Business Profile: The Bull, Great Totham, Essex

18-Jan-2012 - Last updated on 18-Jan-2012 at 17:09 GMT

David Milne, owner of the Bull at Great Totham, near Maldon, Essex, talks Champagne dinners, learning from pricing mistakes and spirit pourers with Matt Moggridge.

How I got here

I owned an office consumables distribution business for 20 years. We shipped all over the country and the world. I sold it, set up a smaller but similar business and then sold that and spent a year playing golf and going on family holidays. I was looking for an opportunity and stumbled across the Bull.

Punch was selling it off and I decided to develop it as a destination venue. I visited a catering exhibition, took advice from a professional chef and opened for business in August 2010.

I have a general manager and a chef and employ 20 people, 12 full-time. My role is marketing and finance and I’m a bit of a face in the pub. I’m also on hand to discuss weddings and functions with customers.

Achieving business growth

We got it wrong when we opened. It was purely a food pub and we quickly realised that people wanted more, so we changed the menus and the pricing and introduced live entertainment.

There are three elements to the business: the Willow Room, which handles big functions, like weddings, and seats 80 people. It has a separate bar and toilets and is air-conditioned. The Gastro seats 50 and is busy mid-week and there is a snug bar for locals offering Sky Sports.

The food never changed, it was the offering. We talked to the customers, asked them what they thought, issued comment cards and discovered that they wanted traditional dishes.

We had to remember that we were in a village environment and needed a wider-ranging menu that took into consideration the ‘grey pound’ and those who wanted steam puddings, fish & chips and steak & kidney puddings. We also offer more sophisticated dishes, such as seared scallops with wilted spinach and truffled mash.

Best piece of advice given

My dad used to say there were two things on the side of your head and they’re more important than your mouth. It’s all about listening to your customers and engaging your brain before opening your mouth.

Standing out

Ours is a quality venue manned by quality staff — including head chef Mark Blake — serving freshly-prepared locally sourced food. If you want to take a client out, bring them here; if you’re taking mum out for Sunday roast, come here. We served 500 covers over the course of three sittings last Mothers’ Day.

ON THE MENU

Menu philosophy

Variation is crucial. We’ve got to deliver to all sexes, all age and wage groups, people on diets, vegetarians; it’s all about variation, but above all it’s about quality and freshness and achieving the wow factor. All our food is freshly prepared and locally sourced.

We offer eight starters and main courses and six desserts, and our bar menu offers 12 items including a sandwich of locally-reared hot salt beef with home-made piccalilli and a warm winter ploughman’s for two including a haggis Scotch egg, pork belly fritters, pickles and apple jelly.

Best-selling dishes

Starters: Chicken and duck liver pâté with Melba toast (£5.95); mussels in garlic sauce served with home-made bread, which is baked daily (£4.95).

Mains: Venison (up to £16) and duck (up to £12) both cooked in many different ways; haddock and chips with salad or mushy peas (£11.95); venison burger with triple-cooked chips and salad (£9.95).

Desserts: Home-made sticky toffee pudding with home-made vanilla ice cream and toffee sauce (£5.95).

Best food event

We hold annual Champagne gourmet evenings where we offer a seven-course meal and six or seven different glasses of Champagne or wine with every course.

Numbers are limited to 45 because of the complex menu, but a certain type of clientele will pay £80 for the evening. Laurent Perrier’s sales director gives a 90-second speech as to why he picks different Champagnes for certain dishes.

We send him a menu and he pairs wines with the food. Quiz nights are also popular. We run them on the first Tuesday of every month and charge £10. They can attract up to 80 people.

IN THE KNOW

Biggest mistake

The pricing was wrong at the beginning. Assumptions were made, but they were wrong. I genuinely thought it was what they wanted, but customers also want fish and chip supper, they don’t want top-end stuff all the time.

Service secrets

My personal view is that staff need to be trained to a level where they know what’s in the food and have confidence to recommend dishes, but each server, waiter and waitress’s own personality needs to come to the fore.

Successful PR

Repeat customers — you can’t do better than that. If people come back to you and say that things were good, you know you’re doing something right. We’re in the Michelin Red Guide, which is excellent, and we have two AA rosettes. We’re also in the Michelin Eating Out in Pubs Guide 2012, making us one of 86 new entries for this year.

Business philosophy

To deliver more than is expected.

Staff motivation

The best thing you can do is tell them when your people have done a great job and recognise their hard work. Thank them for their efforts, put your arm around them — if you genuinely mean it, they will know and will appreciate it.

Bar talk

We offer up to three cask ales, including products from local microbrewers, and also have a direct account with Heineken UK, which means that we can offer Foster’s, Kronenbourg and Strongbow. Where spirits are concerned, the house ‘pours’ are Gordon’s and Smirnoff.

But we don’t use optics, only pourers, as it looks and tastes much better doing things in that way. We have a serious wine collection here at the Bull and utilise Enotria and local suppliers Cellar 12 and Grape Passions.

Four best ideas

Our cabaret nights in the Willow Room are absolutely fantastic as they involve a four-course meal and top-end entertainment. We offer soul nights and tribute acts, including Elvis and George Michael, and customers pay £40 per head. We introduced them last year and people think they’re great. They come from 20 miles or so away and always book again. We have a full events programme organised for January to July 2012.

Boutique accommodation: we introduced four bedrooms last February and it’s going really well both at weekends and mid-week. We charge £75 per night with breakfast, and compete with a number of local budget-hotel chains. People often stay over after a cabaret night as it saves getting a taxi.

We sponsor our local football and cricket teams and they all come in here and hold their parties. We also support local charities and organise an annual charity cricket day for the Starlight Children’s Foundation.