Gerry Price blog: pinch has now really hit

Gerry Price, leaseholder of the Inn at West End, Surrey says the pinch has really hit in the last two weeks.

Not such good things to report…

The stock market has had quite a rally since March and the writers in the financial pages are talking of green shoots of recovery, when they can tear themselves away from the MP's expenses story and quantitative easing, whatever that is.

Here in West End we aren't seeing any green shoots but that is mostly because we are only just feeling the pinch that everyone else has been feeling for some time. I have to admit that there have been moments when I have felt a touch smug because we have been doing so well, though I have felt lucky too.

Lucky because last year we cruised along very nicely, thank you and kept customers coming through the door and expenses under control.

Lucky because the smoking ban helped rather than hindered us as we are a food pub. Lucky because the marketing effort we put in seemed to have the desired effect and our profile locally remained high. Lucky because after New Year when I thought things would really crash they didn't.

However, the last couple of weeks have seen a dramatic change for the worse — 25% and 15% down on the same weeks last year and suddenly things aren't feeling so good.

Plan of action​

Fortunately I keep weekly P&L estimates and so know that the food margin has slipped, the wage margin is a bit too high and that we are currently ok for cash but it still makes for worrying times. It is the Monday to Friday trade that has dipped badly and what can be done about it?

Make sure we are still tickling those who send people to us from Bisley Shooting Ground, make sure we are properly looking after those who are coming to us and look for more of those who can still come and eat out mid-week.

One of the ways we get people is through our website www.the-inn.co.uk​, which we are revamping at the moment. The site gets a lot of traffic from guidebooks, from sites we advertise on and from the search engines.

We are looking at what people put into Google when they want somewhere that is into good food and wine in a pub atmosphere and whether we get high enough up on the list when they search.

We are aiming to get the menus that change every week up on the site, days before they are being used in the pub so that customers can see what is available before they come to us, and we are trying to get current pictures up on the site so it is worth our regular customers looking to see if they are their.

It is time consuming and expensive but this is no time for the feint hearted when it comes to promotions, that's for sure.

Despite the concerns we still have fun. We had a golf day last week at Woking Golf Club. Just 12 of us played but it was good fun and the winner had the decency to buy an Imperial of 1999 Chateau Beycheval for us all to enjoy. That is an eight bottle size bottle of Claret and it slipped down very well, my thanks to you Mr Brown.

The other event had me out of bed at 6.30 am to welcome the Classic Car Club for coffee and p-break on their way to Goodwood on Sunday morning. About 20 very nice cars parked outside The Inn and made a picture worth having, not least because the organiser kindly copied all invitees with a few quid, some 850 of them, our website and a recommendation of The Inn as a great place for good food just outside of London. It was publicity you couldn't buy so I duly charged them nothing for the event and am hoping it will reap some kind of reward in the long term.

Rent review saga​

The rent review saga continues, or rather doesn't! Having had a rather dismissive reply to my suggestion to the area manager that my rent could go down in the current climate, I felt it necessary to send him a Without Prejudice type letter to try and clarify how Enterprise say things are supposed to happen and move him along a bit.

Apart from an acknowledgement of the mail I sent him I still have not received anything that suggests they are approaching the review in other than their usual manner or a rent suggestion with reasoned logic in a clear and transparent form but I know that is a bit too much to hope for. There will be the usual brinkmanship, nudges and winks that I have come to know only too well. Such is life.

On the bright side, the hanging baskets are doing well, the wine tasting lunch on Saturday did well and the Black Sheep is going down a storm. Not all is bad, onward and upward.

Gerry Price​