The White Lion: Up for the cup… of sangria
Earlier this month the White Lion celebrated its first birthday. The food-led pub has not reached its target of £300,000 in sales revenue for its first year, but owner Rob Gamble is proud to still be in business after 12 challenging months.
Rather than throwing a staff party, all festivities were aimed squarely at encouraging first-time customers to become repeat customers. The venue, festooned with balloons and banners, offered kids-eat-free promotions plus free Easter eggs on Easter Sunday and Monday. Discounted offers included stir-fry dishes served with rice at £5 and complimentary jugs of sangria for the ladies.
Gamble believes these are effective marketing steps to encourage repeat trade. "Do we pay £400 for an advert that dies on its arse or spend £100 on free booze for people who are likely to come back through the door?" he asks.
Recent trade hasn't been as vibrant as Gamble would like, although sales revenue did rise from £15,000 in January to £16,500 in February. Gamble has been busy working on a new project to increase contact with local suppliers
A British food fortnight planned for May has been discarded in favour of a larger event in November. "I want to put on a mini-food festival in the Noah's Ark car park, with local suppliers. I want to do local things to keep the money in the area," he explains.
The local suppliers' market is planned to coincide with the Noah's Ark's seventh birthday as a means of promoting all of the businesses. In combative spirit Gamble declares: "I want to show to all those cynical, critical bastards who said a pub serving decent food would never work in this area that we are here, seven years down the line."
Gamble believes that independent fresh-food suppliers have a good understanding of the peaks and troughs of a business like his. The recent purchase of a refrigerated van is helping Gamble widen his range of locally produced ingredients.
Yet he may well no longer require the services of one supplier - his baker. With the help of a combi-oven that cooks 100 rolls at a time, Gamble's chefs now bake half of all bread consumed at the three venues and may end up baking it all. "Do you spend £100 a week on the baker or pay an additional £100 to the chef to make all the bread?" he ponders.
A major event closer on the horizon is the football World Cup, starting on 9 June, which tends to deal a blow to food-led operators. Since Gamble's pubs don't cater for the mainstream football fan, it looks likely that those jugs of sangria will be put to good use again to keep gangs of "World Cup widows" happy.
With the games being played on European time, Gamble anticipates running some early-evening promotions also. Of course, the longer England stay in the tournament, the worse it tends to be for food-led operators. But the un-sporty Gamble is taking a magnanimous attitude.
"It'd be fantastic if England got through to the final - in terms of the euphoria and feel-good factor. I think national pride is deeply rooted in all of us, and it doesn't have to mean thuggery. And beer sales will rocket," he adds.
With the White Lion, Gamble feels he needs to get through two winters to really feel out of the woods. "Part of being strong is to recognise when something is wrong. It was wrong that the White Lion was too closely modelled on the Noah's Ark, and we were happy to make a decisive change and scrap the menu to replace it with tapas items."
In another respect, the White Lion is better placed to face the future. It will not have to tussle with the effects of the smoking ban, since it has been completely smoke-free since it opened in April 2005. The property benefits from outdoor decking and a garden area that is maturing. "Business is very much like gardening," Gamble concludes, philosophically. "If you know of a plant that grows 10ft in two months, then let me know."
The story so far The White Lion is Rob Gamble's third pub-restaurant in north Staffordshire - after the Noah's Ark, Harsthill, and Red restaurant and lounge bar, Newcastle-under-Lyme. Gamble acquired the derelict pub on an A-road outside Stoke for nothing in early 2005 and spent £175,000 on its refurbishment. From July 2005 he started paying a £25,000-a-year lease.
Working on the model of the Noah's Ark, Gamble transformed the run-down property into a food-focused pub with a large menu of traditional English dishes and those "with a twist". Following a quiet trading period, a rethink led to the introduction of tapas and freshly baked breads. Sales revenue rose from £15,000 in January to £16,500 in February.
