Meet the Eggleton family, owners of the Pony & Trap
The Eggleton family have taken the Pony & Trap restaurant near Bristol from modest beginnings to a food empire encompassing pubs, fish and chip shops, a foodie festival and even a café in a yurt
The family have come a long way since then. After achieving a Michelin star at the Pony & Trap in 2011, they have bolstered their restaurant portfolio: there's Salt & Malt, a fish and chip shop on Chew Valley Lake; Yurt Lush, a café in a Mongolian yurt in nearby Temple Mead in Bristol; the Kensington Arms pub in Redland; the Chicken Shed; another Salt & Malt at Wapping Wharf; and the soon-to-be Bristol Beer Factory.
"Dad wanted to open 15 hair salons and now we are on our way to opening 15 restaurants!" Holly jokes. Gail and Chris own a hair industry import and distribution business, and Chris says that they "blundered" into purchasing the Pony & Trap because Josh wanted to make a career out of being a chef.
"I remember going to the Pony & Trap as kids and the queue used to be out the door," Josh says. However, their first day of trading wasn't quite of that standard.
"We had two customers the whole night and when they left we had £15 in the till. It was horrific - Gail was nearly in tears!" Chris laughs.
The tipping point came quickly - the following Sunday, which happened to be Mothering Sunday. "We had three sittings - 12pm, 3pm and 7pm - it was insane," Chris says. "We fed more people on Mothering Sunday than in the whole first month of the business."
In 2011 their efforts were rewarded with a coveted Michelin star, and overnight their sales went from around £11,000 a week to £18,000. "I've always called it a double-edged sword," Josh says. "We had to employ more chefs and front of house staff, but it also enabled us to do other things that I wanted to do. For example, I wanted to churn my own ice-cream, but I didn't have the manpower and I couldn't afford the machine. The profits helped us achieve more of the vision that I wanted for the restaurant."
Last year, the Pony & Trap celebrated its 10th anniversary and its turnover was £1.5m, up from £105,000 a decade earlier - a great achievement for what started out as a two-year project. "I think the turning point came when we had the opportunity to buy the freehold," Chris says. "If that opportunity hadn't come along, we would probably have had to curtail the amount of money we were investing in the business."
Festival season
Following an unsuccessful experience running a second pub, the Compton, their next project was Pony Kitchen, an outside catering operation. Pony Kitchen has three events booked this year, but at one point the family were tackling between 25 and 50 a year.