Ep.22 | What Losing £100K On The Wrong Business Taught This UK Pub Owner | Matt Crowther | Supy Talks Podcast

Welcome to another episode of Supee Talks. Today I'm speaking to Matt Crowther, founder of pugpubs, a growing pub group in Warwickshire, which recently won Star Pub of the Year in the Great British Pub Awards. Today we're going to have a conversation about how he got to that place and the decisions he made on the way. Matt, welcome to the show. Hi, Karin, how are you? Thanks for having me. Yeah, pleasure to have you on the show. So, first of all, I just want to find out a bit about your background. So can you talk about your background in hospitality and, and how you ended up running these pubs? Sure, yeah. So I've got a. I've got a small pub group which has got five pubs. They've got the same theme throughout all five that sort of knit them together as a. As a brand. They're dog friendly. They're all called the Something Pug. We started with the fat pug in 2012 and I've just opened one last year, our latest one called the Lost bug. So in 2025. Yeah, how I ended up running pubs, I think that. I think you get to a stage in your sort of career in hospitality, I think. Well, I started off as a bartender during what was supposed to be a gap year in Greece. It ended up being a gap four years and then it went on from there. Then I ended up getting a job with the restaurant group at Frankie Benny's when I came back to the uk, worked my way up through the ranks. And I think you get to a stage where you need to either leave and get your own business or you need to do maybe a sales job and start selling to pubs or you choose to be a lifer and just be an absolute stealth bartender or server forever and make a career out of it. So I think that when faced with those three options, I was like, well, I'd like to have my own business because I suppose some, some things frustrated me sometimes in the, in the businesses that I worked for and I wanted to make my own path, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah, that's really cool. I mean. And did you find that there was anything you took from working in those big groups that you've bought into your new. Into your own business, or was it you just ready for a clean break and to do something on your own? No, I reckon that you. Look, I, I've learned loads through working for. You know, you mentioned the Mitchells and Butlers and, and the restaurant group and I lear. I did a couple of stints at an independent and another small company as well. And, and I learned. You learn a lot. What you, I suppose you get to know what you like and what you don't like. You get to learn what not to do and what to do. So I think anyone that knows me and comes into my pub that's worked with me, you know, throughout my career will spot stuff and go, oh, he's picked that up from there, or he's took that from there. That was cool. And was there a particular moment that pushed you to open your first pub, your first own pub? Yeah, I think that ever since I sort of started, started working in hospitality, I kind of got this idea that I'd like to have my own place one day. And I think that when you're younger, you think that young lasts forever. And my, my wife turned around to me in 2012 and said, we're having a baby. And I said, right, okay, I'm gonna quit my job and, and start my own business. And she was like, are you sure? You sure? And I said, yeah, if I don't do it now, I don't think I ever will. So that's, that's, that's what happened. Yeah, yeah. So it turned out okay, but at the time it sounded a bit of a rogue decision. Yeah, it's okay. Looking back on it now, you've had a good run, but at the time you don't know what's going to happen. Well, I think a lot of people that knew me were like, so you, your wife's kind of now not got the income that she did have and you've got an extra mouth to feed and you've quit your job. And I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, it made sense. So I was 100% certain everything was going to be okay. And I suppose when you just focus on something, you definitely have been, I mean, winning was it star Pub of the Year at the Great British Pub Awards. I mean, I think that's a nice little mark of success. People obviously like what you do. What I was interested in to find out about was where did the idea for your concepts come up? Because I believe a number of your venues are dog friendly pubs. You also have a Greek kind of restaurant and you've had other things. But where did the idea for pug pubs come up? Yeah, cool. So I suppose so we had a pug. And the first pub that we had was named after our pug. Our pug was called Henry. And I suppose, you know, before we had children we, you know, our dog was like our child. And we, and we went out, you know, for Evening walks, weekend walks, and they would usually involve stopping at a pub at some point during that walk and getting a beer or some food. A lot of pubs would say that they were dog friendly and then you'd get to them and then they'd sort of show you the two tables that were dog friendly. And they're usually at the bottom of the garden. Yeah. So I just think there was a need for dog friendly pubs that were actually dog friendly, that would let animals into the pub and you could sit wherever, you know, wherever. And I think we've stepped that up now and we do dog food and dog drinks and. Yeah, you know, the first thing that happens when someone comes into one of our venues with a dog is they get a bowl of water. They get served before the humans do. We are dog friendly, not dog tolerant. I think it's a difference. I suppose, though, since COVID everyone else, you know, I think there was an influx of pet owners during COVID and dog friendly is quite normal now, I guess. Yeah, dog friendly. But I feel like dog focused is another way to look at yours. Yeah, it sounds like you've gone the extra degree. Yeah. If that's next up the list from friendly. Yeah, we're probably dog focused. I might use that. Yeah, that's good. Any other animals welcome? I don't think we've had much else, to be honest. No one brought an alligator in or anything? Not yet, no. That's good to know. And okay, changing the tactics a little bit. I mean, you've worked in large chains which are dealing with hundreds, thousands of locations, and now you run six. Like, how does that. What's the difference between the two? In a large environment, especially with, like, complicated management structures, there's only so many. So much you can decision making you can do before you sort of get above your pay grade and then you have to seek permission, which I've got to be honest, I'm not very good at. So there was a point in my career where I worked in a pub as an employee. I was the manager of the pub. They were up for pushing Sunday roasts at the time. It was a busy, very, very hot August bank holiday. And I suggested that perhaps it wasn't a great idea to be pushing roasts and we should grab a barbecue. And it was sort of, I don't know, shunned a little bit. They were like, yeah, good one, Matt. Yeah, imagine that. We could do that. And I thought, well, we can. So I went out and bought a barbecue and we did a barbecue and we did some Great sales. And then I got in trouble because I didn't seek permission. You know, there's a lot of reasons why I shouldn't have done it. Health and safety reasons and allergen reasons and stuff like that, which are all very important, but I think sometimes, you know, common sense and should, should prevail. We're not going to sell Yorkshire puddings when it's 30 degrees. We're going to sell grilled chicken. So I suppose as a smaller operator, I'm able to pivot really quickly and, you know, as long as my team are not putting anyone at risk and they're, you know, making sense commercially, then I don't mind what it is they do. They know the brand sort of boundaries and what we're, what we can do and what we can't do. You know, we're never going to go, right, let's put sushi on as a special. Because we're, we're, you know, we're a local pub company. We're going to do pies and burgers and things like that. But, but yeah, I suppose we can, we can react really quickly. Yeah, there's good and bad. Isn't that within, within a huge pub company, they can, you know, they've got resource. We, we've just, you know, you look in a head office, but I think from speaking to you ahead of this, it kind of fits your personality as well. Right. You're able to be really nimble, agile, try things. And it makes me think from our chats before, it seems like your group has developed off the back of your personality of just trying things, getting stuff done. And I think you have some really cool examples of this. So what are some other things that have been off the cuff, ideas that have turned into something quite cool for the business? I think that if we were to do a podcast about all the stuff I've done that hasn't worked, it'd be a really long podcast. But I suppose you try stuff, don't you? And if it works, then you go, well, mate, if that works, maybe this could work as well. Well, I was wondering, you told me about a festival you've organized, a pub crawl, all these wacky ideas that, I mean, I think bigger groups would have to take months and years to organize and go through various committees. So what are the kind of events and initiatives you've been able to run as a group of five or six pub chains that a large pub group wouldn't have been able to do? Yeah, sure. Okay, so we do a. We hold an annual Event where we close the Fat Pug, our first pub. Yeah, we. It's. It's a really nice community pub. It's in the north part of Leamington Spa. And on Father's Day every year we close the road officially through the council. We put a road closure in place, we build a stage. We have five or six bands play throughout the day. I've got a street food catering business as well. So we put all of our toys on the street, everything that we've got. So we have a bar, we have a couple of food outlets and then we sub a bit out. We have various, like, kids stuff, rides and like shootouts and things. And we, we nominate a charity and we just have a really big tear up on Father's Day, so. And I think Father's Day actually wasn't strategic, but it's a day that everyone recognizes. But it's actually nothing really happens on Mother's Day. You go out for a roast on Valentine's Day, you've got to go to a nice restaurant. On Father's Day, I think you get up in the morning and you go, what does dad want to do? And he'll go, well, there's a thing going on around the corner. Let's just go for a pint there. And that's. And it works really well. That's really nice. We do a publisher pug crawl where you, you get to walk around. I've got three venues that are really close to get. Well, four that are really close together. I think there's probably four, four or five K in between the four. So yeah, we just, we, we. We take, we take as long as we need and we walk around all four of them. You get a pint at each one. Food halfway around. From one of our street food tricks, you get a T shirt to say that you've done it. So that's quite a nice one for the family to do. And the dogs. Yeah, I think that's a really nice thing. Having this dog focus means you got all these puns to play on. It's quite family friendly. There's a lot of fun you can have with it, which is really cool. And I feel like maybe not enough venues or groups do enough to stand out like that. A bit scared of the personality. So yeah, that's awesome. That's really, really cool. And just speaking about a few of the failures whilst we're here on it, tell me about a couple of the failures and what have you learned from them? I opened a cheese bar. I think you might have mentioned that earlier. So, yeah, I just. There was an opportunity come up in Leamington Spa and it was a small venue. It wasn't able to do hot food due to some restrictions and extracts and that sort of thing. It was, it was difficult to do. So I just thought some cold prep food would go down really well. I went to somewhere in London that just did cheese and wine and I just thought cheese and cocktails would, would absolutely fly. So we. I spent far too much money on, on doing, on refurbishing this venue, putting a new concept in there. It was a pub, the Beer Cellar. This is probably where I went a bit too mad. The beer Beer Cellar we didn't need because we were not doing beer, just doing bottled beer, focusing on cocktails and wine and cheese. So. And the access to the, to the cellar was. Was like a really old school type thing where you pull a hatch up behind the bar and you have to go down, like almost a ladder. So I actually dug a new entrance to the, to the cellar, which I don't know if you ever tried doing anything like that. That's expensive. Yeah, I can imagine. It wasn't my property. I was leasing it and just went mad over budget. It's a really cool space. We got great reviews. The people that came enjoyed it. It's just that I'm just limited in a town as to how many people want a cheese board on a Tuesday. Fair enough. So, yeah, so I made a difficult decision. Like, you know, I said, I've had a lot of ideas that don't work, but this is the first one that I've spent 100k on. Yeah. And that hurts because, you know, you just, you just start thinking, that's a lot of pints in it. I could have had a lot of, a lot of fun with that amount of money. Yeah. I could have done a lot of other stuff, could have invested it a bit more wisely, but. But it's, it is a bit of a shock to the system, but it slowed me down and I think now what I do is research. Yeah. Which is something I've never done. I've just gone, oh, this is going to work. Yeah. And now I go, actually, let's just, let's just do our homework on it. So, yeah, how would you go about that research? Imagine you're thinking of a new concept for next year. What would that process look like? And yeah, do you know what? I think that, like you said, I've got pubs, they are dog friendly. There's a load of stuff going on in them. That reflects my personality and I'm really passionate about that. I spent a lot of time in pubs my whole life and I think that's one of the reasons that it works. And then the other thing I've got going on is, is a, is a, is a Greek restaurant. Like I spent four years there and I'm pretty passionate about Greece. So I think the key thing is you've got to be whatever it is, you've got to be bang into it. And actually I'm not that bothered about cheese. Yeah. You know. Yeah. So I think that when I look back and go, look, why didn't that work? It's pretty obvious. I didn't really like, I did not care about it, but I wasn't that into it, so. But I know what works now and I don't think I'm going to be going too off piste, away from pubs, dog friendly pubs and, and, and Greek stuff. So that's pretty good. Yeah. And I think when you're passionate about something, you're willing to put in the hard hours to figure out the problem, to make it work. And you know, when you get up in the morning, you want to make it happen rather than it being one of those jobs that you kind of know you need to do but you know, you don't really want to do it. That's really cool. And then maybe let's speak a little bit about, you know, the culture in your organization. Because when I speak to a lot of restaurant owners and pub owners, they say that, like, their teams make a big difference, but finding the right staff is tough. Like, how do you approach finding the right staff? And, and now you've got people across a number of venues. How do you make sure they still want to be there? I guess I'm quite lucky in the location that I'm in, you know, so like Warwickshire, specifically, like Warwick, Leamington area. Because it's not really difficult to recruit. We've got, it's a nice place to be. Warwick University is pretty big and has, you know, a lot of people, so we don't find it difficult to recruit. Obviously recruiting the right people is the key thing and I think that we just recruit on personality. A lot of my team would say to me now this person's really good. They've had this many years experience doing this, sometimes that's not what you want. You would just want someone who's really willing and keen and naturally hospitable. And I think that's the key thing. If you're not naturally hospitable and you've got to force it or switch it on. You're probably not for us. Yeah. You know, so, yeah, that makes total sense. And I think, you know, it's a people business still. Hospitality, you're interacting with people in almost every role you do, so if you don't have that, you know, there's not many places for you. A lot of people say to me, like, they come back from, like, the us and they go, oh, my God, the service is amazing. And I'm like, no, it's not, because, you know, it's efficient. Yeah, it is definitely efficient and you get what you need when you need it. But there is. It doesn't feel as genuine as good service does here. But the problem is it's consistently efficient there. And whereas here it's genuine or. Yes, exactly. And I think that's the difference between service and hospitality in my mind. Good service is being there, offering you everything you need, making sure you're following the order of service and you have the experience that that establishment wants you to have. And hospitality being, like, making you feel welcome, feeling like you can ask them anything. You know, it's an open place. And I feel like that's what a good pub is all about. Like, it doesn't have to be a polished service, but you want to feel welcome and, like, you know, it's like your living room kind of thing. Yeah, Ayers is definitely not polished. It's something I knit. So someone said to me the other day, actually, that we've got a really good punch of people. Yeah, they just need to be aligned slightly with service, because that's exactly what it is. We've just got a great bunch of people in a way. It's easier to teach it that way around. If you've got the right people, then you can teach an order of service. True. And I guess, are you at the point you said to me earlier that you don't really believe in writing down mission statements, like maybe a big group would do. Why is that? And how would you frame what the essence of your pub is without a mission statement? Mission statements, visions, values, you know, and then loads of other gumph that you can write on your wall if you want. But I've. I've seen and worked in a few places. I've seen more and I've worked in a couple that have these, you know, these things made into pretty posters and there's stuff on the walls that say, we will do this. It's like a sort of scout's promise, isn't it? And everybody knows what they are and they can recite them on demand, but that doesn't make you live and breathe it, does it? You know, I just. I remember going to. I remember meeting a general manager once at his pub and I went in there and I jumped on the coffee machine to grab myself a coffee and said to him, would you like a coffee? And he said, yeah. And I said, what's the. What's the cleaner's name? Should I grab her a coffee while I'm on the machine? And he said, I don't know. And I said, what? He said, I don't know. I said, oh, she knew. He said, no, she'd been here for two years and he'd never made her a coffee. So when I offered her a coffee, she thought she was, I don't know, getting a sack or something. And. And this company had stuff written on the wall to say, like they cared about people and stuff. And I just thought, you know, it's nonsense in it. You've got to just live and breathe it. And then. And that. And then if something comes out of that real life living and breathing, that mantra or whatever you want to call it, then. Then you could write on the wall if you wanted to, but just write it with a Sharpie. Yeah. I don't think you need to make a pretty poster. It doesn't feel cliched that way. You know, you can see it living and breathing and then it's there. Whereas having the other way, it's kind of just all for face value, just like, yeah, we will be naturally hospitable all the time. Well, don't, don't just do it. Don't write, you know, you don't need to write it down because it's even worse than it. If you've got something written on the wall saying, you know, I'm brilliant, when you're not. Yeah, it's so much worse. Not true. Yeah, exactly. Amazing. And like, one thing I'm kind of interested about you is because you have a bunch of different kind of hospitality models that you run within your business. So you've got the pubs, you've got a restaurant, you've got some food trucks. As someone that sees the differences between all of them, how can you compare them? Do you have a preference for which you run? What are the pros and cons of each? They all have their moments, to be honest. So obviously the food truck stuff. So with the food truck thing, I suppose I'd explain that we basically do gyros Greek gyros, out of the food truck. And we take those around to anything from a corporate afternoon at work where the boss will feed the team to festivals, events, shows, that sort of stuff. Obviously that's fun. You know, if we do like one that over a bank holiday weekend and it's like two or three days, it can be good fun because you're off, you're sort of on tour and, you know, you camp and stuff like that. So that can be fun. I like a lot of stuff, though. It's only fun for that weekend if you're doing it relentlessly every week. It then becomes pretty hard work. So I suppose that's what I like. A bit of variation and diving in and out of each. I guess. If you were to open more to expand your group, do you think it would be easier in the current environment to open another restaurant, another pub, or. Or go down the festivals and catering route? Like which one's doing well for you at the moment? Like I said, I think they all have their moments. What I've ended up with. And it wasn't. I could just tell fibs and say it was really strategic. But it's just worked out this way that I've got some pubs that have got really great outdoor spaces and really good gardens. I've got some pubs that have no outdoor space at all and those ones are in really nice neighborhoods so that they're quite busy in the. In the winter. And then, you know, when the sun comes up, everyone wants to go to a pub, beer garden. They're not. So I tend to do like a similar number all year round as a group because when one's sort of slightly withdrawing. There's another one. Yes. Advancing. And then. And then obviously the food truck stuff doesn't. Doesn't happen at all in the winter. That gets sort of mothballed after Bonfire Night. Yeah. Yeah. I can't imagine anyone wants to go out after that, which is great. We like Bonfire Night because. Yeah, it was just a smash and grab. Yeah. Because everyone, I suppose a bit like football, you know, when the game ends, everyone goes. So. So, you know, it's quite. It's quite good to forecast what's going to happen. Yeah, that's true. Amazing. Okay, great. So let's get a little bit into the actual operations and running one of. One of your venues. I was wondering, are there any. You know, we've spoken about the people. They're really important to get right and it sounds like you've done a smashing job at that. But are There any tools or systems that you rely on on a day to day basis to keep the business running? Supply. No joking. So I suppose you've got to have some systems, haven't you? Because if, you know, I think that, because there's, there's obviously older businesses, but we've been going since 2012 and originally when we started, we would get a piece of paper, draw some squares on it and turn it into the rotor, stick it on the back of the office door and then the second it would go up, someone would scribble on it and write, I can't do that shift. And then there'd be, you know, more, more scribble on the top, on the top, on the top. And then you'd get to, you know, you'd get to Friday and you, it'd be illegible and you wouldn't know who was, who was roted on. And then off the back of it, you don't have to try and figure out who did what and pay them. So yeah, we've tried various systems and we use a labor scheduling tool called planday, which is pretty good. So, yeah, so we use Plan Day for that. We've obviously got a POS system, we've got a stock system, we've got a booking system. Do you know what all these costs though? We need this stuff though, right? Because payroll, you know, I was saying to you before that I used to dread what we used to call payroll week. Yeah, payroll week was exactly that. It was a week. So you'd start winding yourself up for payroll. You would try and decipher all the rotors, you'd eventually copy it all out onto a clean piece of paper. You'd input it into something and then that would spit out some information that you'd then log onto your bank and you'd pay people and then you would just go, right, thank God we don't have to do that for another three weeks. And now, you know, we just, we just click a big blue button and everything happens. So it's definitely worth having these systems and processes because it frees you up to focus on more important stuff. So. But yeah, you know, I suppose when you add it all up, it's quite, it's quite, it's quite a bit, but it's essential stuff. Leads nicely into my next question because when do you decide that you need a new piece of tech or you need to change systems? Like, are there normally, have there been any sort of pinch me moments when you're like, right, we just can't do This, I think I'll go back to the payroll example. That was, that was time consuming. And you go, well, there's got to be a better solution out there. So, yeah, I've tried. I've actually used three different companies across, over, over, you know, over the time that we've had the business. And we use Xero for accounting and plan day for, for payroll and that. And that really works well. But I suppose you hit milestones as a business, don't you, where you just go, right, okay, a big milestone is going from one site to two. Because in one site you could probably get away with not having too many systems because your fingers on the pulse, you're there physically and you can control everything. It's only when you grow to two that having two is like having 10, really, because there's only one Saturday a week and you kind of want to be in both and you can't. So that's when you need to put some process in place. And then I think it's about cost as well, because as you grow, if you're making a serious stock mistake on your menu and you've got the same menu in all your sites, that could be an expensive mistake. So identifying those things could benefit you massively. And what are the kind of key metrics that you look at on a regular basis in reality to, to keep your finger on the pulse across all the venues, thinking we're in a good way or in a bad way. And. Well, there's a, there's an obvious one, I suppose you just, you go onto your banking app and see what that looks like. That's quite a, yeah, quite a, quite a immediate check, though. I'd like to be a little bit more planned than that, but it is, it is something I do. Yeah, so, so yeah, we get, we, we, we forecast sales quarterly. We forecast sales obviously, we budget annually, we forecast quarterly, we get a sales report daily, we look at labor daily, we look at stock weekly. And then all the other stuff. I mean, there's so many KPIs now, isn't there? You know, if you want to. We've got our number of bookings versus number of bookings last year. We've got the number of email addresses on our database versus last year, how many reviews we've got. So, so yeah, I mean, you could, you can spend a lot of time looking at all that stuff, but I think there's something to be said for just going to the venue and getting a feel for it, talking to people and having a look about. I Always say, you know, you only know that you need some more teaspoons. If you jump on the coffee machine and make a coffee. Yes. Yeah. I think the best things are built that way. And sometimes you can over complicate things and get sold all these ideas of what you need. But, but in reality, experience, being close to the operation is where you can notice things that no data point is going to tell you. And I feel like the tech that does help is the one that points you in that direction rather than just overwhelming you with a big screen of numbers that you need to look at and think about and whatever. I think sometimes these tech stacks, there's so much data to analyze that you end up getting one of those companies that, you know, display it in a nice way for you, which is great. But then you've still got to look at it. Right. Cause there's no point in having it if you're just gonna. Yeah. You know, so, yeah, there's some essential. If you can, if you can manage income, stock and inventory as a, as a system, labor and scheduling as a system and, and pay money, getting money in the right place at the right time. That's, that's, that's the key stuff, isn't it? That's. Everything else is, it is not essential for, for me personally, having six venues. You know, obviously if you've got 200 venues, then you probably want something to collate all your reviews and give you like a, you know, a net promoter score. Now you're doing in each one. But I, you know, I, I've got Google reviews, it's free, and I can just have a quick look at all six in five minutes and honestly, then you want to get back in the venues and just see what's happening. So. Yeah, well, the thing is if you, if you, I mean, I stick my head in all the time and I'm sure that if something's adrift, one of the regulars will see me walk in and go, I'll tell him. That's what happens. That's a very good system. It is. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's all for now. Matt, it's been great speaking to you. Thanks for sharing all of your advice, your stories and if anyone wants to check out of your venues, we'll post a link to where you can find them. Maybe get along to PugFest or the Pug Crawl soon. So, yeah, thanks for your time and we'll see you on another episode soon.