Licensee of the Year: Brewers reveal the secrets of success
After the announcement, they revealed their secrets to success are providing a large beer offer, giving staff incentives and looking after the regulars.
The Brewers offer 24 lines into the pub with nine of them being craft ales which make up more than a quarter of the drinks offer.
Rob said: “Our selection of beers is one of our USPs along with the diversity of what we sell.”
Transformation
In the past two years, the married couple have transformed the pub by knocking through to the public bar in order to make it larger and have spent £220,000 to refurbish existing bedrooms.
Rob said: “The public bar is a locals bar so, during the refurb, we kept to this rather than make it too modern.”
The couple also bought a nearby guesthouse and spent £120,000 to renovate it which has boosted food and beverage revenue.
Since September last year, the Rashleigh Arms has gone from a team of 32 to 50 yet Rob admits one of the biggest challenges is recruitment. However, he is seeing a change.
He said: “Most of the younger people in the industry now want to take working in the industry as a career option rather than a stop gap.”
Staff
The pub has a number of schemes in place to help provide an incentive to reduce staff turnover such as wage increase when employees complete CPL training and when trade is rising, they are rewarded for the success of the business through their wages.
After getting into the industry on leaving school, Rob explained that he had been with St Austell, which owns pub, for the past 10 years and said: “The freedom you get with them is really flexible and that is what attracted me to the company in the first place.
“You are running a unique pub in a great place but you can make decisions such as the menu is ours and we work very closely with our BDM.”
The couple were crowned at the BII Summer Event last week and went through a rigorous judging process that Rob described as “the most intense thing we have ever done”. Once nominated, they were then subject to mystery visits, the judges visiting the pub and a panel judging process.
