By Ben Winstanley, 14-Mar-2016
A real love of cask ale and drinks in general has propelled one operator to the front ranks of the sector and netted it the title of Best Drinks Offer in the Publican Awards, sponsored by Coca Cola Enterprises.
Cheshire Cats Pubs & Bars, who own and operate The Cholmondeley Arms on the Cholmondeley estate, The Bulls Head and Church Inn in Mobberley, the Three Greyhounds Inn in Allostock, the Fitzherbert Arms in Swynnerton and the Red Lion in Weymouth, Dorset, has been voted the company with the Best Drinks Act in the UK at the prestigious Publican Awards ceremony in London.
Cheshire Cats Pubs & Bars beat a number of national chains to the title, drawing high praise from the judges for supporting cask ales from local brewers. The company was also awarded a ‘Highly Commended’ title in the Best Food Offer category.
Each pub within the collection specializes in a particular drink with The Cholmondeley Arms boasting more than 300 gins, the Red Lion offering more than 80 rums and the Fitzherbert Arms offering over 30 Ports by the bottle. Whiel the Bulls Head, Three Greyhounds Inn and the Church have enviable collections of Whisky, Brandy and wine respectfully.
Tim Bird, owner of the unique collection of village pubs and country inns, comments: “These awards are equivalent to the drinks industry’s ‘Oscars’ and it is fantastic that our pubs and our teams has been recognized in this way. The award recognises the hard work that the team puts in and how we work with local breweries, suppliers and food producers to bring a memorable and unique experience to our customers everyday.”
Ed Bebbington, of the Publican’s Morning Advertiser, comments: “This is a company that puts a lot of time and thought into getting its drink offer right, from its superb focus on local, great beers, through to an impressive offer of wines and spirits.”
Tim Bird and Mary McLaughlin, owners of Cheshire Cat Pubs & Bars, have already won numerous awards for restoring pubs of great heritage and character and are now focused on the Roebuck Inn, also in Mobberley which after three years of closure is set to open in April.
For further information on Cheshire Cat Pubs and its collection of pubs, please visit www.cheshirecatpubsandbars.co.uk.
Cheshire Cat Pubs and Bars, the north west of England multiple operator led by Tim Bird and Mary McLaughlin, is to open its seventh site and first in Staffordshire. The company has taken on The Fitzherbert Arms, which sits on Lord Stafford’s estate in the village of Swynnerton. The 19th century pub will reopen this month following extensive refurbishment work featuring log fires, snug, private dining room and outside summer terrace. It will serve ales from Staffordshire micro-brewers as well as wines and a range of locally sourced, freshly prepared English dishes.
McLaughlin told the Stone & Eccleshall Gazette: “We are very excited to be working with Lord Stafford on this project and look forward to opening the doors to this iconic pub. We have restored the Fitz ensuring its heritage is brought to the fore and that it remains in keeping with the village of Swynnerton and its history, we are very proud to open a pub in Staffordshire.” The company also operates five sites in Cheshire and one in Dorset.
The task was to re-create the sharing plate and all the competitors came up with some brilliant ideas. First up was the Fitzherbert Arms, who added some great elements to their Pub Plate including a wild boar sausage roll with a homemade roasted red pepper and chilli jam.
Next up was the Cholmondeley Arms. Ollie and Leigh decided to recreate the concept of the Pub Plate and made a Cholmondeley ‘Garden Hamper’.
The Three Greyhounds went for a plate that took traditional pub elements and made them into sharing portions.
The Roebuck Inn took a different twist on the challenge and presented a pudding sharing plate—all of the puddings reflected their bistro roots.
All four teams came up with some fantastic ideas. Their imaginative elements will be used on our menus in the future and they were all very creative! It was a very close call but the winners were the Cholmondeley Arms with their Garden Hamper!
Watch this space though, as new pub nibbles will be on all of our menus soon!
A MOBBERLEY pub is celebrating after receiving a trio of awards in one week.
The Church Inn, on Church Lane, found out it has been listed in the Michelin’s pub guide on the same day as winning the ‘most stylish dining experience’ at the Hilden Awards and being crowned the winner of the Mobberley Scarecrow competition. Read full article…
At a glittering dinner at Chester Racecourse in late November we are very proud to announce that the Cholmondeley Arms was chosen as the ‘Tourism Pub of the Year 2015/16’.
The judges reflected on our consistent food and drinks offer particularly the work done to attract more people to Cheshire via our work with Gin and of course the success of our annual ‘Gin Fest’, plus our Bonfire night, our Annual Gin Appreciation homemade gin competition, our Cholmondeley Car Club, the investment in the Headmaster’s House Bedrooms, our Dog Friendly coverage in the Telegraph, plus maintaining our presence in all the guides.
The Cholmondeley Arms is a unique pub with lots to make one happy and it is a great rural meeting place. This award was gratefully received by our manager Jess and owner Mary who were delighted that the ‘Chum’ has at last been recognised for the efforts made to promote its position on the Cholmondeley Estate and in Cheshire as a whole.
BEST TOURIST PUB AWARD
JESS AND MARY CELEBRATE
Following trips to Rioja (2013) and the vineyards of Mallorca (2014) it was time for the cool climes of Ireland, the home of co-owner Mary and her brother and Red Lion manager Brian as well as Barry from the Bulls Head.
Cheshire Cat Pubs and Bars are proud to announce that our lovely country pubs are now fully fledged members of the Sustainable Restaurant Association!
The SRA are a “not for profit” organisation, (with Raymond Blanc as President), who focus on helping restaurants and pubs to become more sustainable across 14 key areas of their work including in sourcing produce, their environmental impact, and their contribution to the local community and society as a whole.
If you are a customer in any of our pubs you’ll already know that we take sustainability pretty seriously, whether it be in the purchasing of our local beers, or our seasonal food or indeed minimising our environmental impact by attempting to reduce waste and recycling where we can. We also ensure that our pubs are at the heart of the villages in which they serve, by our tireless dedication towards community projects, and the development and training of our fantastic teams of staff!
Now, with the help of the SRA we are hopeful of taking our contribution to the next level so that you can be sure that we are working harder than ever to make our pubs even better at the things that we already try to do so well!
Watch this space for more news and updates related to our work with the SRA, just another way of ensuring that our pubs remain for the long term, “local and proud”
SRA President, Raymond Blanc OBE, named Hugh Fearnley-Whitingstall as his Food Hero of 2015, (both pictured) at the SRA Awards noting the tremendous effect of Hugh’s hard hitting campaigns such as “Fish Fight”, which illustratively has motivated almost 900,000 people to challenge the European Union to change its regulations regarding fish discards and start eating less popular fish like mackerel.
Our Bulls Head pub started supporting Hugh’s fight nearly five years ago following his TV documentary on the subject and now all our pubs are FishFight supporters and signatories and we celebrate this through our menus and in our Seafood weeks within our pubs.
MARY AND TIM WITH THE AWARD
We are delighted to announce that our Church Inn pub has won the ‘Chairman’s choice’ Best Dining Pub Award for South Manchester and pipped our very own Bulls Head pub (also in Mobberley)!!
The ‘Eat, Drink, Sleep’ Awards 2015 took place at the Manchester Mercure Piccadilly Hotel and our Bulls Head and Church Inn pubs were up against each other in the same category! Barry our landlord at the Bulls Head was the first to congratulate Simon (our Church Inn landlord) and the team saying “They’ve done a cracking job and I am delighted at least one of us won it!! This will make the Bully team even more determined to beat our ‘little sister pub’ the Church Inn next time round!!”
Simon said “I am really chuffed for the Church team and the customers…it’s been a solid start since opening a year and a half ago…I am very proud and feel a little sorry for Barry but not really!!”
Owners Tim and Mary were there to cheer both their pubs on and what a night for the village of Mobberley with two pubs from the same village up for the award! Tim said “it is always so exciting to be nominated for an award without entering anything and for both our Mobberley pubs to be nominated was a great achievement for all our fantastic people from our pub teams to our loyal and supportive customers and suppliers”
Mary added “we have been in Mobberley now for just over five years with the Bulls Head and have so enjoyed it becoming a proud pub in the village. We took on the Church Inn two years ago when it had closed down and we knew it was going to be hard to create a second special pub in the village… but we are on our way. The teams at both pubs have made this possible with the help of course from our customers. This award is for everyone to celebrate”
As a big thank you to our team of managers and support managers a trip to Mallorca wineries was planned. Three wineries were visited over the three days. Macia Batle whose wines we sell in our pubs in the UK, C’an Vidalet who not only make wonderful wine but also distil Gin!! Then we finished at Angel Winery for an excellent final day!
The weather was wonderful and the wines equally as good. We were so well looked after by Marta, Anja and Andreas! Thank you to them for their hospitality and well done to our team for working so hard for our business.
