Strong Silent type

When former butcher Mark Narey decided to change career and run a pub, he took the tools of his past trade with him. Now, customers at the Old Silent Inn in the village of Stanbury, Yorkshire, enjoy dishes prepared with speciality cuts carved from whole sides of meat by their very own publican.

Food is one of the main attractions at the pub, situated just a couple of miles outside the Brontâ village of Haworth, and is undoubtedly one of the reasons why it was declared The Times's Pub of the Year in 1999. Quite a feat for Narey, who bought the pub in 1995 with no previous experience except the distant memories of being a child in a pub run by his parents.

Trade was good before the journalists descended, with a turnover close to £400,000, but when they left and the article was published, the phone went into meltdown for days with people wanting to book in. Business has continued to improve; now the pub's turnover is in excess of £500,000.

Not having any pub management experience did not unnerve Narey, who had run his own butcher's shop for 11 years and saw being a publican as "a step up as far as catering goes". He asked his friend Peter Thornton, an engineer also looking for a career change, to run the Old Silent Inn for him.

Thornton is frank about the severe learning curve for both of them. "We've paid the price of mistakes, and we've made plenty. But we haven't made the same mistake twice. That's a trick you learn in any business."

A secret weapon on the road to success has been Narey's father, a 64-year-old former publican whose advice on cellar management and running the bar side of the pub has been invaluable. "This has allowed me to spend most of my time on the food side," says Narey.

The question is, with two raw recruits to the pub business plus an old hand, how did they win The Times award and how do they pack customers into a pub in the middle of wild moorland? "We look after our customers," says Thornton. "The food's right, the prices are right and we treat them right."

It's difficult to pick out one of those "rights" as being pivotal, but the commitment to food has to be a frontrunner. The Old Silent Inn serves real pub food, hearty and zinging with flavour. It relies on fresh, locally sourced ingredients, hearty plate cover, and all the food cooked from fresh. And the inn is mindful of pricing in a county not renowned for open wallets. Despite the accolades, average food spend is just £10 per head and wet spend with food, £4. Any main course of more than £10 struggles to sell.

Narey's butchery skills complement those of chef Dean Marren. "It works well, because chefs enjoy being able to work with speciality meat cuts," says Narey.

By buying in whole sides of meat, Narey can cut them to give maximum yield and flavour, and from Easter not even the trimmings will be wasted. Just added into the kitchen is £800-worth of sausage-making equipment. Thornton explains why.

"Good sausages are dear to buy, but cheap to make. It's typical pub food. We'll use the bits of meat left after cutting, which will drive down food cost in the kitchen. A sausage main course for £5.50 will eat well and sell well. Just think about it: sausages made in the pub to our recipes - it's menu heaven. We'll pull back the cost of the equipment inside 12 months."

Marren is already working on sausage recipes and has a free hand to work out his own flavour combinations. Inventiveness is one reason why he was appointed last summer from his post as head chef at Dunsley Hall in Whitby. Narey wanted to bring some outside influence to the kitchen, including more modern restaurant dishes and sauces, as well as the traditional cooking the pub was already offering.

Despite being in a part of Yorkshire that creaks all summer long with tourists, the pub has largely ignored this market to focus on repeat local business.

A high ratio of regular customers means the menu has to change constantly. Although there is a fixed menu, the focal point of the dining area is a large, wall-mounted blackboard offering the day's specials. These are not preplanned, but are devised the day before when suppliers come up with good produce at attractive prices.

The kitchen is used to sudden menu and pricing decisions, but buying quickly and cooking quickly means the selling price can be kept below the £10 main-course ceiling and still meet the 62% gross profit target.

Idyllic setting and catchment area

Perched on top of the Pennines with nothing in sight except sheep and swirling mists, the Old Silent Inn is within 40 minutes of the Leeds-Bradford conurbation and industrial east Lancashire is 30 minutes to the west. It's a very attractive catchment area that contains a lot of disposable income.

The juxtaposition between Red and White Roses also provides a useful source of revenue for the pub's eight bedrooms, which attract midweek business travellers and weekend tourists. En suite double rooms are £56, but there is a discounted rate of £38 for single business guests. That, says Thornton, makes the inn cheaper than a road lodge, but with the comfort and food advantages of staying in a real pub. Midweek percentage occupancy is consistently in the high 80s.

With five years of pub experience now under his belt, Narey feels confident enough to expand. He has just bought the Grouse three miles away to repeat the good food concept and to cash in on Old Silent Inn's table-bookings surplus at the weekends. Due to open in April, it will be managed by Thornton but treated as a separate business.

"It needs to evolve itself rather than be carried by this place," says Narey. But one thing is for sure: Narey will be sharpening his butcher's knives to meet his next pub challenge. n