Maria Lloyd (00:01.454)
Hello and welcome to the My Local Marketer podcast, which shines a light on the success stories, key learnings and insights from people and businesses based in Reading, Berkshire. I'm your host, Maria Lloyd. I've lived in Reading for 20 years and I've only recently started to appreciate what our wonderful town has to offer. Join me as I explore Reading's opportunities and lessons in more detail. Now, without further ado, let's jump in. Okay. So hello, Marius, and thank you so much for coming on the My Local Marketer podcast. Hello. How are you?

very well, thank you. And thank you, I should say, first of all, for the really delicious lunch. That soup was absolutely amazing. Did you make that? I made it just this morning, yeah, before you guys came in. Very organised. Well, that leads us into the fact that we are here at the Dewdrop Inn. We've been on a walk works this morning and you very kindly hosted us for lunch afterwards, which has been absolutely delicious. And your puppy is amazing. The new addition to the pub, yes.

Yes, you've got a kitten as well, haven't you? Yeah, he's three months old now. The idea was to get the kitten first so he can set the boundaries for the puppy and that seems to be working right now, so that's cool. well done on that. So how long have you been at the Dewdrop Info? You've recently taken over, haven't you? Yeah, we moved in around the 19th of July. Actually, that was our opening day. We moved in the Monday before and then we launched on the 19th of July. And to be honest, it's been really great.

We've had awesome support from the community. It's been really busy. It's kept us going. It's great. That's amazing. mean, you say from the local community, we are, I mean, it feels like this is an in the middle of the woods. That's no exaggeration. So do you mean like all the houses is there, it's not like a housing estate around here? Yeah, there's, there's a couple of roads down here that's got quite a few residents in it. We've got Noel Hill just up the road, Crazies Hill, Bertitts Green, Honey Lane and Hurley is all.

very, very close, all within two miles. And I think that's where the majority of our customers come from. Of course, we're reaching out currently for the sort of edge of Maidenhead and Reading as well. So that's where we're reaching in for, you know, marketing-wise, and it is working. People are coming in from a bit further away. Brilliant. I mean, you've done fantastically well. I said, you've only been here three months. It only takes you three months in a new job just to find out where all the files are. Never mind start a business, get it up and running.

Maria Lloyd (02:21.1)
Yeah, I think we were quite lucky in the way that we got to start from scratch, which is often a bit harder work, but you get to put your ducks in the road from the beginning. So how do you actually market what you do then to people? Yeah, so we use a lot of social media. I think that's a, it's a very fine platform to work on. Facebook specifically, our target market is sort of 35 upwards, I think majority 50 plus, I think.

And I think those people, they've not quite tapped into the sort of younger generation social media. They all on Facebook. And so we kind of just use that mostly. And that's really paid off for us. What made you want to come here in the first place? It seems like, you know, suddenly to end up here in an inn in the middle of the woods. When we first started negotiations with Breakspear, they did show us a few different sites. We drove around the three counties looking for

You know, that X factor which a pub has to have, I think for us, the X factor is generally location. No one likes having your sandwich next to a main road. So we had to find the perfect location. We looked at a few pubs and then we got a phone call one day and they said, hey, why don't you go have a look at this pub? in the forest. I've never heard of it. And to be honest, when we drove in here and we thought, wow, where we actually going? This is really in the middle of the forest.

And as we came around the bend, it sort of opened up and the sun was shining and it was a beautiful looking place and we immediately fell in love with it. And I think the rest is history, you know, we sort of said, where do we sign? And that's it. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I was driving up this morning, it's my first time coming in. I was thinking, where am I going? Is the sat-nav broken? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, beautiful location. So since you started, have you faced any obstacles or challenges and how have you overcome them? Yeah, I think.

Being South Africans taking over a little British country pub comes with its challenges. You know, it's not because we're South African, but because we're also not familiar to the area, you know, and what the market's looking for and what the other pubs in the area are doing, you know, and we want to target precisely in the middle of that. We don't want to be a cheap run-of-the-mill pub where people, for lack of a better phrase, neck pints and then go home.

Maria Lloyd (04:44.878)
We want to be able to offer a quality product at a quality price, you know, a quality establishment. And I think we've just hit the nail correctly, you know, to infiltrate that market. There's not a lot of that around us, but that's been the challenge I think is just to gauge and perfect exactly who we're aiming for. Aside from that, I mean, unique selling points. You've just said you're a South African as well as having this pub in the middle of the woods. So you've got so many unique points going for you. This is not your stereotypical pub.

Yeah. I mean, going back to the social media thing, we've infiltrated a lot of South African groups because the South Africans, we're always looking for other South Africans, which I'm sure, you know, if you're an expat and you're in a different country, you know, you kind of embrace what the country has to offer. But at the same time, you're looking for a little piece of home and that's what we kind of offer you. You know, we don't generally have many South African things on our menus and we surely don't market ourselves as a South African pub. In fact, we

quintessential British. But on like rugby days, we do push the advert out to South Africans where we do a little barbecue outside and you know, we welcome them in and I think that's really clicked well and we had a day about three weeks ago where we had 150 South Africans down here just having a barbecue in the garden and it was fantastic. That's sort of what we're aiming to do here.

We are at 2024 now, so we're not too far past COVID. And unfortunately, I know many pubs and inns, did close in COVID. know a few near me have closed. So where do you see the growth opportunities now? Yeah, I think COVID was a challenging time for everyone. We ran a hotel at the time, hotel slash pub slash restaurant. And we were closed for a total of about 16 or 17 months, you know, and it was a really tough time.

Thankfully for us, we build up a really good rapport with our customers that the minute we were allowed to be back open, which if I remember correctly was sort of the first of April or something around there in 2021. The morning we woke up ready to open, you know, we've prepped our whole menu and we look outside because only outside dining was allowed and there was two inches of snow lying outside. So it was horrific. But the snow melted away.

Maria Lloyd (07:01.962)
skies opened up and we had a full garden service that day. And I think the key areas and for the future of pubs is you need to really hone in and focus on what your guest wants. It's really easy to get bogged down by what you want. And I think a lot of places struggle because they tend to do what they want or they tend to think, but this is what we serve. If you don't like it, you don't go somewhere else. And we're just not like that. You know, we, we focus on what you want. We focus on

friendliness and happiness and bring your dog in and bring your kid in. As long as you spending money, you know, we don't really care how we do it, you know, and I think that's important. That was the pivotal point for us to cope with the COVID challenges was to just be able to accommodate and welcome everyone. think that's a key thing for the due job in because you are so welcoming and so accommodating and you do actually, you are focused on the local community. So could you say a bit more about what you.

do in local community. Yeah, so we keep an eye on the events that's going on in the Hurley village and in the areas. We've got, for example, I think it's Guy Fawkes celebration coming up in November, know, Halloween night. We're hosting a big cycle group that's sort of local to the area and they're all dressing up in their Halloween suits and then they're going to come in here and have a burger and a pint, you know. And the thing is we...

could very easily go, no, we can't have that. It's absolute chaos and it's carnage if 20 people on their bicycles arrive and then they're like, we want to special prize. It's very easy to sort of go, no, it's too much, it's too much. And we just went, yeah, sure. Burger and a pint, 20 quid, come in, we're gonna host 30 cyclists in their scary costumes. And that's what we're doing to connect with the community. Same with the Guy Fawkes evening. We had an email out of nowhere going, can you?

put a prize up for the raffle and we'll donate money towards the fireworks and the fireworks is not even near us, know, it's two miles away from us. Are we going to get trade from it? I don't know, but it's not the point. The point is, the dew drop, they gave us a donation, they involved in this, you know, let's go down and support them and have a few points. I think that's what you've got to do. You've to connect with the people, know them by their name, welcome them in and help them. It's a challenge every day to collect money for charities and so on.

Maria Lloyd (09:24.962)
We can't support every charity, but those that we can and we think it's important, we definitely try and help where we can, you it makes a big difference. Now on your website, you say, obviously that you and Sarah, you're South African, but you've also traveled extensively, which I love. And you say that that's helped to inspire your food. So what influences have you brought with you to this beautiful pub in the middle of the woods? Well, we've got quite a diverse diet in South Africa. We've got huge influence from India. We've got huge influence from

Northern Europe and, you know, England. If you ask any South African, what's your, what's your sort of South African food? We tend to not really know. There's a few things that we go, yeah, we like this and we like that. And that's sort of traditionally South African, but our huge influence comes from India and Malaysia and Holland and so on. I think I keep a lot of that in mind when I'm cooking and when I'm writing my menus. And then every time we travel,

We travel to eat, we don't travel to really see places, though we'll go to the Eiffel Tower, but I really want to go to the cafe and I want to see what the traditional French cuisine is like. I want to go to Bangkok. I want to eat the street food. I want to go to Mumbai and try and not eat the street food there. But you know what I mean? And then I bring that back and I sort of do our adaptation of that, which will suit the British palate. It's not as spiced as they enjoy their food in Asia.

So I adapt it and it tends to go down well. Currently we've got a sort of a braised duck leg on the menu and it's done in like a sweet honey and soy glaze with coriander and cashew nut crust on it and that's served with a pak choi. And that whole dish, I met a chap in Indonesia while we were out there last year and he served me this dish and I was just blown away by the flavor and the texture of it. And I sent him a message the other day over Instagram and I said, hey dude, like, can I have this recipe?

I'll put it on my menu, I'll put your name on the menu and I'll sell it as Max Indonesian duck leg. And he went, yeah brother, no problem. And he sent me the recipe, know, he's got a big restaurant in Jakarta and in Bali. And so the kid knows what he's doing, you know, and he sends me the recipe, I put it all together, I sent him pictures of it. He goes, wow, that looks amazing. And it's been flying off the hot pass, you know, people really enjoy that sort of diverse dining. It's not just sausage and mass, it's not just fish and chips. It's a little bit something more.

Maria Lloyd (11:50.766)
Even though if you want the sausage mash, you can come here and I make all the sausages ourselves here. So it's all homemade, full meat, gluten free sausages that's made on site. And the flavors are different. At the moment we've got a Thai sweet chili pork sausage on. So that with a bit of mash, tennis tem broccoli, and you've got different flavors. It's not just a Cumberland or a Lincolnshire sausage. It's something more. I love that idea of taking all these global influences, but adapting them and

on the local level because like you said it's familiar but at the same time it's different and again that makes you stand out. For sure. I think the British palate has gone quite a far way since 10-15 years ago when I first walked into kitchens. People are exploring a lot more, they're traveling more, they're eating more different foods and it shows in what they're ordering. They're not just ordering the burgers anymore, you know, they're ordering the crayfish and clam tagliatelle with chilli and ginger.

lime leaf or something like that. It's not just the boxed standard food anymore, but it's still a crayfish and clam tagliatelle. It's just adapted a little bit more foreign, a little bit nicer. So what's your vision for the future for the dew drop in? I think the sort of short term plan with the dew drop is to maintain what we're doing, keep going on the route that we're on. I think it's paid off really well so far. I think people are really embracing what we're doing here.

the welcoming aspect of it all and the fact that all the foods now are freshly made and it's sort of at the right price point. You can get a cold pint, know, that sort of division. We really love engaging with people and we just want to be that place that you always feel like when you walk in that you, you know, that you welcome and it's a warm, there's a fire burning, there's a dog lying on the floor, you know, you're going to trip over the dog at some point, but it's part of it. Bring your baby and the baby runs around.

That's just the vision we have for this place. think it's so unique in its location. The garden is massive. There's areas to play for the kids. If we just stick to that vision, people will embrace it. They'll keep coming back. Thank you so much, Marius. Thank you again for lunch. And honestly, your food here is delicious. So I'm sure a lot of the walking group today are going to be back, including myself. Amazing. Thank you.