Vegetarian stew

01 January 2000
Vegetarian stew

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Restaurateur the Earl of Bradford, along with his business partner, bought a run-down Shropshire pub last June for £350,000. They spent a further £300,000 transforming it into a modern eating and drinking venue, the Countess's Arms, which opened in October. Although the pub was dogged by equipment failures at the start, the business soon settled down nicely, with sales slightly ahead of expectations. A new menu was introduced in February.

The Earl of Bradford has a problem with vegetarians. One has written in saying it's absolutely disgraceful that his pub, the Countess's Arms, had only one vegetarian dish on its menu when he visited.

"They could have had starters as a main course," Bradford points out. "Did they ask? Of course they didn't. They just sat there and fumed. I will always cater for everybody's taste. We've got flexibility built into our menu, but you just expect people to have the nous to ask."

Bradford has always had trouble with vegetarians, even before opening his new venture in Weston Heath, Shropshire, last October. At his London restaurant, Porter's, dishes put on specially for vegetarians have invariably been the worst sellers, he says.

The curse has now struck at the Countess's Arms, where the vegetarian pasta bake (£4.95) - introduced in February as part of the new menu - has been killed off because not enough people were ordering it. The dish has been replaced by fresh spaghetti with meatballs (£5.95), which has proved far more popular. Says Bradford: "The vegetarians can always order it without the meatballs."

The pasta bake was not the only casualty from the new menu, which has just been given quite a hefty tweak. Also killed off were the game terrine starter (£2.95), the 6oz chargrilled lamb steak (£8.95), and the 8oz fillet steak with Madeira sauce (£14.95). It seems customers felt the lamb steak was too small, especially when compared with the 8oz sirloin on the menu at the same price. And, despite hopes that customers would be less price-sensitive than originally thought, the fillet steak was simply too expensive.

Bradford has also bumped up the prices of a couple of dishes that were not making their percentages. The sirloin steak and the honey-glazed duck have both gone up 55p to £9.50. "If you use expensive ingredients, you've got to charge for them," he says.

Despite these hitches with the new menu, business at the Countess's Arms is still ticking over nicely. Gross sales in February hit the projected £69,000 (they hoped to hit £72,000 but the team forgot that the month had three days fewer than most). The business made a bottom-line profit of about £2,500 for the month, says Bradford. "If you can make a bottom line in February, you can make a bottom line for the rest of the year."

March was heading for sales of about £74,000, with £8,000 of that coming over one busy weekend. Labour costs are running at 32% of turnover and gross profit on food is 66% - all more or less what Bradford was aiming at.

A further pleasing sign is that the sales mix of food to drink is moving closer to the hoped-for 60:40 split after skewing slightly too far towards the food side in the opening few months. "We're starting to get this younger crowd of drinkers in now, which is what we always wanted," says Bradford.

The trend has been helped by the Sunday games nights, and to move it along even further, general manager Alison Frizzel is planning a new marketing initiative when students return to the local colleges after their Easter break. A free bus service will pick them up and bring them to the pub.

Bradford thinks it will be a hit. "This place would not look amiss in central London," he insists. "The younger crowd nowadays like something different, something modern." Pointing out that the students will be a captive audience until the bus departs, Bradford is also hoping they may buy food. But Frizzel is sceptical. "They would rather spend their money on drink," she says with authority.

The pub's other main outside marketing ploy - sending flyers to local businesses - is beginning to pull in extra trade too. Frizzel says new customers are first coming in for a drink and a look round, then returning for lunch another day. "So we're catching them twice." On the Saturday after the first leaflet drop, business was up by £1,500, she says.

The forms for business people to order their meal by fax and have it ready when they arrive are now coming through at the rate of about one or two a day, but midday trade is still mostly local ladies doing lunch. "We're not a natural place for weekday lunchtimes," admits Bradford, referring to the Countess's rural location. "But we're not doing badly."

With the good weather around Easter, some customers have already been sitting out on the front patio. But Bradford's plans for a fully-fledged outdoor barbecue and bar area are still awaiting planning approval from the council. "We just hope we can get it all done in time for the summer," he says.

Bradford reckons the Countess's Arms is really finding its feet now. Staff are often unaware of just how busy a particular evening has been, which, he says, "means we're settling down into our rhythm". And the pub is also settling into its own market niche. "Every business in the first six months goes through a process of finding where its market is. In the beginning, we tried to appeal to everybody, but you can't. The people we suit, and who suit us, are now finding us."

The only people who have been really disappointed were some old customers of the Plough, as the Countess's Arms was called before getting its radical makeover last summer. Says Frizzel: "They came in and stood there open-mouthed and said, ‘What have you done to the Plough? You've ruined the place.' They didn't even stay for a drink." n

Next visit to Countess's Arms: 20 May

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