ournewpubventure

We have been here for 2 months now and all is going well.  This Saturday we are hosting the village fete, which we are hoping will be a great day.  Fingers crossed the weather holds out!!  There will be loads of traditional stalls such as Face Painting, Coconut Shy, Aunt Sally, Tombola, Cakes, Bric-a-brac, Books, Toys, a Tea tent, and the famous Worminghall Egg Throwing competition.  There is also clay shooting in the back field with a pump action shot gun (oh yeah!!! says Matt).  Also a raffle with some great prizes (including a meal for 2 here at the pub).

We are then holding a Beer & Wine Festival in the Evening, with Hog roast (and vegetarian option), with Mike Patto and friends playing some Jazz.  We have found some local and unusual beers, and a selection of “undiscovered wines of the world”.  Beers from Hook Norton Brewery, Hopping Mad Brewery, Loddon Brewery, Loose Cannon Brewery, Oxfordshire Brewery, Sherfield Village Brewery and Vale Brewery (Brill).  Wines from Portugal, France, New Zealand, Spain, California & Sicily.

Why not come and join us if you can.  The Fete kicks off at 2pm, with the Beer and Wine festival from 6pm (this Saturday, 10th September).

We opened last night.  But have no internet access, so currently unable to do the daily update we were hoping for (that should change on Monday).  What a great pub, village, group of people.  We are in love with the place already, and despite the fact that a couple of hours before opening we had no till, no way to process payments, and the place looked a mess, our fantastic team worked themselves into the ground, and everything that we needed turned up just in the nick of time…ready for the doors to open!!!

Unfortunatley that is all I have time for today, as I must get back & get on….

And for those who don’t already know, (and I maybe should have included in yesterdays’s post), we have now revealed the location of the pub!!!!!

We are moving to…..

The Clifden Arms, Worminghall, Buckinghamshire, HP18 9JR.

We will soon have our website up & running and I will update you of it when it is, but you can visit us from Thursday evening onwards (30th June).

From Tuesday evening, you can contact us on 01844 339 273.

And you can already e-mail us at enquiries@theclifdenarms.com

Get in touch & come for a visit!!

Woo Hoo!! Yippeeee!!! Hoooooraaaaay!!  We move in next week!!! In fact, we move in, in just 3 days time!!!  Suddenly the whole process, which has been dragging very slowly and frustratingly over the last few weeks, is back on track, and massively exciting again.

And secondly, something else, almost as exciting as moving into the pub itself, happened today!!  We received all of our printing!! Business cards (amazingly smart), wine list sleeves, pockets to put the bill in, headed paper, and comment cards!!!!  They are AMAZING!!  Thanks Les (our fab friend & designer of all branding for mentioned print)

So it’s full steam ahead… Matthew, as I write, is in the garden (at the parents house, where we are currently staying) dismantling and scrubbing their greenhouse, which we will take with us to the pub.  Numerous print outs have been done of recording sheets that we will need to fill in, daily, weekly, monthly etc (we definitely owe my Dad a couple of reems of paper and a new print cartridge), files are being put together, staff details are being gathered, to arrange a staff meeting before we open, the last loads of washing are being done, before the big move, and there is constant price lists arriving from various suppliers who we are considering.

In fact, so much to do, that I really should go and do some of it!! He he!!!  So excited!!

We are waiting…we are waiting for our house sale to go through, we are waiting for the solicitors (on all sides except ours it seems) to do their thing, we are waiting to move in, we are waiting to get this pub business going!!!

We are stuck, waiting for everything else, and other people, and cannot move forward at this stage.  Patience is wearing thin. 

We still have so much to do, but most of it cannot be done until we have moved in, or at least have a move in date, however I have a feeling that it may just happen, with very little notice at all.

So we are having a few days away.  We have spent the last 2 days with Hillary (a very good friend, and Mum to Les, who is designing our website).  We are about to leave hers, to spend 24 hours in Brighton.  One last night of Freedom before we will be busy for the next 2 years!

Nothing else to report at this time…oh, but if anyone knows a chef looking for work (CDP level), we need a kitchen number 2, to work alongside Matthew!

Hopefully there will be more to report soon!!

Today was an interesting day.  Shopping!!!!  Following a thorough inspection of my wardrobe, it was decided that a few new pieces were required for me to be able to present the image required to be running front of house in our new venture!  So Reading it was.  And a very successful day it was – which also included a thorough analysis of customer service, and quality of staff wherever we went.  I say “we”.  It was me and my Mother.  Matt was at home doing some serious work.  Phoning potential coffee companies, sorting out insurance, flooring, and the PDQ!

We also had a visit to “the pub” this morning, to discuss details of exactly what is being left behind, and handover arrangements.  We need to plan our first beer order, which we may need to place next week!!

I now have my personal licence.  It was processed surprisingly quickly!  And had I not been so honest, I would have got it for free.  They had noted me as having paid already when actually the cheque was still in my cheque book.  I however insisted that I had not paid, despite the lady being adamant that I had.  I did not want to delay the process if they realised at a later stage that I had not actually sent the money.

Last week both Matt & I completed a “Business Management” Course, insisted upon by the pub management company.  Matthew was at first reluctant, insisting that he had spent enough time running Kitchens, their budgets, staffing, health & safety etc, and did not want to be taught to suck eggs.  However, we both came away from the course, having learned about employment law, marketing, merchandising, health & safety, cellar management, food safety (Matt was sucking eggs a little in that one), financial management, stock control etc…. And also came away feeling a lot more prepared, and massively motivated and full of fresh ideas.

So now it all seems to be full steam ahead!

So, it’s decided…bank holidays are very frustrating when you are trying to move to the next stage in buying a business.  Nothing is happening!  There are so many things that we need to do, people that we need to call, e-mails that we are waiting for a response from.  But no one is working until Tuesday!  And it’s been like this for 8 days already (I’m sure some people thought that Tues, Wed & Thurs last week were all part of one long bank holiday week)!

One thing we can do is start packing our house – unfortunately the place where we can get boxes is closed until Tuesday – So that leaves me to go through all of our stuff putting it in piles, and making Matthew more and more frustrated that “The house looks like a bombs gone off” (not conducive to a happy Matthew).

And more importantly still, I have still to find something to wear to my works leaving do tonight…and lots of my “good” clothes have been packed (into the one massive box which we have packed & has already been unpacked twice, as we’ve changed our minds on what we might need in the next couple of weeks).

However, although I know there are loads of things we still have to do, I think I will start making a list of the things that I plan to do, once Tuesday comes.  The first is to chase up my CRB clearance. I need it, to be able to apply for my personal licence, and it is registered to me at my current address, and we are moving next week. And then we have to hope that having applied for a personal licence, that the processing of that happens before we move into the pub.  Otherwise…..

So…We have sold our house (moving out next week), Matthew finished work a couple of weeks ago, and it’s my last day at work tomorrow (aarrrgh!!!).  Next step…the pub!

We have been looking for a pub for about a year now.  And a couple of months ago, through the grapevine, stumbled accross the place that we intend to take on in the next few weeks!  It’s more local to “home” than we had hoped to be, it’s more stunning than we thought we could hope for in our first venture, and has everything we could have hoped for but had expected to have to compromise in our first place of our own.

Already there are challenges.  And with a little over 2 weeks til we hope to move in, solicitors off due to the bank holidays, and paperwork still to be sorted, it’s still touch & go as to whether it will all fall into place in the planned timescale.

Another challenge will be that Matthew & I have never worked together…in fact, with his long hours as a chef, and my several jobs at any one time (in an attempt to fill my time while Matt is at work), we have rarely spent more than an evening a week together in the 4 years of marriage and the years before that.  So after tomorrow, when I finish work (currently a drug & alcohol worker in a prison – so not too much of a career change for me) the real hard work begins.

As I write, Matthew is test listening the playlist that we have, and commenting on what a legendary song Elton’s “rocket man” is.  Apparently a great song coming up next…