Focus East Anglia: Pub food profile
Clearly, there are some areas where it's easier to generate enthusiasm about locally sourced food that others. While East Anglia as a whole has some great produce, Bedford is not necessarily the first name that springs to mind when promoting the region's specialities.
However, balanced against its slightly awkward location on the cusp of where the Home Counties meets East Anglia, Bedford has one key strength - the presence of brewer Wells & Young's in the town. So, when licensees Nigel and Sue Anstead, licensees of the White Horse in Bedford, decided to celebrate local specialities over the May Bank Holiday this year, it was perhaps inevitable that they started with beer.
Alongside Wells & Young's brands such as Bombardier and Waggledance, they also included brews from two other Bedfordshire producers, the Potton Brewery and Banks & Taylor.
The White Horse is run on a lease with pub operator Charles Wells.
"We were offering around 22 beers over the weekend, which is pretty ambitious," says Nigel. "But we then thought that, with the dads sorted out with the beer, maybe we should try to offer something for the mums and even the kids as well."
So, working with a local group which promotes Bedfordshire produce, the White Horse's Bank Holiday beer festival was expanded to include a food festival.
"I invested a thousand quid in a 40ft marquee, and we were off," recalls Nigel. A range of producers set up stalls selling a wide range of produce - cheese, meat, jams - as well as handicrafts. To turn it into a real theatre of food, on the Saturday a local farmer cooked home-made burgers and sausages for visitors, while on the Sunday another farmer offered a full hog roast.
"It was right at the start of the summer, before the weather turned nasty, so we just about got away with it," says Nigel. "Inevitably, the men tended to stay with the beer while the rest of the family went outside, but it did attract plenty of new customers. One of my regulars came along for the beer festival and said to me that half his street was in the pub."
The food and drink festival will run again next year. "I think it has to become an annual event," says Nigel.
The popularity of the White Horse as a community pub comes after a period of flux for the business. In 2005, when Nigel and Sue were appointed managers, Charles Wells had spent a considerable sum turning the pub into an upmarket burger bar. However, the idea failed to capture the imagination of Bedford's burger gourmets.
For Nigel and Sue, the pub represented a career change, and while they were new to the trade, they had clear ideas about what would work. The shift back to a community feel was accelerated after Charles Wells exited managed pub operations last year and gave them the opportunity to become tenants at the White Horse. One year on, the tenancy has just become a 15-year lease, reflecting the Anstead's commitment to the business.
The programme of events includes popular twice-weekly quiz nights, and an open mic night on Mondays which sees local musicians and singers perform. Food is simple, classic, pub grub. "We haven't got a big kitchen, so we have a relatively simple menu with dishes such as scampi and chips, steaks and panini," says Nigel. "We don't believe in promising anything we can't deliver."
With a crematorium nearby, funeral receptions have also become something of a speciality for the White Horse. "They keep the pub busy during the day, when we might otherwise be quiet, and like the quiz and open mic nights, they encourage new people into the pub, some of whom become regulars," explains Nigel.
Last year, Nigel and Sue were named winners of the Business Personality of the Year category at the Bedford and Luton Business Excellence Awards, recognising the significant contribution they have made in the business community and their immediate neighbourhood. In May this year, the White Horse won the Charles Wells Pub of the Year title in the company's own Eagle Stars Awards.
"It is hard work running a pub," says Nigel, "but is was also pretty clear to us what we needed to do to be successful. It's about making the pub part of the community."
