TWO young landlords have turned around the fortune of a dying pub as they took it from being ranked 59th on TripAdvisor to top three in just two years.
The Clatford Arms pub, Goodworth Clatford, was not looking like it would achieve any successes before Shane Wells and Georgie Littler, now 27 and 25 respectively, took it over in January 2020.
But since then, the ‘youngest pub landlords in Andover’ have improved food, facilities and the customer service over the past two-and-half years to take The Clatford Arms to one of the top three pubs in the area.
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“We are really happy to give success to The Clatford Arms over a short period,” Shane said.
“When we took over, it looked like the pub was going to close and it didn’t look very good. I was the youngest landlord in Andover and Georgie was the youngest landlady. She was 23 and I was 25.
“We had a chef come on board with us, and between all three of us, we had a target to beat the other pubs in the village on TripAdvisor. So we overtook one, and then another one, and then another one, and then we went to number one. And we’ve been floating around between number one and number three over the last four or five months.”
But it wasn’t an easy task for the duo.
Covid hit almost straight after they took over the pub and the whole country locked down. But luckily, they had a refurbishment booked and they carried on with the works.
They spent around £150,000 on the pub during the lockdown and then spent another £40,000 on cooking facilities. The pub is a freehold as his uncle owns the building.
Shane said the secret to his success has been customer service and fresh food.
“Most pubs we go to, the landlord is just there. But we take the time to go around, have a chat with customers. We want to make sure everything’s okay. We individually try to try to find out every person and try to get to know them.
“Also, we have got a young team. At 27, I’m the oldest in our team. Georgie is the chef now after she trained with our old chef. It’s taken a long time. A lot of hard work and sleepless nights. We used to spend 16-17 hours, seven days a week for six months straight when we started.
Shane also has an 17-year-old in his team who holds a personal licence to sell alcohol.
"We took Ryan a year back. He's now nearly 18. We've put him through a course to get his own personal licence," Shane said.
"He's not even old enough to actually obtain the card yet. But he is qualified to run the pub. He's got level one for the course and he's got level two food and hygiene. We've really invested a lot of time and Ryan has come on so well."
But Shane himself was actually not destined to become a pub landlord.
He is a carpenter by trade, but he had always felt he'd be good at running a pub.
"But I didn't have the confidence to do it in Andover because everybody would know me and it's a bit awkward. They must just think 'Shane didn't do anything and he just was buying a bar'," Shane said.
"And I went to Australia for two years travelling. When I came back here I started working at Marwell Hotel near the Marwell Zoo.
"Soon my manager realised that I had some potential and he made me the bar manager. After some time I went back to Australia for a year.
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"There Georgie and I worked in a five-star hotel. She was the restaurant manager and I was the bar manager.
"One day my uncle [owns the pub building] flew to Australia had a meeting with us and offered us to be the landlords. And I said, 'look, the pub is dated and it needs a facelift'. You need to have families and you need to do have fresh ingredients for nice food.
"So we came with a plan and we got the pub to the level it's out now. We spent a lot of money on it and it is definitely paying off now."
He added: “I grew up in Andover. And it was sad to see a local pub close at 7pm or 8pm every Friday night. We are happy we could revive Clatford Arms.”"
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