‘You must listen to your customers in the pub trade - a lot of people don’t get that’
LANDLORD: Dennis Wann in The Sailmakers Arms
Chewing the Fat, out to lunch with Phil Ascough
This week’s guest: Dennis Wann
Venue: The Sailmakers Arms
It all started with a rare type of New Year resolution. The type that is still remembered when you wake, that you decide to run with however life-changing it may become, and that you then maintain for 10 years and counting.
At about 3am on January 1, 2013, Dennis Wann decided to run a pub.
Perhaps worryingly, he was influenced at the time by various pub products. But he was also reassured by the support offered from the experienced operators of The Lion & Key and Ye Olde Black Boy. Alan Murphy and Chrissy Fleming, and their neighbour Adam Scruton, kept their promises and, six months later, Dennis took over at The Sailmakers Arms just along High Street.
“When I moved in I couldn’t even change a barrel but the others taught me and I’m a quick learner,” Dennis revealed a few weeks after passing the 10-year milestone.
“I walked in here with two suitcases to my name. I now have a nice house, I have paid off half of it, and I recently took this place on for another five years. It’s because we work hard.”
Four years ago he also took over Ye Olde Black Boy, a sign of success breeding confidence in a role which was a significant diversion from his reason for coming to East Yorkshire.
Dennis detailed a bit of his personal history: “I came to Hull in 1984. I was in the army at Leconfield. I met a woman from Hull, we got married and I moved to the city permanently in 1994.”
He worked in haulage for nearly 20 years, initially for other people and then running his own haulage company as well as a body and paint shop and a newsagents. Recession hit, the businesses failed and so did the marriage.
In 2009 Dennis started at the University of Hull, studying English literature and travel writing and living in Pacific Court, which was handy for getting to know the licensed trade in High Street. In 2012 he went home to Cornwall to look after his father, who had dementia, but he managed to get back to Hull to see in the New Year, and a new life.
“The lady who had this place was putting her notice in,” he recalled as we sat among the midweek lunchtime crowd in The Sailmakers.
“Chrissy, Alan and Adam convinced me to throw my hat into the ring so I applied to the pub company. I sold my car to fund the move back here, I went back to driving trucks to earn some money and I moved into the pub in June 2013.”
Like The Lion & Key, The Sailmakers is a relatively recent addition to Hull’s pub scene. Sources of pub history are many and varied. Between them they suggest The Lion & Key was a pub in the early 19th century and then became offices until maybe the late 1980s.
‘WE WORK HARD’: Dennis in the courtyard at The Sailmakers Arms
This column can’t vouch for or argue with any of that but I certainly remember the building from the mid-90s as Durty Nelly’s, a big, bright green place that did good Stella, table football and Jenga. As The Lion & Key it’s become one of the most popular pubs in the city centre, especially for food, and it certainly impressed Bishop Eleanor when we lunched there last November.
The Sailmakers Arms took its name from the services provided by E E Sharp ship’s chandlers who, according to Dennis, occupied the building for many years before it became a pub in 1988.
Dave Foster was the first landlord. I remember the courtyard as a place where you could happily spend an afternoon enjoying a glass or two while watching the chipmunks scampering along the wire runs which were fixed to the red brick walls. I don’t remember Dave or his parrot, but both of them feature in a couple of photographs in the pub.
Landlords, chipmunks and parrots don’t last forever, but at The Sailmakers they’ll never be forgotten.
“When I first took over the pub it was only about four years after Dave had passed away”, said Dennis.
“We were given the pictures and we wanted to put them up as a nod to someone who made the pub as popular as it was, and as it still is.”
Dennis’s wife Sally used to work for Dave. Her brother knocked the holes in the walls for the fish tanks. But it would be a few years before Dennis became involved.
“Some solicitors bought the plot and had it for a couple of years,” he said.
“They realised it was hard work and sold it to the brewery. Then it was sold again and ended up with Punch.”
There are generally two types of licensee. Those who moan endlessly about their terms and conditions, and those who don’t speak at all. But Dennis just tells it like it is. He can be lured into a grumble, but essentially he’s a straight-talking realist who recognises that however tough the business environment becomes, he can do something about it.
We talk about different business models for pubs. A freehouse is expensive to run because it’s free of tie and the licensee has to pay for everything. Managed pubs might be cheaper because there should be fewer stakeholders chasing a profit.
Dennis said: “A tied tenancy like ourselves pays extra for beer and spirits and has back-up from a pub company. Things like finance, legal and maintenance.”
TEAM EFFORT: Dennis and pub mascot Toby
The difference between the models explains why, during last year’s Holiday in Hull, we found ourselves paying something like £4 for a pint of Stella in one pub and, when it closed at 10.30pm, were then able to wander to another nearby and drink the same beer a pound a pint cheaper until midnight. Guess which pub was the busier.
Nearly 18 months since our Hull city break, the hospitality landscape has changed massively, and Dennis admits that opening hours for many pubs are without doubt being influenced by utility bills.
“Before the lockdowns, out of every pound we made we were left with about 20-30 per cent to play with, but since then it’s dropped to 10 to 20 per cent,” he said.
“Before Covid our gas and electricity was £350 per week and now it’s £800. It’s gone down a bit but that’s where the 10p in the pound comes from. Utilities have more than doubled and you can’t pass it on.
“It’s not like at home where you can turn off the heating. We have got LED lighting, timers and other equipment to reduce the bill, but just to have this room illuminated takes 60 light bulbs.
“We can’t pass on the extra costs to the customers because Hull is a working class city. It’s got that glass ceiling. When we renegotiated our terms here, the price they were telling me to sell the beer at was unrealistic.”
But, by working in partnership with Punch at The Sailmakers and Stonegate at the Black Boy, Dennis is full-on with investment and innovation at both sites.
“After Adam left the Black Boy some people took it on but things didn’t work out and one morning the area manager asked me if I wanted it. It needed a lot of TLC but we moved in as tenants in August 2019 and the pub company spent £60,000 renovating it,” he said.
The work included upgrading the toilets and improving the bar offer. The upstairs room, venue throughout the 1980s for National Union of Journalists Hull and East Yorkshire branch meetings, is now open again, initially for weekends only.
Within six months of taking over at The Sailmakers, Dennis had increased sales of 36-gallon barrels from a rate of 160 a year to 280. Over the years, the upstairs room has had a new floor and been redecorated and, even with the industry far from thriving, brings in a couple of functions a month.
The attractions are a consistent, fair, room rate whether it’s a birthday party or a wedding, and the offer of a full set-up service including music and food, where there have been significant advances.
I sampled the fare after our chat and can recommend the Cornish pasties which, along with the Doom Bar beer, enables Dennis to offer a taste of his home county. It was a good choice from a quality menu with the emphasis on the Pie Minister range featuring versions of beef, chicken and veggie/vegan fillings from mushrooms and asparagus to tofu, jackfruit and quinoa.
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN: Pictures of David Foster, the first landlord of The Sailmakers Arms, and his parrot
Proof that in this pub the modest pie has assumed a certain supremacy comes with the heading on the next page of the menu.
“NON PIE DISHES” include burgers, bangers and mash, a couple of fishy options, baguettes, loaded fries and some very tempting desserts.
“Until seven years ago we were only doing traditional pub grub,” said Dennis.
“Then we added the Pie Minister brand and have been known for that alongside the traditional fare. It’s good quality food cooked properly every day. We invested £9,000 in a steam oven to enable us to cook food quickly to a high standard.”
Add to that the £2,500 spent on furniture in the courtyard sun trap and £3,000 on air conditioning for the function room the day after signing the new deal with Punch and you have an idea of Dennis’s commitment.
But there’s also a frustration that he can’t do more as a result of measures introduced to protect fledgling licensees.
Dennis explained: “I could only get a five year deal because of the limit put in place to protect new licensees who don’t have the experience of running a business – a lot of people come into the trade with rose-tinted glasses. I would like a 10-year deal because if we had more time to get a return we could invest more.”
He says he feels fortunate that Punch and Stonegate want him to stay in charge of their respective hostelries, but there’s more to it than Dennis and his 18-hour days.
Most of the staff are family, and the others are treated that way, with a living wage and a recognition of the importance of demonstrating to staff and customers that running a pub is a team effort, and that includes chocolate Labrador and pub mascot Toby.
It’s a team that’s buzzing having this week scooped the award for best drinks offer among the entire Punch estate of 1,350 pubs. In addition Dennis made the shortlist for landlord of the year.
At the heart of the business and its success is the relationship with customers, and it is enhanced by maintaining a keen knowledge of the sector locally and in general. Dennis quickly confirms his position on another big story of the day – the Black Boy will not be one of the Stonegate pubs introducing “dynamic pricing.”
The rise of Princes Avenue and then the Fruit Market has been overcome because “it wasn’t our clientele – it was the place to be seen rather than to enjoy yourself.”
FAMILY AFFAIR: Dennis’s brother-in-law knocked the holes in the walls for the fish tanks at The Sailmakers Arms
The larger pubs aren’t really a concern because they’re geared to attract a different crowd again.
“We get more of a regular crowd – we have a diverse demographic,” said Dennis.
“During the week it’s family orientated and in the evening it’s regulars. On a weekend it varies from early 20s to late 60s and what they have in common is they don’t want rave pubs. We have door staff on a Friday and Saturday but that’s just to make sure our customers feel comfortable because we still do about 70 per cent of our trade at the weekend.”
As someone who was known to don his top hat and period costumes for such seasonal celebrations as Victorian Christmas and Edwardian Easter, Dennis would love to see them return and hopefully herald the arrival of more attractions in keeping with the museums and cobbles of historic High Street. But he is seeing some post-Covid positives.
“The public now seem to have a much better idea of how hard it is to make hospitality pay and how hard we have to work,” said Dennis.
“If you take something away from people they suddenly want it more, so people seem to appreciate hospitality a little more than they used to and they will always love the Old Town.
“A lot of cities lost this type of architecture. It was all wiped out but in Hull the lack of investment after the end of the fishing industry meant a lot of this was left alone and that’s been to our benefit. People discover this part of Hull and can’t believe the city is so maligned by some people.
“There are very few cities with this sort of atmosphere. That’s why people come back again and again. They come from along the M62 corridor and we get them before and after the ferry to Rotterdam.
“The quality of pubs is very high as well and a lot of that is about the amount of choice in the city. We have 24 products on the bar and over 150 bottles of spirits on the back bar in this pub alone.
“Every time we change something or put something new in it’s because we have been asked for it on a regular basis. Where possible we get in what the customer wants.
“It’s one of the biggest secrets of this trade. Listen to your customers. It’s fundamental in any business but a lot of people don’t get it.”
What also bemuses a lot of people is that The Sailmakers Arms can shine in the nationwide Punch awards yet no city centre pubs feature on the shortlist for this year’s Remarkable East Yorkshire Tourism Awards. Maybe they just weren’t good enough, but it’s more likely that they lacked the resource or appetite to enter.
Either way, the REYTAs organisers should be concerned.
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