London 2012 Olympics: Day 2 of pub landlady Janet Dooner's diary

Delivery issues​
We had a little hiccup with our delivery yesterday, it should have arrived between 8pm and 10pm but it didn’t come until 12.10am. It seems that someone who works at the depo must have put my delivery on the Olympic Route which means I get it between 12am and 5am, but it was agreed that I would be on the ‘city run’, and it has been coming like that, but last night it didn’t get here until after midnight.

I hope it is not that time again today - we don’t have any kitchen staff left at that time of night because nobody is coming into the pub for food. I wasn’t willing to pay for anybody to wait up and get the deliveries at that time. But I have spoken to my supplier, and they are going to make sure this doesn’t happen again, so fingers crossed.

Monday trade​
Trade definitely doubled compared to a normal Monday. It was pretty slow early in the day but from about 5pm it picked up and I was getting a lot of the support staff and volunteers in, as well as people who help the athletes, like coaches and physios. Whilst it is still interesting to get to meet the support staff from all over the world, I am just not getting the tourists in. I would have thought given how close I am to the entrance of the park, I would be getting them in, but it just isn’t happening.

My husband has been opening at 6am and stood outside with a cup of coffee this morning to let people know that we were open. The Central Line was down his morning so everyone was being let off at Leyton which meant we had a lot of people walking past. However, we did have a huge group of people who make the beds for the athletes and other staff in the park come into the pub last night. They make 17,120 beds per day and I asked one of them if they could make my nine beds!

Accommodation​
I am hosting employees from a sound company up until the middle of September and they will all be back for the closing ceremony – they have some time off at the moment until the athletics starts later in the week. I was charging the normal rate for accommodation up until the day the Olympics started then increased them for the period of the Olympics. I will bring them back down to normal for the period between the Olympics and Paralympics before increasing them slightly during the Paralympics.

I have started working with booking.com which had helped me fill the rooms at weekends before the Olympics, and will also help afterwards. People will come to see the Olympic Park and the location of the pub is ideal for people to commute into central London.

Atmosphere​
There is still a very good atmosphere around the place – we are putting the sports on and have people asking to watch specific sports which we try to show what we can. I felt bad for the gymnastics team last night after they were demoted from silver to bronze but it was still an amazing achievement, and I was very disappointed for [diver] Tom Daley.

Finally, we had a newspaper reporter in yesterday who spoke to me and took a few photos. It is all good publicity for the pub. We are still going to be here after the Games so it is great to be getting our name out there.