There was a time when most pubs did little but sell pints of beer, and pork scratchings if you were lucky. Now publicans are cutting hair, keeping livestock and stalking deer in an effort to pull in more customers.
There were 50 pub closures a week in 2009, a nadir for the industry, so landlords have been trying to stay open by making their pubs as idiosyncratic as possible, according to TheGood Pub Guide.
In Merseyside, Sue and Franky Gallagher have opened the award-winning Gallaghers’ Pub and Barber’s. The couple, who are fully trained hairdressers, drove past a derelict pub in 2010 and decided to start a new venture, offering a cut and a pint all day long.
“At first we got so much stick, but now men will come in for a pint and a cut while their wives wait drinking a glass of wine at the bar,” Mrs Gallagher said. “We thought we’d never make money out of the bar but it’s now matching the barber’s. It’s a great success.”
In Hampshire, Simon Page, who wanted to run a pub, and his partner Jason King, who wanted to be a vet,have realised their dreams with a micro-farm just over the fence from the beer garden at the Wellington Arms in Baughurst.
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“Customers come up the drive, go through a plum orchard and our vegetable patches to the sound of hens clucking,” he said.
The couple have kept as many as 200 chickens, and now have 16 sheep, three beehives and several pigs, which roam the wood next to the pub. They butcher six pigs and 12 lambs each year, putting the meat on their £17 Sunday lunch menu.
In Wiltshire, Noel Cardew takes his gun out after breakfast to shoot deer on the next-door estate, serving up 600 venison dishes a year in his pub, the Malet Arms, at Newton Tony.
“Obviously some customers are absolutely horrified when someone says, ‘Oh yes, that’s the deer Noel shot last week’, but most people love it,” he said. “It really is the ultimate food provenance. There the animal is, standing in the field, and I shoot it.”
Fiona Stapley, the joint editor of the guide, argues that the novelty factor is ensuring that thousands of pubs are not only surviving, but thriving. “Of course, there will always be old Bert who trundles down to his bar stool every night, but pubs are learning how to pull new customers in.”
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The Good Pub Guide 2015 is out today and costs £15.99.