Cellars in Portsmouth: Playing to your strengths

Steve Pitt, Enterprise lessee of the Cellars, at Eastney, Portsmouth, tells Sonya Hook how he has used music to ride out the recession.

How I changed the Cellars​

Originally, in 1998, I was the relief manager at the Cellars at Eastney, but in 1999 I bought the lease and I became the licensee of what was a rundown former community pub.

It took seven or eight years to build it up, but over that period of time it became the best pub in the community — as voted for in the local area.

When I took over the pub it had been a gay-friendly venue with a gay licensee. Rather than music events it tended to have drag artists in.

I didn't want to make it a gay un-friendly pub, but when I took over, the original crowd disappeared

overnight and we had no trade at all at first! We did manage to keep the very local clientele, but the transient trade disappeared, so we had to build its reputation up from scratch from the start.

I did this via music and a lot of charity work and an awful lot of making ourselves accessible for events such as birthdays.

My music experience​

I worked at Whitbread when it was split into regional managed house divisions and I used to run events such as pool nights, quizzes, music and five-a-side competitions. I then did this regionally for Whitbread for quite a while.

My mother is in the theatre and I worked there too for a while, so I grew up with the entertainment business around me.

The rest you learn along the way. It's a trial and error process and you have to build things up over a period of time.

People tend to approach me to play here and it's spread by word of mouth. The music business is really a very small industry and as the pub has evolved it's gained a good reputation.

We've had some great names playing here, such as the Zombies, Alabama 3 (people were in tears — it really was that unusual for them to be here) and Chesney Hawkes.

How the music started​

Originally the pub's reputation as a music venue was driven by live music and mainly by local bands, but four or five years ago the demographic here changed. The older people that were the mainstay of the pub were replaced by first-time buyers who had big mortgages and didn't tend to go out as much. So I had to change the way we did things.

Consequently, I turned the pub into more of a touring music venue and now we hold live music events full-time.

It's not perfect as a music venue, as it's a bit of a squash, but it has a very unusual environment and it's this that seems to work well. There's something very special about it and people travel from miles around to come to a gig here.

We don't tend to open late — in fact we often close earlier than other bars around here because of the time events start. But we have got triple-glazed windows on the street side to ensure we don't make too much noise.

The council is very receptive to us and it recognises that we provide a vital service to the community because there is no arts venue here and we help to fill that niche. I am the chair of the local culture partnership board and we are in support of Destination Portsmouth.

Investing in the pub​

It was an evolutionary process as far as investment into the venue went. However, in 2006 a partnership investment between myself and Enterprise took place. It included a full PA system, toilets and a bar area. Before this we just brought in a mobile PA whenever we needed it. The combined investment totalled around £100,000.

In terms of the building itself it has always been about preservation rather than renovation. The venue had been done up as a gothic-themed pub and we didn't want to lose this atmosphere. We set about redecorating, but we aimed to keep the feel overall because that's what people so loved about the pub.

The business had been growing steadily but after the refurbishment year we managed to take £300,000 — fantastic for a small venue. The pub can take 120 people shoulder to shoulder, but it's not a huge place.

Recessionary problems​

We have struggled through the recession, but I have a good BDM on the ground and I also got an immediate reply from Ted Tuppen when I got in touch to let him know about the trouble I was having, so it has all helped me to keep going. They realise that they have certain businesses that are not like some of the others.

We have bookings that are six or nine months or even a year in advance, so it's possible to see what is set up for the future. Enterprise was happy to give me time to work through the profits and losses and they were prepared to accommodate us with some support. Without it we simply wouldn't have survived.

I do everything to do with booking the bands myself. I have one full-time member of staff and three part-time, plus one promoter. Two of the staff behind the bar are musicians. Independent promoters tend to arrange the space and they bring their own sound engineers, but I can call upon a sound engineer if I need one.

Until last April we had normal pub nights three or four days a week. Come the recession we concentrated on gigs and moved right away from free-entry nights for eight months.

In the last few weeks we have been able to move back to the pub side a little more, but at one point we had music nights up to seven nights a week, including local indie artists and big touring bands.

Nappy nights​

We don't have as many big touring shows as we used to now, and we are re-introducing some local band nights. We do some work with Business Link and creative arts centres because I feel it's important to work with youngsters to give them a more level-base working environment. We also run some under-18s nights (we call them nappy nights).

We have great relationships with all the local further education colleges and we run songwriter competitions — the last one had Chris Difford from Squeeze and Chesney Hawkes among the judges.

I work closely with James Harris at the Half Moon in Putney. We all support each other in this business. If we come across a good name we recommend them to other pubs, and this can be really cost-effective as we can work together to sign a band up with a string of dates. We are all on each others' mailing lists and we can pick up the phone to each other and have a good moan too.

For the past 10 years I have also run Comedy Club nights here on the first Tuesday of every month.

I have a Facebook group for the pub and events are advertised on our website and in the local paper.

Going forward​

I don't have any plans to change the venue itself in the future, because every bit of space we've got has been used for the pub. We are really very lucky to get household names playing in a tiny place like this — a place they wouldn't normally entertain. For the future I'll just keep working on doing the same, but better, and hoping that people start to get money in their pockets again.

We serve cask ale and it's been doing well. People know that you can come here and get a decent real ale in a glass at a music venue, rather than a warm lager.

I don't do food here, although I have done a barbecue in the summer. There's no room to even put a kitchen here. Enterprise has a pub that does good food near here and we support each other. People often go to eat there before they come here for a gig.

The Enterprise view​

"The Cellars at Eastney is an excellent, well established and well known specialist music and entertainment venue," says Enterprise local regional manager David Barber.

"As a licensed retailer of considerable experience, lessee Steve Pitt continues to demonstrate what it is possible to achieve given a well thought out and carefully-planned approach to marketing, operating and controlling a licensed business.

"The open and honest relationship between Steve and Enterprise Inns is key to allowing regular, detailed and meaningful reviews of business performance, which have enabled the provision of financial and commercial support to the pub.

"Enterprise Inns looks for