Success is a Gray area

Phil Mellows meets Sue Gray, The Publican's Businesswoman of the Year, millionaire at 30, and currently in charge of yet another profitable pub

Sue Gray can afford to take it easy these days. She has found her rural retreat with the squishy cushions and has the time to sit and chat with the locals. Trade, left to its own devices, would tick along nicely and the pub could sink quietly into the gentle pace of village life.

But that wouldn't be Sue Gray, would it?

The licensee of the Fox & Goose at Armscote, is still the Sue Gray who held tightly onto the reins of the mad beast of a pub that made her name, and made her a millionaire before she was 30 - Bar Humbug. Life is more relaxed at the Fox & Goose. How could it not be? But Sue is in charge and hot for profits, her big hair flaming behind her.

"Two years ago, when I sold Bar Humbug, I felt as though I needed a rest," she said. "Five years was enough. It was, when you think about it, 10 years in normal terms as I was working an 80-hour week. I thought I would stay in catering, maybe write a book. But the pub life is addictive."

So addictive that when Sue left Bar Humbug and Stratford-upon-Avon for the Warwickshire countryside she couldn't help but buy the pub that happened to be over the road from her new house.

"It was a typical village pub with a floral carpet and scampi and chips run by nice people who actually wanted to get out. I approached them, made an offer and they bit my hand off."

Sue transformed the Fox & Goose into "the sort of place that I would like to stumble across in the middle of nowhere". That is, a style of modern rustic plumped up with squishy cushions and jazzed up with dashes of zany eccentricities - plus "fantastic food" of course. There are also four letting rooms, a new challenge for Sue and, with each themed on a Cluedo suspect, they are a theatrical departure from the usual bed and breakfast boxes you find on the road.

Within a fortnight of reopening, the formerly ordinary village pub had taken £22,000 and less than a year later Sue scooped the title of Businesswoman of the Year at the 2001 Publican Awards (see picture, left)​.

Still, it seems a long way from the heady days and nights at Bar Humbug, which was, in fact, Sue's second venture. She started out running a restaurant in Stratford called No 6 - "but there was no bar, and I wanted a bar", and up came the chance to buy the "huge great ugly pub" that was to become Bar Humbug.

"It was twice the size I needed and I could only just about afford it," she said. "I only really wanted the bar as a holding area for the restaurant and this place could take up to 300 people."

The little cash that Sue had left meant that the refurbishment was "like a DIY project". Eight weeks later, Bar Humbug repoened, "on a Monday night, to give us a chance to build up for the first weekend".

"We took £6,000 that night. I was so naïve. We didn't have enough glasses, enough staff or enough loose change. I had to go to the local takeaway to get some pound coins.

"Bar Humbug got a reputation for the buzz. The rumour spread and the people never stopped coming."

The Fox & Goose, too, has a kind of buzz about it. Not the loud kind, but reassuring, telling you that, yes, everyone is having a good time, you have come to the right place.

This "atmosphere", as it is loosely called in the pub trade, starts with those people actually working in the pub, Sue believes, and at the Fox & Goose she has relied heavily on the same people who made Bar Humbug buzz.

"Everyone who works here works as if they own the business," she said. "It's not like the Waltons, exactly, but it makes for a great atmosphere. I have 15 staff here and, I know it sounds cheesy, but they are all nice people.

"I try to lead by example, I always look on the positive side of things. I give people the chance to have a great time while they are working here, and if they aren't having a great time, they can go somewhere else."

The pub's two managers, Michelle and Christian, have a financial involvement in the business and Sue recently incentivised the head chef with a weekend with Rick Stein, the television cook with an unhealthy passion for fish. "That was better than giving him money," she said.

"We like to have fun. We have nights out, whip rounds for birthdays and we socialise a lot together. I treat staff the way I would want to be treated. They have all got talent and I wouldn't want to lose any of them."

Only two people have left the Fox & Goose since it reopened, and they were both students. And according to Sue there has been "no theft and no sickness - and there are no drama queens in the kitchen. They are all definitely in the mould," she laughed, alluding to her own enthusiastic commitment to the job.

It is an enthusiasm she feels she has a duty to transmit to others, beyond her own staff. She has lectured on catering at Stafford College and brought the students back to demonstrate to them what it's really like to work in a successful pub.

"I showed them around and tried to inspire them. This is such a great business to work in and more of us should get out and talk to people to try and get some decent new talent into the industry.

"Lots of people work in pubs at some point but few of them get the chance to work with people who are truly inspirational - I was lucky."

Sue's inspiration was Roy Ellis, currently managing director of Inventive Leisure, who she met early in her career, at the White Hart Hotel in Beaconsfield.

Inspired staff go on to inspire customers. "Customer service is the big thing," said Sue. "I think we can make people feel special in a way that corporate-owned places can't."

Marketing is another area of the business that Sue is keen on. "You can spend very little energy and get a lot back," she said. Among the initiatives, Sue has been developing a relationship with the receptionists at local hotels - Shakespeare's birthplace is obviously a big tourist area - and encouraging them to recommend the Fox & Goose to their guests.

It is a typically cost-effective ploy. While to the customer the pub provides a relaxed, "anything goes" experience, Sue's really rare quality lies in being able to combine her energy and operational flair with strict financial controls - diverse skills that in most successful pubs need two people.

The menu, for instance, despite changing daily is carefully structured and designed to bring in 65 per cent gross profit every time. You might imagine that putting on different dishes every time costs more, but they are in fact based on what produce happens to be cheap in the market that morning.

"A daily menu gives us flexibility and we can take advantage of the good offers - that's a theory we all work by," said Sue. "I can afford to be laid-back about things. I don't have to watch every penny - but you have to, don't you?"

The steely money-woman that lies beneath Sue's generous sociability was revealed when a debate sprung up at the Fox & Goose about whether there was room in the dining area for an extra table for two.

"You have to weigh it up. You don't want customers to be too cramped. But then I thought, that table means taking an extra £6,400 a year, so we went ahead and squeezed it in."

On the other hand, if she was really only interested in the cash, she would have stayed at Bar Humbug, maybe launched a chain of them. Quality of life won out, however.

"Bar Humbug was a fantastic money-machine," Sue concluded, leaning right back into her squishy cushions. "But finally I feel I'm in my perfect position."