NEW INN BRIEF – almost 6 years on
It would be fair to say that the New Inn has survived the potential closure of 2020 with the community buy-out and almost 6 years of trading now behind us. With continued effort and support, it looks like it will survive well into the future. We seem to be bucking the trend in hospitality as we are regularly busy when others aren’t. We put this down to our staff who are always welcoming and cheerful making a visit a pleasant experience for all. The frequent activities and events the pub offers (most weeks at least 2 events) provide people with the entertainment they want in a fantastic atmosphere. (Let staff know if there is something else/more/less you want)
The Restaurant is booming most nights with people travelling from further and further afield. Kaan has 3 regular chefs to assist him and his frequent changes to the menu help massively with our repeat visitors whereas the reviews he gets for the food are consistently good. The reviews from one off visitors (eg people in the numerous holiday lets or down for a family function) are also good and often show surprise at how good the food and service are for a small country inn. Our restaurant is now consistently in the Top Ten Taunton Tripadvisor eating houses.
The Bar and front of house continue to provide a healthy turnover for wet sales as well as providing constant employment for those seeking their first job, often before they leave us for further education. A good proportion of bar turnover is from locals who seem to be getting what they want. (Tell us if you’re not)
The Accommodation is busy and occupancy regularly exceeds our expectations with a mixture of business and people (often relatives) attending functions locally. Many customers then decide to eat in which helps keep the restaurant very busy too. Now almost 50% of our staying customers are repeat visitors.
The Café/skittle alley is proving popular as a day-time meeting place and there are over 33 regular groups meeting there. With people just meeting friends, cycling groups and dog walkers it can often be busy and the decision to provide a ramp to the courtyard has afforded much extra space. The cafe has also become a venue for local artists and crafts people to display their wares. An unforeseen spinoff of the cafe has been the restaurant lunchtime trade which has really picked up since the café opened.
There is still some refurbishment work that is needed such as render and paint roadside, Toilet blocks, Kitchen repairs and we shall continue to fundraise for these and other projects, mainly through pushing shareholding. We have gained about 20 new shareholders each year since 2020 (currently 287) mainly from either sceptics who now believe this community project will work, or people who are so impressed with what we have done so far that they wish to support us.
We are concentrating carefully on rising costs (Energy, National Insurance, Rates, rising prices and staff wages) and doing our best to absorb as many of these as we can. That said, even though we are a community pub we do not want to go bust and therefore have to close because we were unable to break even so we need to make sure our low prices are both affordable and sustainable. Reducing our costs elsewhere saw us last year make our first tiny profit.
We now employ upwards of 13 paid staff (including several youngsters on their first foray into the job market) and about the same number of volunteers although there is always scope for more volunteers as this keeps rising costs down. Many of our youth are still able to get their first employment/pin money as well as complete D of E service despite minimum wage hikes. We also support a growing number of local firms, not just food and drink but also services firms providing cleaning, laundry, building, decorating, tarmacking, woodwork and many others whom we have had to call upon.
The pub, café, bar and restaurant are all repeatedly nominated for awards ranging from the Good Pub Guide to Somerset life food and drink awards to The Great British Pub awards to CAMRA and others and we await to see where we get with these later this year. Reviews in Google, Trip Advisor and Booking.com are consistently very complimentary and help us retain our high positions in all three businesses. This in turn helps massively in advertising and promoting us by getting the word out about how we are viewed by other customers. The bonus being that this sort of advertising is at no cost.
A typical review:-
“Thank you New Inn for looking after my clients. They were extremely impressed with everything, staff, service, food and joining them for dinner was superb as well. Serena you are a credit to the industry, thank you”. (Simon, 3 Jun 2026)
So if you are not yet a shareholder, please consider becoming one, otherwise do continue to support us by using your New Inn.