Dynamic duo's trio

Since giving up their London jobs and heading west to Bath in 2004, Charlie and Amanda Digney have opened

three pubs and had two children along the way. David Hancock reports

The Digneys spotted the huge potential in a run-down Georgian pub with a bad reputation in a residential area of the city and set about transforming the King William into the sort of pub they liked drinking in. What's more, they decided to really focus on food - gutsy, no-nonsense British cooking using local, seasonal, free-range and organic produce - as Charlie had worked at top London gastropub the Anchor & Hope in Waterloo.

Four years on, they have another great food pub in Bath (the Garricks Head), while in October they moved to the Somerset countryside to open the Oakhill Inn, near Radstock.

The King William - a flying start

No one believed we would get the finance to buy the King William. It took eight months to set up, sort a business plan and approach investors (all said no!), and we were lucky to get it because it was a freehold at a bargain price.

Most operators probably thought it was too small to make any money. It really is small, for sure, and it will never make us rich, but it worked for us and very quickly.

We were doing something very different in Bath, cooking great British dishes from local produce, and we soon became known to the guides and critics who seek out new, interesting places where the food is good. Again, we were lucky, as it generally takes much longer to become established with the general dining public. That's certainly the case in Bath.

Although we had a flying start, business at the King William has evolved steadily and turnover is still growing - not bad for a tiny place with only 24 covers.

What was the game plan?

We expected to be completely hands-on at the King William, with Amanda running the bar and me in the kitchen, and we certainly didn't plan on having three pubs. We sort of ran out of space very quickly, then once we opened the upstairs dining room and things started to work well for us, we started to consider another pub.

The catalyst was being invited to submit a proposal to take on the lease of the Garricks Head, located beside and owned by the Theatre Royal in Bath. We weren't really ready to take on another pub only 18 months after setting up

the King William, even though it was doing well. We still had plenty of work to do there, but we couldn't resist going for it.

It was an emotional experience developing the business plan and sitting before the board of directors was daunting. We thought we had blown it; for one thing, as we didn't have enough experience. To our surprise we got it because they liked the King William and what we had achieved there. Another point in our favour was the fact the Garricks Head had been closed for a year and the directors wanted an operator they knew, respected and could trust.

Initially we tried to recreate the King William and that was a silly thing to do. Rather than local residents, the clientele is more transitional, in the form of theatre-goers and people calling by for coffee and light meals at all times of day. Pre- and post-theatre suppers are very popular and have been the mainstay of its success.

Why a third pub so soon?

Having sorted the King William and got the Garricks Head up and running in the way we wanted, we started to take an interest in

brewing and looked for a country pub with space to set up a brewery. To be honest, it would have been better if the Oakhill Inn came up a year later, but driving down the street we saw the old Oakhill Brewery and that was it — we bought the pub in October 2007.

Buying the Oakhill was easy four years on from the King William. Our knowledge of the business was greater, writing a business plan took less time, and investors were willing to lend us money because of the success of the King William.

Amanda was pessimistic about taking on the Oakhill, what with the locals deserting the pub, and thought it would be the straw that broke the camel's back. She reckoned we should be taking it easier, keeping staffing down etc.

We have been trading on our initial projections and, right from the start, were doing 40 covers on Friday and Saturday evenings. The location is also good — there's so much potential at the Oakhill.

Food is a touch simpler than in the Bath pubs, the menus more approachable with nothing too fancy. So we offer good traditional pub food prepared from fresh local produce.

New business approach

When we entered the pub business, I don't think money was the driving force. But now we have children, we want financial stability for them. Also, with three pubs to operate, rather than focusing on the product, my job now is looking at margins and profitability.

That's difficult for us, as we are essentially hands-on people, passionate about getting things right and looking at every detail. What we do and how we approach running a pub is not exactly geared to running three sites - we are not exactly mainstream. Even though we have good managers at each pub, we find it difficult not to be hands-on in every facet.

Having stretched ourselves so much financially with the Garricks Head and then taking on the Oakhill, we needed to take more control of the business, identifying areas of over-spending and cutting back on certain expenditures without compromising our attention to the product, such as checking the integrity of the produce we use. For example, I now do all the accounting for the pubs and this alone saves us around £9,000 a year.

We are also changing the infrastructure of the kitchens and I am delegating all the cooking and menu development, so I can concentrate on the business side of running all three pubs and improving the profitability of the company.

Local food - key to success

The menus may be different in each pub, but all the produce we have bought since day one has been of a high quality. If the ingredients are

first-class, you don't have to mess around with them. Apart from the fish, which comes from St Mawes, everything is sourced local to Bath and is free-range or organic. We use a local butcher and market gardener and buy meat direct from local farms.

The link between the pubs is integrity; we will never compromise on the food we offer and, for example, buy battery eggs because they are cheaper. Our food ethos has been key to the success of the pubs.

Future plans

Everything is currently being ploughed back into the business. Once we have consolidated what we have — developing the kitchen at the King William, investing more into the structure of the Garricks Head, and finishing the refurbishment at the Oakhill — we plan to add bedrooms at the Oakhill and resurrect the old Oakhill Brewery. It will round things off nicely — the perfect model of a small pub company with a micro-brewery supplying its own beers and having control over its own product. Financially, it also makes sense.

Time is the problem at the moment. We are a young company, we have expanded quickly and there are other priorities we have to address with the pubs before I can step back and swan off to brew beer every day.

The benefits of Heinzsight

Business Inn-sights is sponsored by Heinzsight, the online resource tool from Heinz Foodservice to help caterers understand more about their customers and grow their businesses more profitably.

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