Beers all round

Globe manager John Hunt shuffles his chair to avoid a drip coming through the roof of the beer tent. "It's just raining itself out," he says, trying to convince himself more than anyone. "It'll be nice and sunny tomorrow."

The day-long downpour battering the marquee of the Globe hotel's first beer festival is not dampening the enthusiasm of the usually pessimistic Hunt. It's Friday on a bank holiday weekend, and he hopes the rain will exhaust itself before the real business starts pouring in on Saturday.

The intentions behind the festival are more celebratory than financial. The Hunts took over as managers at the Globe a year ago, and they wanted to mark the occasion with an event they could repeat annually.

"We decided to do something that was big enough to commemorate our first year here," says Hunt. "Mitchell's [the Globe's brewery] had arranged one at a pub in Lancaster called the Bobbin and they were keen on having one here as well.

"They've been really helpful with how many barrels we were going to have, how it was going to be organised, how to run the voucher systems, and getting promotion and advertising."

The festival includes about 17 beers from 13 different breweries, from well-known ales such as Shepherd Neame's Spitfire to more obscure brews like Bateman's Miss Whiplash.

Mitchell's is billing for the beers along with the normal order - anything between £56 and £127 each for the different barrels - although 20 gallons have been given free to offset any potential losses.

Mitchell's has also contributed £300 towards the costs of the marquee, T-shirt printing, promotional slots on local radio and other sundries.

But Hunt is the first to admit that just breaking even over the course of the festival would be considered a good result. "It's a long-term thing," he says. "One of the things we will gain from it is the publicity.

"People are talking about the place. We've had staff telling us they've overheard people in shops in Lancaster talking about the festival. A pilot comes in here for a drink now and again, and at Manchester Airport he heard two of his colleagues talking about the Globe's beer festival. I couldn't believe it."

The festival's popularity is more evidence of the gap in the local market for specialist events and gatherings. This has also prompted the building of a barbecue, which Hunt hopes will be put to good use over the summer.

"Every year in Overton there's a Rose Queen Festival at the local primary school," he explains. "And there are about 1,000 people at this event. Last year we had about 150 of them come down to the Globe at about 5 o'clock and were we ready? Not at all. This year we will be, and if we have a barbecue on, it will take the pressure off the kitchen."

Now that a full year has come and gone, Hunt can look back at his first 12 months with satisfaction. He and wife Sally have taken a loss-making business and turned it into one that is turning in results more than £10,000 over profit target.

"I think the success speaks for itself," he says. "The growth we've had on the year before has been unbelievable. When we first came in, I didn't think we'd get any bonus at all in the first year and we've ended up with more than £4,000."

The Hunts' achievements have also been rewarded by tenants John Hughes and Sue Birkhead in other ways. "At the end of the 12 months, I sheepishly brought up the possibility of an inflation-based pay increase," Hunt says. "And John said they'd already discussed it and we'd be getting 5%, which is way over inflation.

"John doesn't do things without checking them out. He'd phoned his old colleagues in Bass and found out what the high performers were getting, and 5% was the average."

As for the future, Hunt readily admits that his goal is to have a tenancy of his own and now that he and Sally have made such a success of the Globe, his thoughts are turning to when Hughes and Birkhead might sell on.

"I want my own place," Hunt says. "We've moved three times in the infant- and junior-school life of our kids and we really don't want to do that again to them.

"John and Sue have the lease on the Globe for six years and after three there's a rent review. At that point John should've made around £170,000, so that's when he could think about perhaps selling it to us."

But their success at the Globe may lead to other offers of tenancies from Mitchell's, keen to capitalise on good landlords. "There's a couple of nearby Mitchell's places that are really, really nice and are doing way under what they should be. So you never know. We'll all just have to wait and see."