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Nigel Anstead tells Joe Lutrario how talking to customers, organising events and taking care of staff doubled sales and tripled net profits over two...

Nigel Anstead tells Joe Lutrario how talking to customers, organising events and taking care of staff doubled sales and tripled net profits over two years at the White Horse in Bedford

My background

My wife Sue and I ran a pub in our early twenties for a couple of years. Then we had a family and, in our opinion, babies and pubs don't mix, so we left the pub trade. We've both worked in catering and hospitality, mostly hotels and contract catering. Sue's also branched out into training, she's currently an NVQ assessor.

My business

I came into the pub as a manager in January 2005 but now my wife and I are tenants. We plan to take on the lease in the next year. When we first came in the pub had no identity, Charles Wells had spent £205,000 on a major re-furb but it wasn't really working.

We had gradually been building up the business as managers but it's really started to grow since we took it on as tenants - I can implement my ideas without having to consult an area manager.

Since we started at the pub we have doubled turnover to £12,000 and tripled our net profit.

My staff

The first question I ask myself at the interview is: "do they smile?" I will spend two or three minutes talking to someone and in that time I will decide whether or not they have the right personality. I'm not bothered about their experience or their training - sometimes that can be a bad thing because people can come in with bad habits and bad ideas. If they can smile, hold a conversation, make eye contact and are generally pleasant then I'll offer them a trial. You can teach them how to pull a pint but you can't teach them how to smile. We never take our staff for granted - when I'm not there I want them to be "me".

My training

Sue's very keen on the training; we send them on basic food hygiene and cellar management courses. We have now created an assistant manager out of a strong bar person so we can go on holiday and not worry about the business. As a professional trainer Sue does a lot of the training, but, when necessary, we send our staff on external courses.

My events

We think outside the box. We like to do things differently. We do regular live music nights, sometimes with a meal theme. We always celebrate things like St George's Day, Burns Night, even St Andrew's Day. We have a quiz night two nights a week that can attract up to 90 people through the door.

We try to create an atmosphere that brings people together and then increase trade on the back of that.

We recently held a local beer and food festival. The atmosphere was fabulous - it was like an old-fashioned village fair. We had a barbecue on the Sunday and a hog roast on the Monday. It had a lovely community feel to it and one customer told me that half of his street was there, which made me very happy.

We bought a marquee for £1,000 and in four days we took £16,000. On the Sunday and Monday we took £10,000, which is just amazing - there were hundreds of people there.

My food

It's not rocket science: we are very limited on our facilities because the kitchen is very small. So at lunchtimes customers can come in and have jacket potatoes, paninis and simple

dishes like scampi and chips, burgers - that sort of thing. Pretty much snack food for people in a hurry, and it's very good value, between £4 and £8 for a main meal.

On a normal weekday lunchtime we'll probably do 30 to 40 covers and pretty much the same in the evening but on Friday and Saturday nights we could do up to 90 covers.

On Mother's Day we served 168 roast lunches between 12noon and 6pm - obviously on a limited menu. We wash up by hand because there's no room for a dishwasher in the kitchen!

My beer

The beer is very important to me. I'm a keen real-ale drinker myself. I know what it's supposed to taste like. If I'm changing a barrel, I'll always taste it before the customer. We probably turn over about 10 firkins a week of real ale. We're Cask Marque accredited and we're in The Good Beer Guide. We also won the Beautiful Beer Award this year.

We have two Wells & Young's beers all the time, usually Bombardier and Eagle IPA, plus a guest beer. Draught beer accounts for half of all wet turnover and wine sales make up about 20%.

My wine

Sales are up 50%. We now sell 150 bottles a week. We created a food menu that incorporated a wine list and immediately saw a huge increase in wine sales because you pick up the menu and there's the wine list shouting at you.

My marketing

We tell people what we are doing. Every menu has a copy of our monthly activity sheet on the back. Copies for customers to take away are available on the bar and I walk around handing them out. We create flyers for special events and hand them out by the bucket load. We get the local newspaper boys to put them through peoples' letter boxes. We are moving away from paying for other advertising - it's expensive and difficult to measure any success. But we do get support for our events from local radio and positive coverage in the local press. Our best form of advertising is word of mouth. If people have a good time they tell their friends.

My top three tips

1. Get good staff and look after them.

2. Do your absolute best to keep the customer happy.

3. Put on regular events that people want to attend.

My Pub

Tenure: Tenancy, two years remaining

Rent: £42,000

Turnover in 2005: £5,000-£6,000 a week

Current turnover: £12,000 a week

Wet:dry split: 75:25

GP food: 62%

GP beer: 48%