for us."