We opened The Druid Inn, or perhaps I should say re-opened The Druid Inn, a year ago today on Monday 18th March at lunch time. It’s been a really good first year, the pub looks good, has been well received and has made a profit and we’ve comfortably settled in with Gorsedd and its lovely people. Of course this is not a first, we are not the first people to run this pub which has been here for many centuries and we are not the first to make a success of it. In fact we still have previous landlords as customers, I’m thinking of June Doherty and her daughter Katie, who have become regulars. Indeed, as far as I can ascertain the only people who have let the pub slide away from popularity was Thwaites who bought it in 2006 (from the Craigs) and sold it to us in 2023. This strikes me as odd, you’d think they above all would be good at making it popular.
Under our ownership (my wife and I) the pub has been in the control of Ray (Faulder-Jones) and Tom (Price), the Landlord and his Deputy respectively and they are the ones who have really made it work. That’s no mean feat as it’s hard running a pub nowadays, the business world is full of rules and regulations, wages and energy are at an all-time high, competition is fierce and customers are understandably being careful with their money. In today’s economic climate small business has to fight to be successful.
Whenever we open a new pub it’s a learning curve for us all. A new area, new customers, new building, new authorities, a new vibe. It’s also been a mostly new tack for Ray (although he worked in a previous carnation of the Druid as a hired hand) who was a civil servant prior to running the Druid. He was personal assistant to the local MP, and that world is completely different to both small business and hospitality. Yes, both roles are dealing with the public and both roles need natural diplomacy and a sharpness of mind but being in the civil service gives its workers no inkling of the everyday commercial pressures that small business needs to deal with and which need to be understood and controlled.
In fact many people in local (and National) government have no idea about the commercial world, which is dangerous considering it is the country’s only source of tax revenue. Our current government doesn’t seem to understand that they need to make an environment in which business can thrive if we are to have healthy tax revenues and a healthy economy. That means fluidity of labour, low front end taxes, access to capital and straightforward, understandable, sensible regulations. It would also help if the legal system, put in place to regulate all this, worked properly (sorry, little rant there).
Tom, Ray’s deputy, is a different kettle of fish altogether. He’s been largely, although he strayed into horticulture for a while, in the pub business and you can feel he’s naturally at home behind a bar. He understands the mechanics of a pub what we’d call “the back of house” but also has a lot of experience of being with the customers, what we call “front of house”. We’ve got a talent here and I hope we’ll find him his own niche at some time, not easy in a small family company run by ageing proprietors. He travels a long way to get to work, from Neston on the Wirral, where he lives with his wife and children, although the fast roads make the journey sustainably quick. Good job he’s teetotal.
Ray has a cousin, Sarah Faulder, more like a sister really as they were brought up together by their communal grandmother, who now works with him. He wanted her at the start but, although I leave all the recruitment up to the Landlord working alongside Lindsay and Howard my fellow directors, I don’t like people hiring their relatives. If they want to do this, they have to clear it with me and need to have a very good case. Ray’s prediction that she’d be good and they’d work well together has turned out to be the case, so I hope they don’t fall out. Hannah Hughes, the other Assistant Manager has been with us nearly from the beginning and has now stepped up to take greater responsibility. She is grounded and sensible and a pleasure to work with. There’s something very pleasing about being a customer in the pub when the two girls are working together, it’s stable, calm and efficient.
The kitchen has taken some time to settle down too. The joy of the food side is that we have three chefs who are available to work when and where needed. This means that if bickering breaks out in the kitchen, we can send experienced staff to settle things down and we’ve had to do this on a number of occasions. I’m hoping things will be good from now on as we have settled with an excellent Head Chef in Peter Fanning and two good Sous Chefs in Oksana and Matt.
As time passes, I’m sure we’ll get deeper into our community. We have already started experimenting with dog walks which seem to be for ever popular and with a farmers’ market where we’ve been working with Katheryn Evans, the Vicar of St Paul’s, the church across the road, and with her Church Warden, Ian Austerberry, to try and get a decent farmers’ market going. It’s already good but I think it will get much better as time passes. It’s indoors so can be used in any weather and it’s a real opportunity for food producers to get together and trade with their local community. Good for everyone.
I’ll report back next year and let you know how the Druid has fared in its 2nd year.
Cheers,
Jerry
March 2025