‘We crossed out the word “pub” on the sign and became a lockdown deli’
of your meat and start selling it in the restaurant, turning it into a shop?’”
Bird got in touch with his greengrocer as well, and just a day after restaurants were closed he started taking orders for meat and veg boxes, while selling off surplus ingredients from the restaurant.
He says: “I wanted all the people I’m supplied by to be there on the other side, because we’re nothing without them. It’s 15 years worth of relationship and trust.” Not only that, but by keeping prices low, “the idea was to build up a bit of a community, providing a service and having a bit of fun.”
For Cheshire-based chef Aiden Byrne, star of the BBC series Restaurant Wars, looking after the community was where it all started. “During lockdown I was getting a bit itchy so I asked our street if they needed anything to eat. We made pies for a couple of old dears and then started a WhatsApp group, and people jumped on.”
It snowballed until he was making 500 pies a week, as well as selling charcuterie stored at his eponymous pub-restaurant in Lymm. When the time came to adapt the pub to incorporate social distancing measures before reopening, they decided to convert the old garage into a shop. “We’ve got a gorgeous little deli now, selling homemade charcuterie, chunky pies, bread and pastries, as well as wine.” There are
Chef Aiden Byrne ended up creating 500 pastries a week vegetables from the local grower, who also supplies the restaurant, and they open at 8am to serve coffee and croissants to the locals.
This new breed of restaurant-shop offers people the chance to get their hands on the sort of ingredients that, until now, have generally only been available to the trade: the likes of Cacklebean eggs, loved by chefs for their rich flavour, huge tins of San Marzano Italian tomatoes, and deep pink, intensely flavoured Iberico pork. Or, as Bird puts it: “It’s being able to shop like a chef.” Alongside that, most of the chefs are offering ready meals, meal kits or a bespoke service. “People come in and say, ‘I’m having a dinner party next week, can you make me a beef wellington?’,” says Byrne. “We say, ‘of course’.”
As for the owners themselves, it’s been a steep learning curve switching from chef or restaurant manager to shopkeeper. For the McCoubreys, it meant everything from redesigning the website, to learning how to deal with mistakes. Bob says: “In a restaurant you can sort things out straight away, but if a customer finds they are missing their sauce once they have got all the way home, it’s much harder. People were really understanding though.”
Helen Nathan, whose background is in front of house, found her new role hard too. “I did struggle at the start,” she admits. While a restaurant customer will let you know what they think at the time, when food is eaten at home, she explains, you need to wait for customers coming back “or someone stopping us in the village to comment, and this can take days”.
For the chefs, though, it’s a welcome chance to talk to customers instead of being stuck in the kitchen. “I’m normally behind the scenes, so I got to meet the customers. I enjoyed that, it felt old school, like a 1920s village shop,” says Bird, recalling the lockdown environment. “Really seeing what was going on, what people wanted. It’s changed the way I look at things now, you understand more what customers want.”
He revels in the feedback, even if it is a few days later. “They bring me their bread and cakes in to try, and hummus that they made, saying ‘your chickpeas are so amazing. I brought you in some hummus because it’s the best I’ve ever made.’” Byrne, too, loves chatting to the customers. “It’s nice to have a conversation about what we use, the process we go through with our charcuterie, for example.”
Most of all, says Bob McCoubrey, this new model offers security for the future. “We’ve got an outdoor area for the restaurant, which has been great, but we are worried about what will happen in the winter. We’ve got a back-up plan now.” Helen and Kris Nathan, too, say diversifying their business has given it more resilience. But you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s the Nathans, and the other shopkeeper-restaurateurs, who are the resilient ones.
The Kings Arms, 17 Fore Street, Mevagissey, Cornwall, PL26 6UQ; kingsarmsmeva.com
littlefrench, 2B North View, Westbury Park, Bristol BS6 7QB; littlefrench.co.uk
Mourne Seafood, 34-36 Bank Street, Belfast BT1 1HL; mourneseafood.com
Aiden Byrne Great British Food, Church Green, Higher Lane, Lymm, Cheshire WA13 0AP; aidenbyrne.co.uk