Golden Fleece

Queen Street, London EC4 "Ever since my first pub 13 years ago, I've always aspired to running a pub like this." So says Annie Power, who realised her dream one year ago when she became house manager of the Golden Fleece ­ a Greene King outlet within a stone's throw of St Paul's Cathedral. It is easy to see why ­ the pub has all the best attributes of a Victorian gin palace with a central bar area and all the trappings. Like virtually all City of London pubs, the Golden Fleece had been suffering from a downturn in trade caused by the uncertain economic climate and the volatility of the Stock Exchange taking its toll on confidence. However, last spring, the building's landlord decided to add a new lift lobby to service the floors above the pub, which meant sacrificing part of the ground floor bar area. This provided the ideal opportunity to reassess the layout of the pub and make improvements. The pub was closed for four weeks as Greene King spent £130,000 cutting and carving the exterior to rearrange the trading areas. A hot and cold food counter was moved to the downstairs bar to free up the ground floor. A new staircase was added, so too were new toilets, and a pool room was installed downstairs in what Annie now calls "the gentlemen's lounge". There is no external signage indicating the pub has a pool room. She explains: "We didn't want to attract unwelcome customers and we also wanted it to be a point of discovery when people go downstairs." So Annie had to conjure up a plan to let her more discerning customers know about the gentlemen's lounge. She collected business cards that had been entered for a prize draw for a bottle of Champagne and then used them to e-mail people and tell them about the pool room. Within a short time, she had enough people to form a corporate pool league with teams from banks and other businesses that had offices in the area. "I know it was sneaky, but how else was I going to do it," she says with an impish laugh. Another part of the plan to attract more customers, particularly female, was raising the floor so that passers-by could easily see into the newly-redecorated pub. All these measures appear to have worked, as Annie explains: "We are up 29% on a year ago, which isn't a bad outcome when the industry has declined by 12%." The revamp has also had the added benefit of attracting customers well into the night ­ a time when many City pubs are starting to empty. To maintain the momentum, Annie's multilingual, cosmopolitan staff members (she has French, Italian, Colombian, Spanish and Nigerian employees) have enthusiastically distributed flyers to entice foreign visitors to the Golden Fleece.