Now -more than ever - our great British pubs need to get people through their doors. The British Beer and Pub Association reports that more than 2,000 pubs have closed since the Chancellor increased beer tax in the 2008 Budget, resulting in 20,000 job losses over the last year. Nationally, pubs are closing at the rate of 36 a week.

With a little help from Matt Edwards, from the Yanwath Gate Inn near Penrith, and Richard English, from the Cavendish Arms, Cartmel, AWOL’s James Brown looks at some keys to survival.

Feed your customers
The Guardian reports that The All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group (sounds like a fun bunch to us!) has called for a cut in the tax on draught beer so that pubs can compete with the supermarkets.

Richard English says:  ‘You could sit at my bar and do a survey, and I can guarantee that by 11 o’clock in the evening fewer than 10 people would come in just for drinks. The smoking ban, the breathalyser, and the rising price of alcohol – people aren’t coming out just to drink any more.’

‘But if the food is good, people will still come out to eat. Having a meal at £50 between three or four of you won’t stop you having a pint of beer because you’re not going out to drink, you are going out for an experience.’

Give them food they can’t cook at home
The pubs that are going to do well are the restaurant pubs – serving food that people want to go out for, cooked by chefs who know what they are doing, because they do it every day of the week. You’ve invested in commercial grills and deep fryers – now’s the time to use them!

Offer them value for money
‘Fillet steak is very expensive’, says Matt Edwards, ‘so we have taken it off the main menu. But we put it on the specials board at weekends. Even at £26 pounds it just goes, straight away. So our response to the credit crunch is to take expensive things off the main menu, but put them on the specials board because people are still buying them.’

Richard agrees: ‘People are being very careful about what they spend, but I suspect that it is possibly not the money they are spending but the worth they are looking for. If you charge a party £50 and it’s worth £50 they will go away happy, but if you charge them £30 and it’s only worth £20 they will not be happy. They are out for the best value they can get for their pound.’

Be proud of your provenance
Use your good relationship with suppliers to source the best produce – especially shellfish and local meats like Herdwick mutton and Galloway beef – that your customers can’t get in the supermarket. 

Take them back in time
‘People are going for traditional dishes,’ says Matt. Popular dishes at the Gate include braised pork belly with black pudding and marinated Herdwick mutton loin (from Farmer Sharp’s) with haggis. ‘We bring skill to these dishes,’ he says. ‘That’s the difference we make.’

‘We cannot make enough toad-in-the-holes and Lancashire hotpot’, says Richard.  It’s not even their mum’s food they are after, but their grandma’s. Either they don’t know how, or they are too lazy to make it.

'Another staple at the Cavendish Arms is steak and ale pie made in a huge tin and cut into 24 pieces. The beef comes from either Higginsons or Burrows. We are even putting rice pudding on the Spring menu.'

Meet their needs
If your customer spots something they fancy on the lunch menu, but it’s evening service, what do you do?

‘We have changed our business to meet customer needs,’ says Richard - for example, if we do a lunchtime menu and it includes a traditional hotpot or a toad in the hole, we’ll still serve it in the evening if that’s what people want.’

Make sure your vegetarian and children’s menus are as fine as your main menu. The Gate’s children’s menu includes ‘homemade fresh fishcake’, ‘locally reared pork sausage ‘n mash and ‘pure bred Cumbrian Galloway beefburger’, while vegetarians always have a choice of two imaginative dishes.

Be flexible
Will the poor exchange of pound and euro mean that more people come to the Lake District for their holidays in the UK? Don’t bank on it - European tour operators have responded to the crisis by giving holidays away. You need to be flexible. 

‘If a lot of people do turn up and we need additional support in our kitchen,’ says Matt, ‘it’s good to know that AWOL are on the other end of the phone. They have helped us out at very short notice in the past, so over 4-5 years they have proved themselves very useful to us.’

With an AWOL relief chef, you can open longer hours without breaking the bank. We show you how.

Don’t stop marketing!
‘When you have to tighten your budget,’ says Richard, ‘the first things to go are usually marketing and staff training. We’ve done the exact opposite! If you got the guts right now to go out and make your name known, you’ve a better chance of staying there because no one else is. If everyone stops doing that because it’s costing money, I’ll end up with the lion’s share.’

The Cavendish sponsors junior teams in Cartmel Cricket Club,  caters for village hall events such as Burns Night suppers, and runs a monthly quiz. 

Other ways in which landlords have boosted their pub’s reputations include giving demos to Rotary and WI, opening up for MP or councillors’ surgeries, delivering meals on wheels and staging charity quizzes.

So all is not lost. Your pub doesn’t have to close, and AWOL can help you keep it open.
Call us now on 015395 35777 to find out how.