Perfect Peach?
Seven months after opening their first pub - the Rose & Crown in the heart of Warwick - Lee Cash and Victoria Moon are a happy pair.
Having taken turnover from £2,000 per week to £20,000 (£5,000 above their budget's target), Cash and Moon can afford to be confident in their search for more pubs. Their aim is to create - through the Peach Pub Company - a group of gastropubs in the Midlands and along the M40 corridor.
In explaining the choice of name for their company, Cash also sums up much of the philosophy behind the type of pubs they want to run: "Peach is a smiley word: it's cheeky, it's foodie, it's young and it's fresh."
Cash goes on to explain that "people, food and fun" are the key elements of what he and Moon have already created at the Rose & Crown. "This is a place where we want people to come and feel comfortable, somewhere they are not intimidated by either the decor or the people who are serving them," he says.
Architect and designer Newman Gauge of Birmingham, together with Suzy Rowe of the Furniture Room, Worcester, have avoided a trendy or heavily stylised look - both of which age quickly. "We wanted it to feel like someone's second living room," Cash says.
As a result, a mix of large squishy leather sofas, bare wooden tables, and warm terracotta colouring, with Indonesian artefacts and funky mirrors adorning the walls, have helped create a room where customers can enjoy breakfast at 8am through to dinner and last orders.
The menu does everything to reflect a relaxed approach to eating out, whether it be the bacon and sausage sandwiches and home-made cakes available throughout the morning, the selection of tapas-style deli dishes at £1.25 each that can be eaten standing at the bar or sitting at a table, or the choice of hearty and homely main dishes and puddings. There is always a sausage and mash of the week (for example, venison and red wine or pork, ginger and spring onion), risotto of the week (perhaps smoked salmon and chive or black pudding and apple) and a cheesecake of the week (strawberry and blood orange or banana and toffee).
There is nothing casual, though, about the provenance of the ingredients used by head chef Nigel Brown and his team of three. Quality, not price, is the hallmark, including the hand-roasted coffee beans from Union Coffee Roasters, Aberdeen Angus beef from catering butcher of the year Aubrey Allen and the extensive deli items, including chillies stuffed with feta and marinated anchovies, from Olives et Al.
Getting the right mix of staff has been equally important. More concerned with creating a friendly, relaxed environment than one where highly polished technical skills are the priority, Cash and Moon have recruited most of the bar and waiting staff from among young travellers. There are three South Africans, a Zimbabwean and a Swede among the present team of 18, some of who live in a nearby flat being rented by the company. "Their willingness to work hard and their cheerful manner fits in with our philosophy," Cash says.
Both are characteristics that the 28-year-old Cash and Moon, 27, themselves have in abundance. The pair met while working at Le Petit Blanc in Birmingham, where Cash was general manager and Moon was marketing manager. Although both quickly discovered they were on the same wavelength, with plans to branch out with a business of their own, they each reached this juncture via very different career paths.
Cash, born in Cornwall and brought up in Middlesex and Devon, has spent his career in restaurants and hotels, including stints at Turner's in London and the Bath Spa Hotel. Five years ago he joined Le Petit Blanc in Oxford as assistant manager and gradually worked his way up through the company, becoming deputy, then general manager in Cheltenham and finally as opening general manager in Birmingham.
Meanwhile, Moon, who comes from Kent, arrived in Birmingham to study music at the Birmingham Conservatoire. After completing two degrees she took a temporary job at Le Petit Blanc on reception. Temporary became permanent and Moon ended up as the marketing manager of the 150-seat restaurant. "I originally wasn't certain what I wanted to do," she says. "There are, though, a lot of similarities between music and restaurants with the element of performance and the artistic temperament of staff."
Once Cash and Moon had decided that gastropubs was the area of the industry that gave them enormous scope for entry and, later, expansion, they began to refine the details of a business plan that Cash had been working on for the previous seven years. But they needed money and this came with the arrival of a third partner - Hamish Stoddart - who was an old university friend of Sunnil Punjabi, the operations manager at Le Petit Blanc.
Having recently sold the family business, Cearns & Brown, to Brake Bros, Stoddart was looking for a project in the hospitality industry to invest in and mentor. With 70% invested by the three main shareholders (Cash, Moon and Stoddart) and the rest contributed by a small group of private investors, £220,000 was raised to finance the launch of Peach.
Finding the first site was laborious. "We must have driven every road within a 40-mile radius of Birmingham, looking at every pub on the market, as well as those that weren't for sale," Cash says. "One week we spent £200 on petrol."
After losing a pub in Bromsgrove owing to difficulties with the lease, Cash and Moon came across the Rose & Crown in Warwick, which had recently been acquired by the Punch Pub Company. Although it didn't match some of the criteria they had been looking for - in particular, it isn't in an affluent commuter village and it has no car park or garden - Cash and Moon felt that the proportions and feel of the building had potential.
The elements that they previously weren't looking for - such as the five en-suite bedrooms and a town-centre location - have turned into big advantages. The bedrooms have provided an unexpected stream of income, while the pub's position in the middle of Warwick has ensured steady business, both through the day and during the week. It is a popular place for both sexes of all ages to meet, either for a swift drink or bite to eat or a more leisurely meal. "It has certainly made us re-think the kind of locations that we shall look at in the future," Cash says.
The Punch Pub Company spent £350,000 on repairing the structure and main fabric of the building, while the Peach Pub Company - which has a 20-year lease with Punch - invested £150,000 on installing a new kitchen and all furnishings.
With £70,000 still in the pot to put towards a second pub, Cash and Moon are already searching. They are looking from Birmingham in the north, down to Oxford and High Wycombe in the south, and are considering both freehold and leasehold pubs.
"We are not aiming for a particular number of pubs as first and foremost we intend to maintain the quality that we've already achieved at the Rose & Crown," Cash says. "If is one thing we learnt from our time working for Raymond Blanc it is that quality is paramount in everything we do."
The Rose & Crown
30 Market Place, Warwick CV34 4SH
Tel: 01926 411117
Leaseholder: The Peach Pub Company
Freeholder: Punch Pub Company
Directors of the Peach Pub Company: Lee Cash (managing director), Victoria Moon (sales and marketing director), Hamish Stoddart (chairman and director) and Tim Doyle (representing minority shareholders)
Staff: 18
Seats: 80 plus private dining room
for up to 20
Average bill per person: £7.50 at lunch and £20 for three-course meal at dinner
House wines: Soave, Italy, £11.50/Cinsault-Shiraz, Kinross, South Africa, £11.50
Real ales: Old Speckled Hen, London Pride and Timothy Taylors
Sample dishes: goats' cheese and red pepper tart (£4/£7.50), salmon fish cake, tomato and chive sauce (£8.50), pork T-bone, apple and Stilton mash, Calvados sauce (£11.50).
Food/drink split: 50:50
