The sheer numbers that came through the doors that evening along with the trade since, it has proven to be a significant hit. Guests included members of the press, suppliers, old colleagues, friends and family members. They were all there to check out his latest venture, enjoy the famous selection of craft beer and gin and of course tuck in to the renowned “Juicy Bastard” burgers.
Sometimes to move forward it's necessary to pause and consider how and why you've got to where you're at today. Opening the latest site provided Ben with that opportunity. He spoke to us about his and the PubLove story. It proved to be an experience he would later describe as cathartic and akin to an enlightening session on the psychologist’s chaise long. This is an intriguing journey as Stackhouse funded much of the early expansion of the business with his own personal credit card. It's “the stuff of London legend”.
Being the owner and founder, much of PubLove originates through me. That’s not to say that the people I’ve worked with haven’t had a massive bearing on the company and the ideas we pursued however, I guess the routes of the business lie in my childhood. You see I was born into hospitality and grew up first in a family run pub and then a hotel in Torquay.
It meant the hospitality trade was engrained in me from an early age and it was there that I learnt my first lessons in the sector. A lot of Japanese tourists would show up on buses thinking our hotel was Fawlty Towers; my father gave up trying to correct them and instead would do the Ministry of Silly Walks impression on the front steps, to try and get some PR. The tourists loved it.
I think entrepreneurialism started when I did a paper round at the age of 12, while doing that I also got a job washing up in our hotel, and subsequently did some more of this in the hotel across the road. Soon after, I added in mowing the lawns at both locations. I learnt to juggle responsibilities and time; there was always an element of being my own boss. Looking back, even at that young age I was striving to achieve as much as possible. It has been a consistent theme throughout my life.
I studied business and finance at college as it was something quite general which would widen my options and I wasn't sure what I wanted to be. I didn’t really enjoy it, as studying through books wasn’t my thing. To my mind, hands on life experience is irreplaceable (that's me in the middle of the picture below in case you're wondering).
After college in Cambridge, I wanted to move back to Torquay, so I did what I do best and went up and down the high street looking for jobs. Millets had both a weekend position and youth training scheme job, naturally I said I would take on both. Their reply was that this wasn’t possible. Being fond of a challenge I offered them a proposal stating that they gave me both positions and if I ever let them down on either, they could sack me from both. I never missed a day and even got to do a management course, 1 day a week on the company’s time.
From there I went on to hold various management positions in my early twenties, one of which was in First Sport in Bristol. Initially I had turned down the position three times on the grounds it wasn’t practical, but then someone told me that I was wise not to take on such an "impossible task", so I decided there and then I had to take on the challenge. Another management position followed with Vue cinemas and I realised retail wasn’t for me. I had learnt some very valuable management lessons along the way mind.
By this time the family hotel had closed and my dad was running a YHA in Rotherhithe. A property developer from East London, whom dad had previously advised on setting up a hostel company, asked if he knew anyone who would be able to run it. So my father put me in touch. I got the job and moved to London to run a backpackers hostel in a shut down pub on Lambeth Walk. I ran it 7 days a week, just me and the cleaner, operating for 4 months like that. Sleeping with a door bell in one hand and the phone in the other.
Then I got someone in to manage the hostel for 2 days a week, so I could have a life. I would return to enquire how booked up the hostel was, with 52 beds available. One time I returned to find we had 65 beds booked and my colleague stated this was a ‘nice problem’. A nice problem, created by things going well, which has gone on to become a personal mantra and company value. Better to have a problem to solve because you are doing well, than a problem caused by under performing.
From there, I progressed to supporting the developer across his business. A residential portfolio, pubs, licensing, planning, development and acquisitions. It was during my time working on acquisitions that I identified The Green Man pub on Edgware Road, a Punch leasehold, as a potential new hostel site. The developer was not keen to work with Punch and thought the site was a little small, so I asked did he mind if I had a go. I’ll never forget his reply, “fill your boots son”.
So I set up my company and took on the lease in 2007. I had developed a good reputation with NatWest Bank, through my involvement with his company and I was able to obtain a small loan. Along with savings invested by my family and £10,000 on my credit card I managed to raise £60,000. At the age of 31 it allowed me to build my first hostel, above the Green Man pub in Paddington.
It was a very exciting period because it provided me with the opportunity to run things the way I wished, utilising my experiences accumulated over the years. The biggest success of the first site was in making the pub and hostel work together in harmony, as opposed to closing the pub to develop the hostel. We achieved this by showing customers that each part of the business was dependent on the other and never prioritising one over the other.
We took the same approach into the next venture, The Steam Engine near Waterloo. This was a small pub that had a record of failure dating back to the previous 3 incumbents. With just enough ceiling height for triple bunks, we managed to squeeze in 42 beds. I agreed to take on the tenancy for 11 months at £10 a week! We began redecorating the upstairs, 4 rooms and 2 bathrooms, one room at a time on my credit card. Using the income generated from opening the first room to guests to pay off the card and fund the second room and so on.
A year later came The White Ferry in a prime location just around the corner from Victoria coach station. We worked on the same business model to make use of disused space above pubs to offer tourist accommodation and breath life back in to the pub. Reintroducing happy hours, live sports and karaoke we were able to triple the previous bar income.
We opened one site a year subsequently with The Great Eastern in docklands and then The Crown on Lavender Hill.
The saturation of the London accommodation market in the lead up to London 2012, along with a thorough strategic review of the business lead to a decision to redirect our pubs. No longer would we prop up our drinks sales with expensive entertainment and discounts. This naturally took us down the path of offering food.
After trying various different things across the estate, and driven by our small kitchen spaces I realised that a simple food offer would work best. This meant a single focus on achieving outstanding food quality. Burgers were a huge trend and something I felt confident we could excel at.
The new focus therefore was on outstanding handcrafted burgers. The accolades we subsequently received lead to us go down the premium route with our drinks range with a specialism in beer and gin as well as a strong focus on London products. Our pubs and in particular our food and beverage offer became a real strength and it made sense to leverage this to attract guests to our hostels.
This new found confidence and belief in this offer created a desire to engage our customers, guests and team around a single brand. We realised the one thing which united us was our love of pubs and hence, PubLove was born. Our burgers meanwhile have become renowned which resulted in the branding and website, Burger Craft. The Juicy Bastard was London's fifth best burger by Twenty Something London
Every February we reach the slowest trading point of the year. This can cause some anxiety. On the whole I try not to dwell on problems because problem solving and innovating is my job. Throughout the process and journey to reach this point, there were areas where I made mistakes, but it’s your mistakes that teach you how to solve future problems.
Learning from your failings is what makes you who you are and drives where you’re going. If I hadn’t messed up when running my business, I wouldn’t have had the drive and capacity to put it right. If we only got it slightly wrong, we would probably have reacted by getting it slightly right. Embrace the complications and difficult times is my advice to any budding entrepreneurs. This is because the bigger the problem, the more impressive the potential solution.
In the short term, developing the existing business. That means not falling back into old habits and letting my operations manager, manage. In the medium term, to acquire and develop more pubs and deliver our great offers to new areas. In the long-term, the idea is to develop and expand other versions of our concept.
I am delighted with the team I have around me and very optimistic about our prospects. I’m also very grateful to all the people I have worked with which has led the business to where it currently is. The whole enterprise is very organic, I am constantly looking at how to improve, adapt and incorporate the business into an ever changing market. My role now is problem solving as well as innovating and that is what I will strive to continue doing.
You can follow Ben on Twitter @benstackhouse and PubLove @inPubLove.
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