Love your local pub feature - The Rutland Chesterfield
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00:00 [Music]
00:08 Pubs have been a cornerstone of our local communities for centuries,
00:11 offering a place for people to meet together and socialise,
00:14 as well as providing thousands of jobs and a cornerstone of the local economy.
00:18 Here we go behind the bar to meet the people who run our pubs
00:21 and say why it's important for you to love your local.
00:24 Tell me a bit about yourself and where we are.
00:27 My name's Martin, I run The Rutland, my wife Dawn, you can see her,
00:30 probably just over there somewhere, she's hanging around, she's on bar duty basically.
00:34 So we've run this place now for about, just over a year, isn't it Dawn?
00:37 Yep, just over a year, there she is, and yeah, it's been going well.
00:41 We took it on, it was May 5th last year, and it was completely closed.
00:46 We were working with a company called Spire Inns at the time,
00:49 who just asked us if we'd be interested in taking it on,
00:52 and it's a place that I've always come for years,
00:55 since being legally allowed to drink I suppose.
00:58 Jane and Ken used to have it when I first started coming here.
01:01 The idea was trying to get it back to being anything like its former glory,
01:07 and just turn it into a pub again that people want to come to,
01:09 and just be nice and chill, and get some real ales on, some nice drinks,
01:13 get some live music on again, and just be its traditional pub that it is.
01:18 That was always the idea of coming back here.
01:20 Do you employ any staff?
01:21 Yep, we have Jack, who's just left.
01:23 His dad's over from America this weekend, so he's American, he's from Atlanta.
01:27 We have Jordan, who's our assistant manager,
01:30 who used to work down at Einstein's just down the road,
01:33 and now he's just been promoted to assistant manager, and he's absolutely fantastic.
01:38 A lot of people say young people don't want to work nowadays,
01:40 but they've really not met our staff, because they are amazing.
01:43 We have Amy, who works here as well.
01:45 She runs the lock of a din with her other half as well,
01:48 but she works here when she's not working there,
01:51 because she just loves working in pubs that much.
01:53 We have another one called Lozza.
01:55 I call her a wand, because she is a wand.
01:57 But yeah, she's fantastic.
01:59 It's nice to get a bit of a community back with regulars and staff.
02:05 Always the idea for us as well, you've got to be quite chatty working behind the bar.
02:09 They're always the best kind of people, do work behind the bar, are chatty.
02:12 But yeah, they're brilliant.
02:14 Absolutely the best staff I could have ever asked for, really.
02:16 What kind of drinks do you serve?
02:18 At the moment, we've got obviously the usuals, like your wines, your lagers.
02:23 We have quite a few different types of ciders.
02:25 A lot of people like getting in the lilies, so we try and get lilies in as well,
02:30 because people do really love those kind of things nowadays.
02:32 Also, other dry and light and non-fizzy ciders.
02:39 One of the biggest things that we try to do at the moment is,
02:41 because we've only got five lines on for Rio Eitel,
02:44 is to use as many of the local breweries as much as possible.
02:50 So we're working on and off different times, about 13, 14 different local breweries at the moment.
02:55 So we have Little Critters, which are quite big around town anyway.
02:58 We love Dancing Duck Brewery.
03:00 We've just got some Woodford's in.
03:02 But yeah, just all sorts of different ones.
03:04 Like I said, I think this now, because we've just ordered from Little Brewing,
03:09 which are an amazing brewery, so I think that'll be like 15 different breweries now.
03:12 It's quite interesting only having five lines, but trying to keep it so.
03:16 The switching change quite a lot.
03:18 We only have a couple of mainstays, which is good for people,
03:21 because they know there's always going to be something on that they know they definitely like.
03:24 But a lot of people, we've noticed anyway, that come in here,
03:27 want to see a few different ones and ones they've never even tried before,
03:30 which I think is a good thing about Rio Eitel at the moment anyway, really.
03:33 Do you have a really popular drink?
03:36 I think the most popular drink we have on, it's not even on today actually,
03:38 because it's just gone, is A-Up by Dancing Duck Brewery.
03:42 A-Up, which actually does continuously, I can't even say it now,
03:46 continuously keeps winning awards at the moment.
03:49 They won like best and everything, they put the Arrayl Ale and yeah,
03:52 they're a brilliant brewery.
03:54 I don't know if it's the name of it, because it tastes amazing,
03:56 but it's pretty much people's favourite.
03:58 We'll get a few different ones off of them as well.
04:00 We've just got one coming called Quack to the Future.
04:03 So looking forward to trying that one.
04:05 Any future plans or anything?
04:06 Yeah, the idea is hopefully maybe get a couple more casks on,
04:09 so like on the line, and there's a couple of people who are interested
04:13 in helping us do that.
04:15 This pub now is owned by a company called The Pub People,
04:18 and they bought it last August/September time.
04:21 So when they bought it, they asked me and Dawn if we wanted to stay on,
04:24 because they were enjoying what we were doing,
04:26 and it fitted in with how they thought the pub should run.
04:29 The outside of the pub is a big one for us, and even for them as well,
04:33 because it's a little bit dilapidated.
04:35 The inside was hard enough as well to keep it going and keep it clean,
04:39 especially with such an old pub as it is.
04:41 So there's always little things that I look at all the time that you want to do.
04:44 But the outside is a big one.
04:47 Getting the kitchen open would be amazing.
04:49 It might be sometime soon, but it would be nice to just get
04:53 some traditional pub food on, even just like proper cobs,
04:59 like pork cobs and things like that, and just traditional things,
05:02 and eventually move towards maybe getting Sunday dinners on and things like that.
05:05 But yeah, it would be great to have the kitchen up and running again.
05:09 For us, it's just a case of keeping that atmosphere and everything that we wanted
05:15 from the place itself, and a place that anyone can come into.
05:19 And the amounts of different people in different ages that actually do come in here,
05:22 it shows it's working, which is brilliant,
05:24 because you never know if anything's going to work. You never do.
05:26 But it's been lovely seeing people coming back into place again
05:29 and getting live music on every Fridays now.
05:32 And some of the local bands that people really, really know,
05:35 or new bands or new up-and-coming ones.
05:38 We started off, first off, with a metal night that we do once a month,
05:41 because there's not much rock and metal scene at the moment in Chesterfield.
05:45 So we thought, well, it's kind of our thing as well.
05:47 We love all sorts of different types of music.
05:49 But setting that up was great, because it meant that people who love that kind of thing
05:52 and just socialise as rockers and metalers and everything had somewhere to go.
05:56 Is there anything you think makes the pub popular with the customers?
05:59 I know a lot of people just like the general decor of the place.
06:03 A lot of people like coming in and seeing it,
06:05 that it's looking back to what it was before.
06:08 I know people like our choice of music,
06:11 which is always interesting when people say that,
06:13 because I always make sure our playlists are a bit different or a little bit alternative and stuff.
06:18 People leave reviews and say, "Oh, it's nice being sat in the Rutland."
06:21 It was very rare that year, like classic rock being played in the pub nowadays.
06:26 And actually do point that out, which is really nice.
06:29 And it's just a case of getting everything.
06:31 To me, a lot of things in pubs is having conversation starters and all sorts of stuff.
06:36 Even things like we still get the daily papers in,
06:40 which is a thing that not all pubs do nowadays, but we like doing that.
06:43 It might be a bit old school, and papers are papers, obviously, aren't they?
06:46 But for us, it's nice to be able to have those elements that are a bit old school,
06:50 but bringing new elements as well.
06:52 There's a lot of things that people do like coming back in here, and it's location.
06:57 Obviously, with some people who've never even been to Chesterfield before,
07:00 because we're right next to the Spire, it's handy for them to be able to call in,
07:04 if you're the visitors or tourists, whatever you want to call them.
07:07 And it's nice just chatting to different people and getting to know different people,
07:10 and meeting new folk as well, which is really, really nice.
07:13 I still work with Sean, who does the Chesterfield Great Historic Pub tours around town,
07:18 on as much as different things as we can, on different tours.
07:21 Getting people everywhere, because it's not just about your pub and your venue,
07:26 it's about people going to other venues.
07:28 In my opinion, pubs need pubs, and that's the best way,
07:32 that I always think is a good way of doing things.
07:34 We have good relationships with loads of different pubs around the area,
07:37 loads of different people who work in different ways,
07:39 even shop owners and everything, and business owners, and restaurant owners, and cafe owners.
07:44 And to me, really, to try and keep Chesterfield a place that people actually want to go out and go to,
07:49 everyone just has to do the best that they can, and everyone work together as much as possible.
07:54 For us, that's the biggest thing, is working together with everyone,
07:57 and making it the best experience that people can have, going into Chesterfield.
08:00 And that's everything, everything. The market, the Spire itself, the shops, everything.
08:06 The whole point of Chesterfield.
08:08 The reason that people do like Chesterfield is because it is a genuinely nice place.
08:12 Specifically here in the Rutland, we like that.
08:14 The fact that people do come in, they always want to have a chat.
08:16 People who don't know anyone, will chat to anyone.
08:19 And it's that whole atmosphere that I want to keep going, really.