£1 meals still going strong

A year on from the launch of its £1 credit crunch meal deal the first pub to launch the offer is still serving 400 deal meals a day.

Marston¹s leasehold the Four Crosses, in Hatherton, Staffordshire, is attracting an average 2,800 covers a week for its £1 and £2.50 meal offers.

The £1 menu offers a choice of a dozen starters, mains and desserts for £1 each.

Pound mains include chicken burger, chips and salad; cheese onion and potato pie; ham, egg and chips and sausage, chips and beans. The best-selling £1 dishes are chicken burger and chicken nuggets and chips. Following the offers launch in May 2008 at its peak the pub was serving an average 600 of the £1 meals a week.

A £2.50 menu of another dozen dishes was added eight months ago to add a new dimension to the offer for customers. Dishes include jumbo fish and chips, all day breakfast, house salad and steak and ale pie, Around half of the 400 daily covers are from the £2.50 menu and half from the £1 offer.

The pub¹s offer has been featured in media including in the Daily Mail and Sky News. Before the offer was launched the pub served around 15 lunches a day. The pub can hold 150 covers in one sitting and licensee Tony Rabbitts has added a 40-seater marquee to accommodate more deal customers.

Pub manager Ben Rabbitts said that 90 per cent of customers buy drinks to go with their £1 meals with the average spend per head around £3.50 to £4. A small minority of customers order tap water to go with their £1 meals.

He said: "If it wasn¹t for running the £1 menu we wouldn¹t be here. it has saved us. It has beeen great for business and got us lots of national publicity. We decided eighteen months ago we had to do something to bring in trade or we would close."