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. Hello Mina and welcome to the My Local Marketer podcast. Hey, good morning.

Thank you so much for coming on. How are you doing? Yeah, we're all good. Obviously bit of a stressful morning trying to get here, but no, perfect. We're here and yeah, looking forward to a good old chat. I know, well, infamous reading traffic, isn't it? I know, well, when we talk about what you, let's ask you that question first before we ask you to introduce yourself as to reverse this around. What do you like about Capuchin? I take it not the traffic. Do know what? Actually, I don't live too far from the bar, so I like the fact that I can actually walk in and choose to use my car or...

to walk into the business. So I'm quite lucky in that respect. But actually, Caversham's got its own little life going on and its own little bubble. So you don't have to venture out for too much. Caversham's beautiful, isn't it? Now, could you just introduce yourself and Angel Bar, which is where we are now, which is stunning. Thank you. So Angel Bar came about in April, 2022. It wasn't a mistake. It wasn't planned for really. It kind of just happened.

Probably the best thing actually, didn't have a lot of time to think before we opened the doors. But what it has done is everything that I've loved in my hospitality career, creativity, friends, collaborations, kind of all in one place now. And I can kind of expand on that. That's great. Because you own Angel Bar, but your parents were in hospitality, weren't they? So one would say you were a glistening for punishment. Yeah, 100%. I do blame them for that. I know my side of the business and what I do really well. So I don't find that difficult, which

I think there's comfort in that in itself, so that it's not new to me. The challenges, I've been there before. I've worked for some amazing brands, so I've managed to grow and learn other sides of the business. So I've just got a nice overall experience of what's going on. And Angel Bar has basically given me space to get creative. Freedom, as we were saying before we started recording, is so important, isn't it? Yeah, 100%. I think I said to you, was independence versus money.

Maria Lloyd (02:24.672)
At the moment, independence has got more value than the money that's coming in within hospitality. But yeah, it's given me quite a nice grounding with the family and yeah, I don't feel so tied. I can use my experiences now to make changes. So what do you like about hospitality? Is it just that it was so familiar because your parents were in it, so you already had an understanding of hospitality and that's how you got into it? Or is there something you like about it and that's what's kept you in? I think what's kept me in is

I love creating the events that we do. I love bringing people together. think it's such a stand on the sidelines and just watch everybody come together and have a good time from start to finish and just give people an environment that they can step into just for a couple of hours, leave everything behind and we take care of everything. So all the touch points. And we literally want you to just come enjoy yourself and leave and not stress, whether it's decorating food, kind of provide a whole experience.

And there's a lot of things that we do do that we don't put on our website for the reason that it's easier to speak to somebody and understand what they want out of their event, because it's their event in our bar. That's really interesting. I mean, you mentioned your website there and I really like your website because there are two, let's call them call to action sections on there where you say anyone who's interested in local photography or video, anything like that, artists even just to come and speak to you. So how else apart from encouraging local photographers, do you collaborate with local?

businesses. So for me, it's a lot of networking. I want to be a hub of, I keep using that word creativeness because I just love people that can just expand their mind, paint, sing, dance, and just want to create like a little beacon where we can just bring people in. And when we did start the business, I had kind of a clear vision that we'd be a table service cocktail bar, kind of 30s upwards. It was all very nice. And actually some of this has gone to the wind. We do some crazy things in here.

Bare less to line dancing, we've got drag bingo, have singles mixes. And we kind of listened over the past couple of years and we know people like to party and it's creating that party environment. I love that, as you said, we were surrounded by feathers at the moment. Drag bingo last night. I just love the variety. I mean, that's one of the things that you mentioned before that I really love that you said you've got to in business the first two years be very flexible and not have that set idea.

Maria Lloyd (04:48.91)
what you need to do because you just need to try things, don't you? Definitely. When we came to Caversham to open the bar, we thought we were going to do all these amazing cocktails, all these things that people hadn't heard of and infused this, that and the other. But over time we realized we've gone back to all the classic cocktails. We listened to what people wanted. We've kept it really simple. And because we are independent, we can flex at any time. And we work with independent breweries as well. So there's a lot of space.

to move. That's brilliant. You mentioned there that obviously you need to be flexible in the first couple of years. What other challenges have you faced? Yeah, I'd say the biggest one was probably our gas and electric bill that did kind of tip us from opening seven days a week and we're now open four days a week. But that's because we did learn a little bit about where we're situated, we're not on a full traffic road and we need to entice people to come to us. So just being open for those long hours and pretty much.

spending out on labour and lights and electric and things that we didn't need to, we made some tough decisions to say, okay, we'll go with the days that are busy and then we'll kind of work backwards. We'll probably open up more days in the future, but we just needed to bring it all back to basics for a while. However, on those days that we're now closed, we have more events going on. So we do do like mystic mingles, we have christenings, baby showers, Sundays are great because we have a lot of 70, 80th birthday parties, we've got more family gatherings.

So I'm really, really fortunate that the space will entertain anybody from 18 to 90 and above. So it's got a couple of faces. It pushes me more to do things on those quiet days to create. I love your focus on this idea of creativity. And I think just looking around the bar, you can see how that comes in. Because obviously, if anyone is watching the video, we've got the beautiful wings behind us, which I think clearly say Angel Bar done by Amy. Yeah, Amy from Two Birds.

But that's what you do, everything around the bar has got that individual unique touch. Yeah, and Amy spent a good couple of weeks in here and she was chatting with us and we were part of every bit of the journey with what she's done in the bar. And I I mentioned she created three little sherabs for us, here no evil, see no evil. And she's put her own spin on them and my partner looked through different portraits and she just brought everything together. So she totally got us from the beginning, which is amazing. And actually her artwork

Maria Lloyd (07:14.124)
She's turned into gift cards for us and it's on vouchers. So we'll probably expand on that a little bit more and you'll probably see it on jumpers and t-shirts. This idea of collaboration, it's not just you going, I want to do something you've got with a local artist and then you said, okay, you've got wings there. Then you said, okay, let's put the wings on cards. I you've just got to be so open-minded with what you do and willing to try things. Yeah, definitely. And this is quite a famous wall. Everybody seems to slap themselves against the wall for a picture, which is great.

and you'll find the wings on probably Bumble, Tinder and a few other profiles as well, which is quite funny. So they do get around. How do you divide your time as a business owner between all the activities that you must do? Good question. The easiest way to do that is we keep everything so simple here. There's no long processes. I don't do paperwork that I don't really need to do. And I think actually having the business closed to reset for those couple of days.

just gives us a massive balance. So those days that we're open, I feel like we're on fire for those days because we're quite rejuvenated. When we do start opening those extra days, it'll just come naturally and it will just fall into place. You've done so much for Angel Ball. What are your plans for the future? We are going to work more on the outside events. So we've got some amazing events coming up next year where we've been talking with the council.

We do a lot of pop-up bars, so we've popped up in people's back gardens, we work with Thames Quarter, we pop up on their social nights. We've got a horse box with angel wings, so we can go out to festivals. So I think now I understand the pattern in our base bar. We can look at the opportunities where we need to push. So you focus on one thing at a time, so you're thinking outdoor events, so you will focus on outdoor events for a bit, test things. Yeah. And then after that, then you'll pick something. So it's one thing at a time. Yeah.

I mean, obviously over the past we've done quite a few outside events, but it is picking the ones that suit us, that suit our vibe. And for me, it's great because it means that I can keep my staff employed, we can find other things for them to do, and it keeps them a little bit more occupied, so they're not just coming into work every day doing the same thing. Variety is the spice of life, as they say. I think it depends what reason you go into it.

Maria Lloyd (09:36.674)
If it's a hobby, because you like drinking in bars and you like the buzz in the bars, then keep it that way. It is hard work and customers are hard work. And I'm not going to say anything that people in business don't know already. It's quite a draining environment. You need to keep yourself healthy as well, which keeps the business healthy. And I think one thing I've learned with hospitality is the staff turnover is quite quick because it's usually a transient job unless you've got a massive career path for somebody. So yeah, you're constantly on the

recruitment role. But I've been so fortunate, I think I mentioned to you earlier, I've got some amazing girls that work for me. So it's more important that I expand and move the business on to keep them engaged and with me. I think that's key as well that you've mentioned that because like you said, it's not just about you and the business, but the staff, the employees of a business I think are so important. They're the ones that are talking to customers. They know all the knowledge by the time you've trained them up. So I did not want to lose that.

Exactly. So just to keep the staff happy, to keep them varied, as you said, with Spice of Life, to do different things, I think is so important. So by looking after your staff, they'll be looking after the business. Yeah, definitely. And you can ask any of them. And the only thing I say to them is just greet the customer as soon as they walk in. That's all I ask because we can recover from a not so great drink or if we've dropped something, but you can't recover from that first interaction into the bar. And I think that's where we win most of the time.

Do you have any final thoughts that you'd like to leave our listeners with? I have actually planned the event's calendar for the next six months. So I'm actually working ahead of the game a little bit. So I'm quite chuffing myself for that one. So keep an eye on our mail list. Beautiful people coming into the bar. We've got some more live music coming in and we are going to be out and about in Caversham with the cocktail bar as well. So there'll be plenty more collaborations.

I have to say just really grateful for the support and the regular customers that come in and the venue highs that we do have in the bar for the parties and they're mainly from Caversham people. So unfortunately I have to lock the bar off for a night but they've kept us in business so we are so appreciative of the recommendations. Mina, thank you so much. I've thoroughly enjoyed talking to you and let's go take a picture with the wings. Aw, thank you so much.