Trade Secrets - Smiles Better - The Trouble House, Tetbury, Gloucestershire

This month, Mark Taylor talks to Michael Bedford, chef/proprietor of Michelin starred gastro pub the Trouble House, in Tetbury, Gloucestershire

Bread

We've been making our own bread every morning for three years. It's simple and easy to make, and we use the local Shipton Mill flour, which is the best. We make one 5kg batch each day - 2.5kg white and 2.5kg brown - and more on Saturdays. We don't charge for bread and we serve it warm from the oven as soon as people arrive.

People always comment on the bread and they remember it when they come back. We bake it at 11.30am and if you walk into the pub about midday, all you can smell is bread baking. People arrive early just to smell it.

Informality

We have a very casual, easy, happy-go-lucky approach to food and that comes through in the staff. We employ staff because of their personality, not their skills and how many plates they can hold. If they don't smile a lot and they're not cheerful, we don't bother offering them any more shifts. When you have a business like this, you've got to have cheerful staff - you don't want an 18-year-old moping about checking their watch, waiting for the end of their shift. Recognition is also very important and I encourage the staff to recognise regular customers. They all have idiosyncratic ways and some people like things done in certain ways. I even encourage them to write on the order who the food's for, rather than just a table number. Half the time I won't have met the people, but I still like to know who's sitting in the pub

Furnishings

All of our furniture is rustic, affordable and not purpose built. We just looked around junk shops rather than antique shops. The tables and chapel chairs were all about £15 to £20 and they suit the pub. Our crockery and cutlery is all bog standard, cheap and stuff you can get from any catering catalogue. If you drop the plates on the floor, they'll bounce rather than break and therefore it works.

Napkins

We used to have just paper napkins, but after we got the Michelin star, people who hadn't been here before were asking us why we didn't have linen or cloth napkins. We decided that nobody likes starched white napkins and they would have looked odd here. We bought huge amounts of different material and got somebody to make our napkins, which we launder ourselves. They're all different colours, all different shapes and sizes, but they're soft and they work.

Local staff

We always use local staff from the area and it hasn't been difficult to get staff because somebody always knows somebody. We never advertise and we rarely lose staff. Scott, our barman, has been with us for three and a half years. We pay them slightly more than the going rate, and we're fair to them. We work a three-week rota where everybody gets one weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) off every three weeks. They also get one night off during the week each week. You have to treat staff well because you can be working with them 16 hours a day.

You've got to help young chefs, too, and make them feel wanted. If they do something well, you have to tell them that you appreciate it. When they do something bad, you have to tell them to put it in the bin and start again. It's the only way they'll get it right next time.

Cheeseboard

We have eight local cheeses on our cheeseboard, which is basically an old wine box turned on its side with a shelf,a plastic screen on the front and some ventilation holes. It's quite visual and people walk past it and tell their friends to come and have a look. From midday to after the lunch service, and from 7pm until after the evening service, the cheeseboard stays by the bar at room temperature. People really know their cheeses these days and it's a big thing to have cheeses at room temperature, rather than straight from the fridge.

Keeping a clean pub

Too many pubs look grubby when you walk in. I hate seeing plates, glasses or carpets that aren't clean. If you feel under a plate and it feels slightly pebble-dashed, it means they haven't cleaned them properly. You'll see Michelin inspectors doing that test. Most pubs haven't got a decent dishwasher, just a 16-year-old washing up - and they're the worst people to wash up! It's basic things, but you've got to have clean crockery, good food, good bread. The place may look higgledypiggledy, it may have crap paint and a smoking fire, but at the end of the day, if it's clean, the food is good and the staff are cheerful and friendly, I guarantee people will come back.

Promoting the pub

Word of mouth will work 10 times more than advertising, so we never advertise. We get more publicity through people recommending us in magazines and papers, which means a lot more. When you get a respectable local "somebody" saying in print that they eat at your pub, it's a good advert. You've got to trade for at least a year before you really know what you are, who you are and what kind of people are going to turn up at your door. Advertising isn't telling people what you do, it's selling, and you can't sell something you haven't got.

Local produce

We buy local produce, but only if it's good quality. Most of our venison, flour, bacon, pigs' trotters, hare and game birds are very local. It's not cheaper buying game from local shoots, but it's a selling point if people see named local produce on the menu. Dishes like jugged hare, for example, really work when it's the right season. You don't see jugged hare on any menu these days, but we sell a lot of it. It's one of those dishes that reminds older customers of dishes they used to have when they were younger.

Brewery

Wiltshire brewery Wadworth owns the pub and the land around it, and they get an annual rent from us. They also pay for the building and any repairs. They've been a very big help from a practical point of running and operating a pub and they also gave us some help with the licensing laws, whereas a lot of pub companies would leave you to it. To have a tenanted pub with a Michelin star is a very big thing for them, but they don't capitalise on it because it's not their business.

The chairman entertains here and he says to me he doesn't know how we do it and what's the secret. There isn't any secret, it's just hard work and determination to make it work. With a brewery, you don't have that pressure of thinking 'what if this broke and we don't have any money'. We wouldn't have been able to expand the way we have if we didn't have Wadworth to do the building work and the pub wouldn't be what it is now.