The Fox and Hounds, Denmead: New landlord takes on the mantle of community owned country pub

The News, Portsmouth

A popular Hampshire country pub has a new landlord as it looks ahead to its ten year anniversary of community ownership.

Transcript

00:00 Hi, I'm Rob Stark. I am the chairman of the Denmead

00:03 Cooperative that owns the building. It's the Fox and Hounds community cooperative

00:08 Which we took over in 2012

00:13 Chris Moore

00:17 Landlord of the Fox and Hounds Denmead

00:19 So new company set up for us Moore and KUK Ltd. Which trades as the Fox and Hounds in Denmead

00:27 And it's that's a very recent thing. So you know the old landlord left last week. So you're yeah

00:32 So he left on Friday the 3rd of May

00:35 So it was that's a week today. Yeah, I lived in the village for 25 years

00:42 Starting up in around the corner of this road now live down in the village down the bottom

00:48 And this came up as an opportunity in a project and it close to my heart. I used to drink it here when I was

00:54 18

00:56 when it was previous owners and

00:58 It was a fantastic opportunity to see what we could do.

01:02 So it is your first kind of venture into the pub industry?

01:05 Yes, first venture into the pub industry

01:07 And you spoke a little bit about how we used to kind of used to drink here

01:12 And it's a place close to your heart. Is that kind of the driving factor when you saw it come up?

01:16 You know, yeah, it's really it's just a beautiful beautiful pub

01:20 Set in a delicate location

01:24 And it's stunning it really is and it's a lovely country pub. It's got a great feel to it

01:29 And it you know the community of support everything that we're doing

01:32 And really it was just really taken to another level. We can really see what we can do about it.

01:37 Yeah, so have you got any changes planned?

01:40 Yeah, so we've started our initial changes. We're having a bit of a clear up outside already. So the first changes are sun's out this week

01:48 Summer's coming. So we've started by jet washing outside, put some new parasols up, going to do some of the patio work

01:54 We've upgraded the courtyard area

01:57 We're going to look at some

02:00 Refurbishment and decoration inside as we go along, but we still want to keep that really nice country feel to it

02:06 And just really really keep it as a lovely nice country pub really.

02:11 Yeah, and one of the draws to the place has always been the food as well. Is there any changes there?

02:16 Is the chef the same?

02:18 So we've kept the same chef. He's been here training for the last five years. He's quite young

02:24 But I like to keep younger people in the kitchen and train them

02:29 I didn't want to bring an expert in as such. I'd like to try and bring younger people through, train them, help them, nurture them

02:37 And really get that kind of feel that we're helping them and they're producing really good food

02:42 So we've had some really really positive feedback from last weekend

02:45 We did food Saturday, Sunday, and we've done the food most this week as well

02:49 We've had really good feedback from that and really positive feedback

02:52 So is it kind of been, are you planning changes to the menu?

02:55 Yes, we've got a specials board and that specials board sits up in the restaurant

02:59 So we've got a standard menu and a specials board and I've tasked the chef for a new special on the board every week

03:05 That's a main and a dessert and then we'll see how he gets on with that over the next couple of weeks

03:10 and then hopefully from there we can

03:13 Get into a couple of week and then we'll have a look at the menu and then as we go through the summer

03:18 We'll start to try and change it so more seasonally as well and get some more fast snacks outside

03:24 And things like that as well

03:26 In terms of the food, obviously it's been a week

03:29 But what are your highlights especially on the menu? What do you recommend?

03:32 I've been doing a little bit of quality control

03:36 That was good

03:39 I had a really nice Yorkshire pudding with beef brisket, a red wine jus

03:43 and

03:46 a mirepoix of veg underneath it and that was absolutely fantastic. A lot of people like the seafood

03:51 There's a really nice piece of cod with some new potatoes and fresh veg on there and they absolutely love that

03:56 That's going down really well

03:58 And our steaks and burgers are absolutely fantastic

04:00 For those that don't know the history of the Fox Niles, what makes it so special?

04:04 So for me, it's the way that the community have saved the pub

04:09 10 years ago. They actually made a huge effort to modernize, refurbish and reshape the actual layout and the changes

04:18 And to keep it as a community pub is absolutely brilliant for us

04:22 That was all down to Rob and his team

04:25 Yeah, so Rob, yeah so 10 years ago

04:30 Well, 2012

04:33 This pub was built in the 1800s as an ale house to support the local agricultural workers

04:39 So it's been trading a long time as an ale house

04:42 And then I used to commute, I live two doors away. I used to commute every day up to London

04:48 You didn't get back till late. I'd drive past the pub at 8, 9 o'clock at night seeing all the people there thinking

04:53 I can't wait till I work down here. And the minute I worked down here in 2012

04:57 They decided to close it and knock it down and build houses

05:01 So a few of us got together and we formed a team

05:06 And we managed to raise nearly £500,000 to buy it

05:10 A lot of fighting going on with, I don't mean physically, legally

05:15 Because we had to get them, the planning commission was rejected etc

05:21 And we ended up buying it and refurbishing it

05:23 And we opened on December 4th, 2014

05:27 So this year is our 10th anniversary in December

05:31 So we're very proud of that and it's been really good

05:33 The co-operative is successful

05:36 We've always tried to be supportive of our tenants

05:40 And I'm sure that as time goes on with Chris we're going to do great things together

05:46 We've had lots of mentions from Parliament right through to the Times newspaper last year

05:51 In 2021 they called us the gold standard of community owned pubs

05:58 It's incredible to see that the last 10 years have been pretty turbulent times

06:02 With lots of pubs going out of Covid

06:04 Especially for Covid, yeah

06:06 We've obviously supported our tenants through that time

06:09 There's also a big niche here where we look after our customers

06:12 And that support filters through

06:14 We sell premium ales, premium wines, sell premium food

06:18 We offer a premium service

06:21 And looking after people in that premium way really does work

06:25 And that's filtered all the way through from the community all the way through into the pub

06:29 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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