East Anglia: Driving a hard bargain
Pubs need no reminders of the impact of the credit crunch in terms of the increase in the number of consumers who think twice about parting with hard-earned cash for a pint.
One Norfolk pub hit the headlines earlier this month when its scheme to beat the downturn was featured in the national media. The Pigs, in Edgefield, offers locals the opportunity to barter produce for food and drink.
A sign outside the freehouse, which is close to the North Norfolk coast, reads: "If you grow, breed, shoot or steal anything that may look at home on our menu, then bring it in and let's do a deal."
Bartering goes back a long way, but has remained a part of the rural economy in many areas. Reviving the practice in Edgefield was the idea of manager and licensee Cloe Wasey (pictured), who runs the pub with head chef Tim Abbott. The Pigs has established a menu built around locally sourced, reasonably priced food. All meat is Norfolk-reared, and sourced from butchers and farmers to high welfare standards. Fish comes from the North Sea and is delivered daily, while game is from the Edgefield shoots. Norfolk farm shops provide fruit and vegetables.
Supplementing these supplies with produce sourced directly from locals seemed the next logical step. Some residents of the village have been trading fruit and vegetables for meals, while others have swapped freshly laid eggs and fish or game they've caught themselves, for a pint.
Cloe says: "We find the home-grown stuff is often much better than what we can get from suppliers. We've been doing it for almost two years now but the success of it has only just recently started to boom with the credit crunch setting in. People need to find different ways to go out and this helps."
In true bartering tradition, the pub drives a hard bargain. All produce, and especially fish and game, needs to be up to scratch. "We get produce at a good price, although we have high standards which the food has to meet," says Cloe. Locally-shot rabbit, pheasants and pigeons, fruit from local trees and potatoes from village gardens have all featured on the menu.
Current rates of exchange value a pint of lager at a kilo of potatoes, a kilo of fresh fruit, a dozen eggs or three mackerel. Below-par produce without a clear provenance is not accepted.
Some less obvious trades stretch Tim's culinary ingenuity a little more, with one customer successfully bartering eight pairs of pigs testicles recently.
"We are mostly offered goods that people have produced themselves, so it's much fresher and tastier than you'll get at the supermarket," Cloe says. "When we get the good stuff, and it gets on to the specials board, it's brilliant. Someone will say 'that rabbit tasted great' and we say 'here, meet the person who shot it'."
In September, the pub will take the bartering economy to the next step by hosting an allotment car boot sale in its car park. "Allotments are really popular around here," says Cloe. "It will be a chance for people to barter or sell their produce to each other."
