Since becoming pub owners, Alex (my husband and Head Chef) and myself have always maintained two key aspects. First is that a pub is a pub, and as such should always remain a pub. No matter what ideas, events, changes we have/make, we always have that at the back of our minds. Second, don’t be influenced by everyone giving you their opinions, saying: ‘you know what you should do’, etc. Trying to take on everyone’s ideas can take the pub away from what you originally set out to achieve. By sticking to our philosophies, it helps when we spend time discussing the business, assessing how the last week was, whether an event was a success, what worked and what didn’t. We listen to feedback, both positive and negative, and we do tweak things, but in the context of understanding our immediate locality and village life. Ultimately, it’s the locals who sustain you through the darker months. We have never had the luxury of too many staff and our small team works as a family, and we work well under pressure. In Devon, we’re finding that bookings are ‘last minute’ — nothing is being booked too far in advance, and this makes maintaining stock levels incredibly difficult. We can go from being swamped, to watching paint dry, so we’ll often have a sudden glut of extra hours on a week’s rota, followed by a day or two off. But the team understand this and we all work hard to maintain a positive environment. Price changes have been something of a bore, and Alex and myself both keep an eye on stock and prices on a day-to-day basis, tweaking dishes, changing beers, etc, as and when required. By doing this, we are helping to maintain price levels instead of increasing them constantly. The village and regular customers appreciate this (as we are not shy to discuss business and costs with them) and they repay us with extreme loyalty.