What It Takes to Run One of London's Most Popular Pubs

Summary

Odd Lots – What It Takes to Run One of London’s Most Popular Pubs

Podcast: Odd Lots, Bloomberg
Episode Date: May 25, 2026
Hosts: Joe Weisenthal & Tracy Alloway
Guests: Oisín Rogers (Co-founder, The Devonshire), Ashley Palmer Watts (Chef, The Devonshire)

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Episode Overview

Broadcast from London, this Odd Lots episode takes listeners inside the business and culture of British pubs, with a two-part deep dive into The Devonshire, one of London’s most successful and talked-about pubs. Hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway first speak with co-founder Oisín Rogers about the history, challenges, and philosophy of running a pub, and then hold a live conversation with chef-partner Ashley Palmer Watts, exploring the operational and culinary decisions that set The Devonshire apart.

The conversation is rich with insights into the intersection of tradition and innovation in the British pub business, the unique social function of pubs, challenges brought by regulation, changing social habits, inflation, and the quest for excellence—right down to the perfect pint of Guinness.

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Part 1: Inside the Devonshire with Oisín Rogers

1. What Makes a Pub a Pub? (05:26)

• Defining a Pub vs. Bar
  • Rogers: “Bars are places that people go to drink... But pubs are much more sort of connected into the fabric of British and Irish society... They’re a place of chaos and wonder and beauty... a place for great stories.” (05:37)
  • Pubs uniquely belong to the culture: "They only really work well on these islands [UK and Ireland]." (05:37)

2. The Landscape of British Pubs (06:25)

• Chains vs. Independents
  • British pubs have a legacy of brewery-owned chains (Wetherspoons, Youngs, Fuller's, Stonegate).
  • Independent “free houses” are rare and harder to sustain due to lack of scale, but Rogers favors them: “I love a free house...” (06:50)

3. Oisín Rogers’ Career Journey (08:04)

• Started working in pubs in Dublin in the 1980s, moved to London, and has run several pubs since 1991. Opened The Devonshire in November 2023.
  • Rogers: “...since 1986 I’ve worked in pubs... the Devonshire is the one.” (08:11)

4. The Business Model: Pub + Restaurant (08:52)

• The Devonshire was envisioned as more than a pub—restaurant upstairs, pub downstairs, prime location off Piccadilly Circus.
• Aim: To make people feel “comfortable and safe and happy and have really great products.” (08:52)

5. Food’s New Role in Pubs (09:35)

• Transformation After the Smoking Ban
  • Smoking bans in the 2000s were “an economic earthquake for pubs... a new audience started coming in and younger people started drinking in there with an expectation of cocktails and Bacardi Breezers... but at the same time it’s always been timeless and the same.” (10:59)
• Rise of the gastropub: Pubs now offer full menus and can be as serious as restaurants but maintain informality.

6. What Makes a Bad Pub? (12:18)

• Rogers: “If you walk into a place and you see that the person... is miserable, or the lighting’s too bright or too dark... it smells horrid... chances of you having a great time... are already diminished.” (12:30)
• Atmosphere, staff attitude, cleanliness, and sensory experience are critical.

7. The Constraints (and Freedom) of Pub Food (14:06)

• Spectrum from “wet led” (drinks only) pubs to full-blown restaurants; gastropub concept is now “so wide that you want to know where that business is.” (14:06)
• “I hate the word gastropub because it no longer means anything...” (14:06)

8. Social and Cultural Shifts (17:33)

• Importance of bar stools, post-smoking ban shifts, and striving to “bring that back.”
• Pubs as ‘Democratic’ Spaces:
  • “You’ll get people who can just about afford to have a beer, and you can get people who could buy the whole place... shoulder to shoulder.” (17:50)
  • “There’s a kind of leveling when you’re just having a pint... that doesn’t happen in many places.” (17:50)

9. Business Realities—Location, Licensing, and Regulation (19:04)

• Location is key: “Right in the middle of central London, literally at Piccadilly... busiest footfall place you could possibly find.” (19:18)
• Regulatory “burden” is real—licenses, noise ordinances, delivery timings, neighborhood complaints (22:08).

10. Hiring and Labor (23:08)

• Contrary to predictions, plenty of young Brits interested in working: “Our best workers are between 18 and 23 years old... so reliable, so hardworking, incredibly happy, very efficient...” (24:00)
• Brexit changed labor supply, but “a lot of our very best employees are British now.” (24:40)

11. Inflation and Pricing (25:14)

• Price of a pint has breached £10 in some places, but Rogers is determined to keep a pint under a fiver: “We keep a pint on that’s less than a fiver always.” (25:14)
• On costs: “I can never remember a year when pub people... all got together and said, oh, we’ve been amazing. It’s smashed it this year. It’s always... doom and gloom.” (25:22)

12. On the Science of Guinness (27:02)

• Serving Guinness “exactly the same as what you get in Dublin,” but 30+ variables impact pint quality—temperature, line width, gas mix, etc. (27:23)
• Rogers: “When I was. Before we did the Devonshire... we did a big study on the best way to do it... and people think our Guinness tastes great.” (28:06, 28:45)

13. Why Pouring Matters (29:02)

• It’s performative & sociable: “The bar is like a stage in a theatre, and the staff are like the players.” (29:02)
• “It’s a gorgeous, beautiful, banal, sociable thing to be able to banter about and know that you’re not going to cross any red lines.” (29:02)

14. Pub Design and Sound (30:30)

• Against TVs and loud music: “The sound you should hear is the sound of convivial chat... very calming.” (31:11)
• Prefers cozy layouts, thick carpets, and textured walls: “You can have a private conversation and you can’t be overheard... places you can hide.” (31:11)

15. Why Pubs Are Closing (32:18)

• Loss of the central role: “Leisure time has now been carved up... sport, live music, tv, scrolling on your phone at home...” (32:32)
• But believes we’re “entering a golden age for pubs” as people seek real, shared human experiences. (32:52)

16. The Myth That Young People Don’t Drink (34:02)

• Massively exaggerated: “I see loads of people... between 18 and 25 still piling in and, you know, having pints and having fun.” (34:31)

17. The Hardest Part of Running a Pub (35:14)

• “It’s a real vocation... I never turn off... to do it well, you’ve got to be there.” (35:20)
• Rogers is hands-on: “I obsess about details... Now I’ve moved on in my career, it feels more like conducting an orchestra...” (35:50)

18. Managing People (37:39)

• Focus on empowerment, comfort, safety: “When our employees feel that, I know the business accelerates.” (37:39)
• Rejects the “abusive” management styles sometimes associated with kitchens and restaurants.

19. Inflation’s Impact Today vs. the Past (38:16)

• “Footfall is hard, has been hit the most in pubs and that’s a big killer.” (38:54)
• Prioritize volume over margin: “When we’re full, we’re not so worried...” (39:04)

20. Business Partnerships (39:20)

• “Don’t go into business with someone who has got the same skills as you... me, Ashley and Charlie... three corners of a working triangle... that has made us really strong.” (39:45)

21. Margins (41:32)

• “Good pubs are still converting at... between 15 and 25%.” (41:32)

Memorable Quotes

• “Atmosphere is the key.” (13:26, Oisin Rogers)
• “Pubs are a place for great stories.” (05:37, Oisin Rogers)
• “The bar is always kind of in the space where you can see it from everywhere... it becomes like a stage in a theatre.” (29:02, Oisin Rogers)

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Part 2: The Perfect Pint & Pub Gastronomy with Ashley Palmer Watts

1. The Art and Science of Guinness (45:27)

• The process of serving the “perfect pint” is complex: “It starts with obviously the beer coming in... you need to bring the temperature down... couple of days... then it goes under the street in the sort of alcoves... then into the cellar... shortest possible lines, right pipe circumference, pressure, the right gas mix—ours is 82/18 (N2/CO2)—and the pour process itself.” (45:58–47:10)
• Continually optimizing with scientific rigor: “We're talking to a food scientist friend about the solubility of gases... we're never happy just going, you know what? That's finished.” (49:26–50:34)

2. Menu Development and Dish Economics (51:11)

• Fundamental question: Does the economics of a dish matter at the menu design stage?
  • “The economic side is really, really important, but it’s more about what is it you’re coming to experience, what are you going to feel?” (51:11)
• Invention of signature dishes designed to be repeatable at high volume (e.g., “beef cheek and suet pudding with Guinness in the sauce”). (51:11–52:00)
• Large-scale production requires robust systems and precision: “All the beef that we have... is aged in a room... grill runs at 8–900 degrees... we cook very quickly and quite hot to create the crust...” (53:36–55:29)

3. Dealing with Rising Food Input Costs (55:45)

• Beef and ingredient costs remain high and rarely decrease. (55:45)
• Value strategy: “Utilizing the right cut at the right price for accessibility... it’s about having an entry level... but then you can also spend £100 on a beef chop.” (55:52)

4. On Wine Pricing and Menu Psychology (56:45)

• Debunking the “second most expensive wine” myth: “Instead of that old thing... our Devonshire wine punches higher up the list but prices are down where house wines are because we don’t want to penalize people for coming in at entry level.” (57:10)
• The highest markup is not necessarily on the second cheapest bottle—value and supplier relationships matter more.

5. Supplier Relationships (58:06)

• Favors long-term, transparent partnerships: “It’s all about paying the right price, the fair price for the best quality. If you’re trying to drive the price down on everything all the time, you’re never going to have the best relationship with... those giving it to you.” (58:25)
• Supplier agreements and price changes depend on trust; volume is real and demands reliable partners. (59:30)

6. Crisis Management & The Bear’s Realism (63:00)

• Kitchen life isn’t TV drama but is “hard.” Issues do arise, and management tries to be non-abusive, preferring calm to yelling: “Much better to be silent...” (64:57)
• Problems addressed quickly and fairly but without aggression.

7. Responding to Inflation (65:19)

• Menu prices have only risen once in two years on a limited set of items (66:06).
• Focus instead on efficiency, labor scheduling, purchasing, and waste reduction rather than passing all cost increases to customers.

8. The Rise (and Limits) of Gastropubs (67:22)

• The danger: “It’s easy to cut quality, cut cost, put the price up... that’s a race to the bottom.” (67:46)
• The Devonshire avoids central purchasing/production, favoring autonomy, quality, and honest prices.

9. Local Regulars vs. “Pilgrims” (69:16)

• The Devonshire sees both locals and travelers, becoming a “local” for many even if they visit only once a year.

10. Storytelling and Food Creativity (71:05)

• Menu built on storytelling and “hidden things that make things taste good”—e.g., using lamb fat and mint to create a unique experience out of traditional expectations. (74:36)
• “It’s about simplicity, it’s about quality, boldness with hidden things that make things taste good.” (74:36)
• “There becomes value in the storytelling that you’re actually doing. It’s no good making up fake things that you don’t do because you will get caught.” (73:23)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Pub Democracy:
  “There’s a kind of leveling when you’re just having a pint. And I’ve seen it... a CEO or a judge sitting beside a guy who’s been sweeping the street... that doesn’t happen in many places.” (17:50, Oisín Rogers)

• On Tradition and Change:
  “We’re entering a golden age for pubs... people are coming in and really loving the shared experience of the chaos of being in a room full of other humans...” (32:52, Oisín Rogers)

• On the Guinness Ritual:
  “There’s a performance that happens behind a bar... The great thing about talking about your Guinness... you’re not going to fall out or get political. You can have a fun time.” (29:02, Oisín Rogers)

• On Inflation:
  “We’re not run by the accounts department. We’re run by giving people the best time... It’s more about what are we comfortable charging for that.” (66:10, Ashley Palmer Watts)

• On Creativity in Pub Food:
  “It’s about simplicity, it’s about quality, boldness with hidden things that make things taste good.” (74:36, Ashley Palmer Watts)

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Key Timestamps

• Defining British pubs vs. bars: 05:37
• Pub landscape (chains/independents): 06:25
• The impact of the smoking ban: 10:59
• The ‘bad pub’ experience: 12:30
• Social function/democracy: 17:50
• Choosing a location: 19:18
• Regulation challenges: 22:08
• Labor after Brexit: 24:40
• Inflation and the £10 pint: 25:14
• Guinness science: 27:23
• Pub design (sound/layout): 31:11
• Why pubs are closing: 32:18
• Margins: 41:32
• Perfect pint technicalities: 45:58–47:10
• Menu and pricing strategy: 51:11–55:52
• Supplier relations: 58:25–59:30
• Crisis management: 63:35
• Gastropub evolution: 67:46
• Storytelling and food: 71:05–74:36

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Episode Takeaways

• Pubs are unique social equalizers—democratic, unpredictable, and deeply cultural.
• Adaptation to new realities (smoking bans, food trends, labor, and inflation) has shifted the economics and experience, but continuity of atmosphere and welcome remains paramount.
• Success hinges on operational excellence, flexibility, dedication, and the careful balancing of tradition, innovation, and honest, humane business practices.

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If you want a vivid sense of what the best of modern British pubs are—why they survive, how they adapt, and what makes them beloved—this episode is a must-listen. For a table at The Devonshire, you’ll need patience (and perhaps quick fingers on Thursdays at 10:30AM).

Transcript

[Joe Weisenthal]

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[Ashley Palmer Watts]

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[Chase for Business / JPMorgan Chase Representative]

Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

[Tracy Alloway]

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Today you're gonna be treated to a special two part episode. We are here in London and so we wanted to learn about the business of pubs. Of course. And so we are bringing you first an interview with famed publican Oisin Rogers. He is the co founder of the pub the Devonshire. And then in the second half that will be an interview that was recorded live at a show that we're doing here in London with the chef at the Devonshire, Ashley Palmer Watts.

[Tracy Alloway]

Take a listen.

[Joe Weisenthal]

You know we've talked about this before. Some of my favorite episodes, and I mean this completely unironically, are when we talk to people in the food service industry in some way because I truly think that, you know, what we specialize in, which is sort of where the macro meets the micro, et cetera. There are so many, whether it's labor costs, food costs, consumer sentiment, Consumer appetites, et cetera. There are so many things that only someone in that specific industry gets a real view on at any given moment.

[Tracy Alloway]

No, totally. Restaurants and food service in general are great microcosms, macro trends.

[Joe Weisenthal]

And so since we're in London, you know, a lot of the same restaurants, a lot of the same things, but of course there are a lot of pubs here and we don't have as many in the us and to the extent we have them in the us,

[Tracy Alloway]

I think they are not the same.

[Joe Weisenthal]

They're like fake. Right? They're like. They're replicas. They're bars that have the aesthetics of a pub.

[Tracy Alloway]

Can I say one thing? So I woke up this morning and I turned on BBC News and. And one of the top headlines was two pubs closing every day. And for as long as I can remember, since I came to the UK for university and then stayed for a decade, every year there have been these reports saying that pubs are closing down. And it's been going on, I guess for 20 years now. And I'm very curious what is cited as the reason now? Because you would feel like the reason pubs are closing in say 2002 versus why they're closing in 2026 would be. Yeah, but the trend overall seems to remain the same.

[Joe Weisenthal]

It seems tough. Supposedly Gen Z, they don't drink as much, which I think. But that can't, you know, that doesn't explain why that would have been a Trend in say 2002.

[Tracy Alloway]

Right, right, that's my point.

[Joe Weisenthal]

There was another headline recently. Apparently a pint has breached the 10 pound mark in some.

[Tracy Alloway]

Oh, that is a lot.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Which is like a big deal. I mean, in New York if you. $10, like, we're used to that. But I guess the 10, you know, pounds are worth more pubs that sort of.

[Tracy Alloway]

There would have been a riot at my university if anyone tried to charge £10 for a pint.

[Joe Weisenthal]

So anyway, while we're here in.

[Tracy Alloway]

Course, back then we were all drinking terrible things like Bacardi Breezers and things like that. But anyway, carry on.

[Joe Weisenthal]

You know, my wife, she briefly worked at a pub in Ireland and apparently they got really upset with her for the quality of her poor. They're like, oh, not drinking that. Yeah. Anyway, I don't think that lasted very long. Anyway, we're here in London, we gotta do a pub episode.

[Tracy Alloway]

Let's do it.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I'm very excited to say we really do have the perfect guest. We're gonna be speaking with one of the most famous, if not the most famous publican in the uk. I don't exactly know what a publican is or what defines a publican.

[Tracy Alloway]

You're about to find out.

[Joe Weisenthal]

So I'm about to find out. We're gonna be speaking with Aisin Rogers. He is the co founder of the Devonshire, one of the most popular pubs in the city. We're gonna learn all about the pub business. So, Aisin, thank you so much for coming on Outlaws.

[Oisin Rogers]

Joe, it's great to be here. Thank you so much.

[Joe Weisenthal]

What is a pub? What's the difference? I've flown all the way from New York City to London to ask just one simple question. Then when I get the answer, I'll be ready to go home.

[Tracy Alloway]

I think this is actually an important question.

[Joe Weisenthal]

What is the difference between a pub and a bar?

[Oisin Rogers]

Well, everywhere has got bars. Bars are places that people go to drink. You know, they're places for that occasion to just go and drink. But pubs are much more sort of connected into the fabric of British and Irish society. I think, honestly, they only really work well on these islands. I think what you said is right about the U.S. yes, you do have pubs, but they're not the same. I think the pubs have a timelessness. A lot of the ones that are really great have been around for a very long time and they have a function for people to meet in a neutral space where you can actually have drinks, have a chat, end up meeting people you wouldn't normally hang out with. And they're also a place of chaos and wonder and beauty and a bit of, you know, art and, you know, it's somewhere you can actually kick your shoes off and really enjoy and not know what's going to happen next. And they're a place for great stories.

[Tracy Alloway]

Can you explain the sort of landscape of British pubs where you have independent institutions such as your own versus a lot of chains? I was in a Samuel Smith pub the other day.

[Joe Weisenthal]

We don't have bar chains. Yeah, not really.

[Tracy Alloway]

Hunch taverns used to be the big one, I guess. Wetherspoons. Oh my gosh. Wetherspoons was a place where I spent a lot of time in the early 2000s. Just explain how it works here in terms of ownership.

[Oisin Rogers]

So pubs go back at least a thousand years, probably a lot longer than that, where people opened their houses and made ale or sold ale and let people come and kick back and enjoy themselves. I think during the 18th and 19th centuries, mostly the brewers started becoming more powerful. So there was lots of regional brewers in all around. And there still are, and some of them are still Amazing. And they tended to try and buy pubs up so that they could sell their wares through those businesses. And quite a lot of those pubcos in the sort of early 20th century, you know, right up until the 50s, they'd have a thousand pubs or some had up to 3,000 pubs and that sort of became more commercial in the 80s. Those pubs started getting traded as lots and bulk and then there became like Allied Breweries at one stage had 6,000 pubs. We still have big operators that come from those brewers like Stonegate, like Wetherspoons, like you said, you know, we've got smaller ones in London like Fuller's and Youngs and you got Mitchells and Butlers that own the majority of the successful pubs across the country. Free houses have always been, you know, harder to find and more difficult to run because you don't have the economy of scale. But I love a free house and I worked for a long time in the managed house business and it was great to work there too.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Before we get to your current pub, give us a little bit of your history. What were you doing prior to opening the dev?

[Oisin Rogers]

Prior to opening the dev? Well, go back to me. I went to university in Dublin in 1986. I studied chemistry, physics, applied maths. I was going to become a food tech engineer. Didn't enjoy university much, got a job in a pub called the Stag's Head part time, loved that more than anything else. Gave up on university and since then, since 1986 I've worked in pubs and in 1991 had my first pub in London and I've run a lot of pubs in London in that time and the Devonshire is the one.

[Joe Weisenthal]

What year did you open the Devonshire?

[Oisin Rogers]

Devonshire opened in November 23rd. So we're there about two and a half years, but it feels like 20.

[Tracy Alloway]

What was the thinking? Because as you say, opening an independent publisher is a pretty big challenge.

[Oisin Rogers]

Well, I think the Devonshire might be a little bit more than a pub. We've got this wonderful restaurant upstairs. It's in an incredible location right in the centre of the city. I always felt that the West End and the City, while it has some really great pubs, most of them are very small and a lot of them are not amazingly good. And we wanted to open something that was really attractive, that would make people feel comfortable and safe and happy and have really great products. And we found this great big site right by Piccadilly Circus and. And we just turned it into a pub on the ground floor with an amazing restaurant upstairs and it's been fun.

[Tracy Alloway]

I will say the reason I was in a Sam Smith pub last night was because we were waiting for a theater ticket and there weren't a lot of good options. I probably should have gone just a little further to the Devonshire.

[Oisin Rogers]

Well, next time, Tracey, you'd be so welcome. Be great to see you.

[Tracy Alloway]

You mentioned food just then and this seems to be a key thing in the survival of pubs nowadays, which is if you can tack on gastronomy of some sort and good food. The economics seem to shift quite a lot.

[Oisin Rogers]

They completely change, if I'm honest, for lots of reason. You know, when I go back, you know, 20 years ago, there was very little food in pubs. Everybody smoked in the pubs and you could smoke at the counter and the whole place was full of smoke, so you wouldn't consider eating anything. And that gradually changed, so we moved more towards snacks. You could eat standing up and then table meals. And then the gastropub started in about 1991-95, and that's really become a thing where gastropubs are now really restaurants. And there's a sort of a real. A border so happening between pubs and restaurants where you can do both. They can be very successful because the pub brings people in and people can drink before and after the meal in the bar area. And, you know, it's a really nice convivial environment. And they're not as codified as restaurants, if you know what I mean. You can sort of. They're more higgledy piggledy. You can sort of get away with a little bit more chaos and, you know, they're more fun. I think, in a lot of ways, you know, you find a great gastropub in the country, you're going to want to go back. And the same across London. We've got some amazing ones.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Wait, just on the history, real quickly, did you say it was more or less because of the elimination of indoor smoking that actually created the space for this notion of a gastropan? Was that crucial?

[Oisin Rogers]

I would say that was an economic earthquake for pubs for lots of reasons, because lots of the old drinkers at that time would have stopped coming in because they couldn't smoke indoors and they would have gone on strike and drank less. So something had to be done. So they needed to attract a new audience and it was really exciting for people to go back to pubs because your clothes wouldn't smell of smoke anymore. So a new sort of audience started coming in and younger people started drinking in there with an expectation of cocktails and Bacardi Breezers, like you mentioned earlier, came straight out of that and all those hooch drinks and stuff, you know, so it's always been changing, but at the same time it's always been timeless and the same. We're in the business of making people feel comfortable, safe, happy, welcome, well looked after and people need that and they love it.

[Tracy Alloway]

Does anyone still drink snake bites?

[Oisin Rogers]

Thankfully not, no.

[Joe Weisenthal]

It is a snake bite.

[Tracy Alloway]

It was like this terrible concoction of. It was beer and then some sort of cordial cider and then a sweet thing in it, black currant.

[Oisin Rogers]

Well, it always worries me that you have beer which is clear and beautiful and fizzy and then you have cider which is clear and beautiful and fizzy. You mix the two of them together, it becomes this really cloudy thing that you've got to color it purple with the black currant in order to make it sweet enough to drink, I'm certain. And it's not good for you. And I don't sell very much of it, thankfully.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Can I ask you a question? And we're not going to name names here. What's a bad pub? You say, like, okay, you said, oh, you looked around, you didn't see many good pubs. What is it? You walk into a pub and it's like, this doesn't have it. What's missing in the bad pub?

[Oisin Rogers]

I think there's lots of things. I think how we are made to feel is always an amalgamation of the inputs that we got. So that's what we hear, what we smell, what we see, what we taste and what we touch. If you walk into a place and you see that the person who's likely to be serving is miserable, or the lighting's too bright or too dark, or it sounds wrong, like the music is wrong, or it smells horrid or something's not quite right in terms of the visual noise that you see and it's not beautiful. The chances of you having a great time and feeling great are already diminished before you go anywhere near the counter and buy anything. So we always think about those sensual inputs when we're being good in terms of making sure that it looks clean and bright and that the staff are in the right mindset to make people feel comfortable, in that they're comfortable and safe and happy themselves and well paid. And, you know, it's an amalgamation of those things that makes atmosphere and atmosphere is the key and making sure that

[Joe Weisenthal]

that is there, you know, And I think of pubs, okay, there's the beer and then there's Certain dishes that I associate with pub food, the scotch egg, the sausage roll. And I'm always fascinated by a lot of. In any field, a lot of creativity comes from figuring out what you can do with a certain set of constraints. And I have to imagine that there is a certain, you know, you deviate too much and it's no longer a pub anymore, it's a bar or something like that. What are the constraints with which you feel like you're in a gastropub where you're food and beer or food and alcohol? What are the formal constraints where if you go beyond this, you're something other than a pub?

[Oisin Rogers]

I think it's a really good question. I'm going to answer it by saying it's a kind of a spectrum. So on one end you've got the codified restaurant where you have to reserve and you sit at a square table and you never talk to anyone else apart from your server and your guest. On the other end you've got a wet pub that doesn't sell any food at all and you can just wander in there, have a pint and end up standing anywhere you want. You can't reserve any area and you can have a drink and stay as long as you want. In between you've kind of got the gastropub which is in the middle. Some of it will be reserved for guests and some of it will be chaotic and you can go and have a beer and there's this whole sliding scale all the way along. And the bit from a good wet pub with good food to a gastropub that is definitely a restaurant is actually really wide. So there's lots of, lots of different places you could go in between. So it's really hard to define and actually I hate the word gastropub because it no longer means anything because that middle of the spectrum is actually so wide that you want to know where that business is.

[Joe Weisenthal]

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[Ashley Palmer Watts]

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[Public Investing Representative]

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[Joe Weisenthal]

Yep.

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[Tracy Alloway]

the point there are different formats, so to speak, of pubs, such as ones that just serve drinks and others that serve food. But have you noticed in your decades of publican experience, have you noticed a shift in in the way people actually use pubs and why they're there?

[Oisin Rogers]

I think so. I totally have. I'm going to go back to the smoking ban again, because before the smoking ban every pub had stools all the way around the bar like you do in the US Whereas before the smoking ban they thought that they could sort of mitigate against it by moving people away from the bar so that the staff wouldn't be breathing the smoke in and they thought that was going to be okay and so therefore they didn't allow people to sit at the bar anymore as much. So, so people sort of retreated away and I think it became a little less social then and we're trying to bring that back. So we've brought all our stools back to the bar so people are likely to be shoulder to shoulder and chat away and stuff like that. I think it's always changing, but it's also always the same. There are places where community gets together. And the great thing about pubs as well is they tend to be very democratic. In other words, you'll get people who can just about afford to have a beer, and you can get people who could buy the whole place and they can be shoulder to shoulder too, and chatting to each other. And there's a kind of a leveling when you're just having a pint. And I've seen it many times where you'll get the guy who's been sweeping the street or cleaning your car or fixing your car, sitting beside a CEO or a judge or a senior leader, and they'll have great fun. And that doesn't happen in many places. And I think we're really proud to be able to do that and have that democracy.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Let's talk more about the business specifics of the dev. You already hinted at it, but tell more. Let's start with, okay, location. What did you see in this specific spot such that you had. This could be an ambitious big investment?

[Oisin Rogers]

Well, I really felt that that democracy of demographic and of age is really important so that you're able to attract everybody. You're right in the middle of central London, literally at Piccadilly. It's about the busiest footfall place you could possibly find. So we knew the market was there, but what we needed to do was make sure we made a place that people would want to come to as well. So we just did it and we thought about it for a couple of years together, me and Ashley and Charlie. And we were very careful about what our unique selling points would be, and we really stuck with those. We also felt that it was important that people would feel that they had value for time and value for money when they came in. So as well as being able to spend, you know, two and a half grand on a bottle of 2001 Chateau Lafite, we can still have a pint of beer for 4.95 and we stick to that. Now we've got the set menu for 29.95 or the scotch egg for $4.95, which I hope you had last time you were in.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I love the Scotch egg.

[Oisin Rogers]

And you can still spend, you know, 150 quid on an incredible piece of dry aged Scottish beef, which will be amazing. So you've got that whole sort of sliding scale of spend, and that's really important to us that people can get in there, have a great time and not spend a lot. But at the same time, if they want to spend a lot, they can and they do.

[Tracy Alloway]

Just to be clear, which came first? Was it the building was coming up for sale and so you thought this would be a good opportunity or was it you wanted to start your own pub and so you went out looking for locations?

[Oisin Rogers]

So we were out looking for locations because we wanted to do a pub. We knew we wanted to do a pub with really great food. There are very, very few big pubs in central London because it's a very large building. Well, the Devonshire as it is was a pub before it was called the Devonshire right up until 2009, but it was less than half the size it is now, in fact, probably a quarter the size. So when that closed down in 2009, the landlords took the building back and they put it together with the building next door and they knocked it through to turn it into a huge restaurant. And that was Jamie Oliver's first. Jamie's Italian and he was incredibly successful. I love Jamie, by the way. And he did a fabulous job there up until his business ran away from him a little bit in 2019 and it closed just before the pandemic. So we'd always had our eye on it, hoping that, you know, we could persuade the city to turn it back into a pub and that we might be able to operate it. And that was a big journey for us to make that happen.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Just real quickly, does the city have a finite number of pub licenses or like, or is it just safe to meet a bar? What's the.

[Oisin Rogers]

It's a very complicated question. Basically, if you have a pub license, you can operate it and obviously trade it and sell it, but in the same location where you, when pub licenses like the old Devonshire one lapse, they're gone. So to apply for a new pub license and be granted it is very unusual, particularly in Westminster, but we managed to make it happen.

[Tracy Alloway]

Wait, so this is one of the things that always comes up when you see the reports about pub closures in the uk. It's too much tax heavy regulation. Can you walk us through, like when people say regulatory burden on pubs, what exactly does that mean?

[Oisin Rogers]

Well, the biggest regulatory burden we have is licensing, which is obviously for public safety, to make sure that you don't do things like have too many people in open at the wrong time, serve people who are drunk, encourage crime, all of those stuff. But those can be very burdensome in some locations for lots of reasons. You've also got to make sure your neighbors are happy that you don't make too much noise.

[Tracy Alloway]

I heard noise ordinances were also.

[Oisin Rogers]

Yeah, there's a big issue with that, particularly in the suburbs. Outside, there's lots of regulations about when you can have deliveries because of what time they'll come and go, how much noise there'll be, where you store your bins, what time they're collected, how your bottles are handled. There's lots and lots of things. But of course, all of these regulations are there for the benefit of our society and our communities. And most of them are great, but some of them can be quite burdensome for businesses.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I mentioned at the beginning, I really was not trying to put my wife on blast by mentioning that she got scolded for her pouring. But I take it that labor is an important factor. Skilled labor is an important factor.

[Oisin Rogers]

Absolutely.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Talk to us about the market for that and the supply and the ease with which one can hire not just a bartender who's capable of the poor, but someone who's happy and someone who, if you put such an emphasis on making the customers feel welcome and warm and so forth, what does that look like?

[Oisin Rogers]

Today we really look for people who will feel comfortable in our environment. So people who've got great skills at relating to others, great skills at wooing people to have a nice time, people who will work hard and, you know, are able to believe what we believe in terms of.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Is it hard to find. If I like. If, If. If you found a skilled bartender today, would you be like, yeah, come in?

[Oisin Rogers]

Absolutely. We find ourselves quite lucky. And anecdotally, I don't see that issue that people keep saying that young people don't want to work. Our best workers are between 18 and 23 years old. We've got a dozen amazing examples of that who are so reliable, so hardworking, incredibly happy, very efficient, and thankfully, really well looked after by us. And I'm really proud of that, and it's great. And a lot of my colleagues in town, in some of the better restaurants are saying the same thing, that the kids really are.

[Tracy Alloway]

All right, how competitive is your pay in the world of pubs to this point? And then also, were you affected by Brexit at all in terms of your labor supply?

[Oisin Rogers]

I think Brexit was once again, a little bit of a shock in that we did lose a lot of our sort of casual Italian, French, German, Spanish and Greek team. A lot of those were able to apply at the time for right to remain and stay, and a lot of them did, but a lot. We lost a few, but then the tap turned off to them. However, we are finding that there are other nationalities and other channels of people coming through and a lot of our very best employees are British now and we're very proud of that.

[Joe Weisenthal]

The 10 pound punt, what's going on with that? And is it just a few locations? And what are you seeing pricing?

[Oisin Rogers]

I think prices have gone up and that's gone up because of the cost of production, the cost of transport, the cost of the raw materials, the cost of everything going on ahead. But I think it's rising at the same steepness that it always has. And I can never remember a year when public house people, you know, pub people all got together and said, oh, we've been amazing. It's smashed to this year. It's always. There's always an element of doom and gloom and, you know, I try to avoid it as much as I can. And we try to give people great value for money. We keep a pint on that's less than a fiver always. Our biggest seller is Guinness, which is 720. Now, I think that's fair, but I think it's true. You can if you want to go and find a pint for ten pounds. But is that the place you're going to really want to drink? I don't think so.

[Tracy Alloway]

How does it work with your suppliers? How much pricing power or negotiating power do you actually have when you're putting in orders for your drinks?

[Oisin Rogers]

So what we try and do, and I think what most of the industry does, is to fix our prices for a long period of time. So we'll know what volume we're going to do, we'll speak to a lot of suppliers and tender out, are purchasing, they'll come back to us with a price, we'll make a decision and then we can do the budget. We try and keep it as simple as that. And, you know, with some of our suppliers, we're fixed more or less now for three years.

[Joe Weisenthal]

So I'm pretty happy with that on Guinness specifically. Go on. People are very weird about, oh, you can't get a good Guinness in the United States and then you're in London, you can't get a good Guinness in London. I can never know if that's just like one of these things that's in people's head, et cetera. Where do you stand on the question of, is one even capable of getting a good Guinness? Like within, is there a certain diameter around Ireland in which the quality of your Guinness pours declines?

[Oisin Rogers]

All of the Guinness in the UK now is made in Dublin. It's exactly the same as what you get in Dublin when it arrives in the pub. However, there's probably 30 variables that can make a difference as to what it tastes like when it gets to the glass and you taste it. Okay, so in order to get those 30 variables spot on is really, really difficult.

[Joe Weisenthal]

What are some of the key ones?

[Oisin Rogers]

The key, the temperature of the keg, the temperature of the room it's in, the width of the line it comes through, the mixture of gas that you push it through with, the temperature of the cooler, the speed it comes through the line, the kind of tap you've got, how clean your glass is, lots and lots of things.

[Joe Weisenthal]

You do a lot of testing on these things and like, all day long. Talk to me as someone who at one point went into. Was envisioning going into food science, talk a little bit about that science of how you figured out for the dev, the optimal temperature mix of gas and so forth.

[Oisin Rogers]

This is what all this we actually do. I've been selling Guinness for 40 years, so I knew that most of the way it's done in the UK is different and not necessarily the best way.

[Joe Weisenthal]

All right?

[Oisin Rogers]

So when I was. Before we did the Devonshire, me and my business partners went to Dublin and we spent some time having a look around. So we went into the cellars where the beer was being stored, and we had a look at the temperatures, the pressures, the gas they were using, the amount of time that they left it to sit, how wide the lines were, what temperature the coolers were, how quick it was coming through at the top. We looked at the nozzles, the taps and all of that, and we did a big study on the best way to do it. And we put together our way of doing it, which might not be exactly the way anyone else does, but somehow it works. And people think our Guinness tastes great. And I'll believe that if they tell me so. I'm very pleased about it.

[Tracy Alloway]

Can you explain, I guess, from a cultural perspective, why the pouring of a pint looms so large in the UK psyche? Because this is something like, you don't really have this in the U.S. right? Like, people are not going to complain that, like, the foam is, like a centimeter.

[Oisin Rogers]

Well, I'll tell you what I think it is. I think it goes back to that timelessness and that there's a performance that happens behind a bar. If you think of the best pubs you've ever seen, the bar is always kind of in the space where you can see it from everywhere. So it becomes like a stage in A theater, and the staff are like the players. So the customers want to know that they're doing their very best and that they can talk about something that's banal and won't cause offense. So the great thing about talking about your Guinness with someone you don't know is, you know, you're not going to fall out because you're not going to get into any political territory. You're not going to talk about religion or race or anything like that. You can go, well, I know a place where there's slightly better one, and they do this. And I can split the G. And this tastes really great. And this is my favorite one. And it's kind of a gorgeous, beautiful, banal, sociable thing to be able to banter about and know that you're not going to cross any red lines and know that you're going to have a fun time. And I think that's really important. There's both the theatrical and performance part, and then there's the sociable part. It's a really lovely thing to be able to talk about.

[Tracy Alloway]

I think British people also love to complain. And so having. And I can say that because I'm married to a Brit, but, like, having something to unite around and complain about.

[Joe Weisenthal]

No, that makes sense. It's such a piece. Like, talk to anyone. You're never gonna get in too much of a fight. It's never gonna be too much. You know, there's nothing.

[Oisin Rogers]

I've literally never seen someone fall out. A bit of Guinness or a conversation about Guinness. It's always fun.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, speaking of speaking, as I've gotten older, I've become very sensitive to loud places. I walk by a place and there's booming music. I'm like, I don't want to walk into there, obviously. I want to have a conversation with someone, talk to us about sound design and building an environment that is conducive to a conversation.

[Oisin Rogers]

I think that's really important for pubs. And I have a particular view on this that people might not always agree on. I don't think that having sports and TVs in traditional pubs is a good idea. I also don't think that having background music on speakers is a good idea.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Some do.

[Oisin Rogers]

Some do and some disagree with me, but for me, I think it's best to leave it out. And I think that the sound you should hear is the sound of convivial chat in the background and the, you know, the clink of glasses and people having fun. And I think that's a very calming sound to have. And we think also really carefully about how sound would travel through a space. I think the very best pubs, and particularly the old ones, if you look at them, they've got screens and little places you can hide and sort of textured wallpapers on the ceilings and on the. On the walls, so the sound doesn't bounce around as much. It's a much more dead space. And they use really thick old carpets as well, so that, you know, you can have a private conversation and you can't be overheard and there's places you can hide and places you can sort of not be seen. And I think that's really important. And, you know, having, you know, a lot of sometimes places are great big square boxes where if you say something, the sound travels everywhere and we really avoid that in our design.

[Tracy Alloway]

I love pubs with little, like hidden nooks and crannies, like, they're the best. There's a great one which I recommended to one of our producers yesterday. The Cheshire Cheese, just down Fleet Street.

[Oisin Rogers]

It's a great pub.

[Tracy Alloway]

Love that place with all the little rooms and things. So, you know, we mentioned the headlines about pubs closing. Can you diagnose the problem here? Like, if you had to give us a summary of what exactly is going on, what is it?

[Oisin Rogers]

I think a lot of it is down to historical stuff. The pub was, you know, 100 years ago the place where people spent all of their leisure time, whereas leisure time has now been carved up with sport, with live music, with concerts, with tv, with scrolling on your phone at home, on your scrolling.

[Tracy Alloway]

You can do that at a pub.

[Oisin Rogers]

Yeah, but I think the best pubs are up there fighting alongside it for those occasions. And I think we're entering a golden age for pubs because, you know, while the world is saying that we're all going to move into this two dimensional AI space where we'll be, you know, playing games and looking at stuff on screens. I can say, see, anecdotally, that people are coming in and really loving the shared experience of the chaos of being in a. In a room full of other humans. And I think that that's going to translate into all sorts of stuff like sport, into being able to go to musical concerts, into going to the zoo or, you know, spending time in spaces with real people. It's far more exciting than what everybody's banging on about with AI Don't.

[Tracy Alloway]

The Sam Smith pubs, I'm sorry to keep going on about them, but don't they ban phones or something?

[Oisin Rogers]

They certainly do. And that's a really interesting company and worth digging into because old Humphrey Smith, who runs that firm, he's a bit like Willy Wonka in a good way. And all of their beers, you know, they still make them themselves. They make their own vodka, they bottle their own wine. They, they. It's a really closed, closed company and very interesting.

[Joe Weisenthal]

One of the things you hear is that young people don't drink as much as the older generations do. Another pretty contemporary trend that is not young people per se is the rise of GLP1s and which supposedly also curtail people's desire to drink alcohol.

[Tracy Alloway]

I can't imagine Guinness is an attractive proposition if you're taking Ozempic.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, you wouldn't think so. But what are you seeing in terms of like, consumer tastes among newer, younger people right now?

[Oisin Rogers]

I think this whole story that young people don't drink has been massively exaggerated. Okay. I see loads of people, you know, between 18 and 25 still piling in and, you know, having pints and having fun in the same way as I did when I was that age. And yeah, maybe they are overall drinking a little bit less and maybe being a bit more healthy, which is a great thing, but they certainly enjoy a few beers. And I think if you, if you start off in business thinking, oh, young people don't drink anymore, so I'm not going to look after them. They certainly are not going to come in. I think we need to look after those guys and make sure that they feel comfortable and safe and keep the pub as a center of community for them so that they can use it in the same way we did.

[Tracy Alloway]

This is a very cliched journalistic question, but what's the hardest part of running a pub?

[Oisin Rogers]

The hardest part, I think, is deciding you're going to do it. Because if you do it and you do it well, it's a real vocation and you do it all the time. It's not a part time job. Like, actually I never turn off. So I spend six or seven days a week in the pub. I'll be there at least a few hours a day, sometimes the whole day. And to do it well, I think you've got to be there.

[Joe Weisenthal]

What are you doing when you're there? Like when you, when you're on site? What's, what are you doing? Is it management yelling at people?

[Tracy Alloway]

Gordon Ramsay stuff?

[Oisin Rogers]

We don't, we don't yell. But no, it, it does. We've got 165 staff, so just, just meeting and looking after them and making sure they're feeling good is a really great thing. I obsess about details, about making sure that everything is clean and there's no visual noise around the place and that people know to keep that stuff correct. I'm always looking at, you know, paintwork and finishes and where stuff is placed and making sure things are like that. But to me, it feels a little bit, now I've moved on in my career, it feels more like conducting an orchestra so I can see what everybody's doing. I love catching my team doing things correctly and right. I love them going above and beyond and I just love working with these brilliant people that I work with. So, you know, just spending time with people is what I've put my life to and it's really great.

[Tracy Alloway]

Sorry, I'm laughing because I'm thinking about the story that you told about your wife not being able to pour a pint.

[Oisin Rogers]

Can I tell you, that was not her fault because training issues, because if she had been properly shown how to do it, then that would not have happened.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I think she was just thrown in there.

[Oisin Rogers]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Tracy Alloway]

This is exactly what I was going to say. So my husband very briefly worked as a bartender at Wetherspoons, got zero training, was basically thrown into it and made all sorts of mistakes, including pouring everyone like the top shelf gin before he was actually told about the cheap stuff, and also mixing up hoisin and barbecue sauce at one point and things like that. But what I was going to ask, actually working in pubs or restaurants is sort of a notoriously pressurized environment and sometimes kind of an abusive environment. Has your management style changed at all over the years? Do you find the way you manage people now is different to what you would have been doing in the 1990s or early 2000s?

[Oisin Rogers]

I don't think it's markedly different, but I am super aware that managing people well and making sure that they feel empowered and that they know what's going on and that they feel comfortable, safe and happy is everything. Because when our employees feel that, I know that the business accelerates. And that has been really what I've concentrated on in terms of having seen, you know, unpleasant things, things in the past in kitchens and around once again, thankfully not in my places. But certainly I think there was a lot of that around and I hope there's not much of it about now.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Just, you know, just on the business question, having started, you know, the inflation that happened in 2021, 22 exploded everywhere. Yeah, you mentioned that you're always going to have a pint. That's under five quid. But talk to us just about, like when you think about menu design or when you think about beer selection, or just when you think about the business in general. Managing a pub today with today's raw input, prices, et cetera, versus, say, if we had been having this conversation in the mid 2010s or in the mid-90s, how different is it because of the reality of just the high cost of many things?

[Oisin Rogers]

I think footfall is hard has been hit the most in pubs and that's a big killer. I think if you're selling hundreds of pints a day, you're not so much worried about the margins.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Okay.

[Oisin Rogers]

And, you know, I'd like to. I always have flipped it on its head for us in that we've always gone for volume, so when we're full, we're not so worried. Yes, of course our costs are really high, but you know, when you have margin and it kind of balances itself out.

[Joe Weisenthal]

And what's the key in a business? Finding a business partner. This is always a really difficult thing in any business, right? Going into business with someone or two people or finding the right investor that will be aligned time wise and margin wise and return wise. Having done this now, what are some of the important things to know for whether it's a pub or even anything about the type of person you're willing to go into business?

[Oisin Rogers]

I would say don't go into business with someone who has got the same skills as you because you, because you will both be doing the same thing. You need to find someone who has completely different skills to you. And in the case of me, Ashley and Charlie, it's a perfect example. Charlie is a big picture guy. He set up his own restaurant chain, Flatiron, and was incredibly successful there. He thinks really from the top down. He's very commercial, he's brilliant in meetings when it comes down to the financial side of things and great like that. We've got Ashley, who spent 20 years working alongside the best chef in the world, earned five Michelin stars in that time. His attention to detail on the food and product and purchasing side is second to none. And he's also a wonderful guy. And I think you're going to be speaking to him, which is great. He has the best palate for tasting things I've ever seen. He knows ingredients inside and out and he was able to really choose dishes that we could do all year round so we don't have to change them, so we don't have to be seasonal like everybody else. And that makes A big difference on the impact of cost. And then there's me, who's the, you know, front of house guy, I'll front the business, talk to everybody, operate the thing. So we're like three, three corners of a working triangle. And for me, that has been unbelievable. And, you know, we do have some similar skills, you know, in terms of the business, but the, the main ones are all very, very far apart and that has made us really strong.

[Tracy Alloway]

This is actually the perfect segue into the next segment of our conversation and our next guest. But one other thing I would love to ask, and I apologize in advance for asking it so directly, but what are the margins actually like for a pub like yours?

[Oisin Rogers]

We're pretty happy, I think, because we're a private business and we don't necessarily have to say, well, I'm going to keep that discreet. But we're certainly at a similar level to the marketplace, if not maybe a little bit higher. And I think good pubs are still converting at, you know, between 15 and 25%. But, you know, it's a great position to be in if we were at that.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Ash, thank you so much for coming on. Odd Lost. It was great.

[Oisin Rogers]

Joe, I'm absolutely delighted to be on the podcast. I listen to it all the time and seeing and hearing your voice at the same time. Same for you. Tracy has been a great pleasure. So thank you so much for having me on.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Thank you. I'm glad we made this happen.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

Yeah.

[Oisin Rogers]

Cheers, buddy.

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[Chase for Business / JPMorgan Chase Representative]

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[Tracy Alloway]

that was our conversation recorded in our London studio with Oishin Rogers.

[Joe Weisenthal]

And now you're going to hear our live episode recorded with chef Ashley Palmer Watts. I love the Devonshire, by the way. It's a great spot.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

That's a good start. Yes.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Now I'm going to ask you to expose your trade secrets and give us in the most excruciating detail possible, the conditions to serve the perfect pint of Guinness.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

How long do we have?

[Joe Weisenthal]

We have half an hour.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

So pre the pub I asked my now partner Oisin what were all the myths busted and what were the truths? He said, look, it's going to take an hour. We don't have an hour. So I'm going to top line it for you.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Okay?

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

Basically it starts with obviously the beer coming in, okay? And then you need to let it settle and you need to bring the temperature down really, I mean slowly, but I mean it takes a couple of days.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Okay.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

So we'll come into the sort of corridor. I mean we sell a lot. So we've not got enough space. So it's everywhere. Every door you open, it's there. It sits in the corridor, comes gently down, then it goes under the street in the sort of alcoves in there, and then it comes down, that's all chilled, that comes down. Then it goes into the cellar. So about two days later, okay. It then sits there, doesn't get disturbed again until you tap it and you start serving it. The pipes from the cellar to the tap are the shortest it can possibly be from the cellar to upstairs. So it's directly underneath the bar. Then you have the right circumference of the pipe to allow the right flow.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Okay.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

Then it's about pressure.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Okay, let's talk pressure.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

You need to put pressure, enough pressure through to pour it in about 13, 14 seconds up to the top of the harp and then you have that 90 second rest on the font, the pressure of the gas. There's two gases. There's nitrogen and CO2.

[Oisin Rogers]

Okay.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

Now in Ireland they do an 80, 20, 80, nitrogen, 20, CO2. In England, we're kind of made to buy a premixed gas, which is 75, 25. We actually mix our own, and our own little magic number is 8218. And then from there it's about the type of. There's a little plate in the pore with five tiny holes like pinholes. And depending on which one of those you choose gives you your texture. And then it's a balance. So it's pressure, gas, mix temperature and time. And then trying to get everyone to follow that and really understand it and respect that. And there you go.

[Joe Weisenthal]

That was awesome.

[Tracy Alloway]

Can I just say, this seems like a lot of work. I asked your partner this question, but I would be curious to get your thoughts as well. And I'm going to play the role of like, ignorant American here, but why does pouring a good pint loom so large in the British consciousness? Because in the us, you know, someone hands us a bottle of Bud Light, we don't really complain that much.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

Maybe we should, I guess it's quicker, I suppose. But I mean, you know, the thing about pubs is they're so. They're so British. It's part of our heritage that I think it is for literally everyone. Right? It doesn't matter who you are, how rich you are, how poor you are, what you're there for, whether it's catching up with friends or you're sad or you're happy or whatever, or just on your own with your own thoughts in your Head, I think, you know, it's about taste and appreciation. And I often ask myself, why is it that we love beer so much? And I don't know the reason, because, you know, you can only drink so many before you fall over. So maybe that's. Maybe that's the lovely tension between the two.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Let's just stick on the technical questions for a moment. How did you figure this out? So, like, okay, you've optimized something. How did you go from, okay, you're going to start a pub, it's going to be a big investment up front. You want to get it just right. Was there AB testing? Was there taste testing? What does that process look like of making sure that the final mix of gas, everything that you know, you have it right?

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

Well, I would say it's probably not finished. And I'll tell you the reason why. The question comes, and I'm a good friend of mine who's very, very clever, he's an American guy, scientist, food scientist. We're actually talking to him at the moment about the solubility of those gases in the liquid.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Great.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

So at the end of the night, the gases are turned off on those kegs. And what that means is that if you leave the pressure on the solubility takes too much of that gas into the beer, the beer becomes too foamy and too frothy. But my question to him was, and we don't know the answer yet, he's coming back in June, and we're going to try and figure this out with OSH as well, is that as the volume of beer in the keg reduces, the relative gas saturation to. It could be have a sliding scale of the solubility. But then there's the thing of saturation of the solubility of the gas. So it's a really complicated thing, probably a little bit above my understanding. But we're never happy just going, you know what? That's finished. And I think that's key with anything to do with the restaurant.

[Tracy Alloway]

But you get to do lots of taste testing as you go along.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

Well, it has to be done to be fair. Yeah, it's not a bad place to be at work.

[Tracy Alloway]

Okay, so I know you've been at a bunch of different restaurants, including famously, the chef at the Fat Duck with Heston Blumenthal. When you go about setting up a menu, when you first go to the drawing board and say, this is what we want our menu to be, how important are the actual economics and the price points, would you say this dish sounds phenomenal? And I would like to do it, but actually the unit economics don't really work for it.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

When I joined Osh and Charlie originally, they just wanted one recipe of a dish that we used to serve in Bray. I said, yeah, this is no problem. You can have it, it's fine. I said, why don't we make something synonymous with the pub? And it was more about creating things. The economic side is really, really important, but it's more about what is it you're coming to experience, what are you going to feel? What are we doing for you? Why are you coming to us? So after the hour's Guinness chat, we then brought Guinness into the beef cheek and suet pudding and finished the sauce with some Guinness. And it became synonymous with the pub, the process of the menu. They had an idea of the framework of what this menu would be. I came in quite late, obviously, just over a year before we opened.

[Joe Weisenthal]

What year did it open for those in the area?

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

November 23rd. Okay, keep it. So November 22nd, we started talking, and then in January 23rd, we sat down in Oisin's flat in Soho and we just talked about food for three days straight. And it was based around that framework. So we went through, and there are a few things that were left off and a few things that were added in. And I sort of was the conduit of almost like two parents input on what they loved and what they didn't love about certain things of what this thing could be, you know, so, you know, we wanted to do a scallop dish and if we could buy scallops from this diver up in Scotland, and, I don't know, maybe we'll make our own bacon and maybe if we could use malt vinegar somehow. So I would distill this down into a plan, add my sort of, I don't know, 25 years, 30 years experience in creating things, but then creating things that we could replicate on large numbers. You know, we'll do 650 covers today in the restaurant, for example. So it's great making it for 50, but you need to do it for a large volume. So that's really where the. There's a lovely tension between that.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Actually talk more about that. I'm sort of fascinated by the idea of, okay, you have a recipe, it might be good, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be able to scale for and do it in volume. I still, like, in my mind, I don't understand how restaurants work. How do they get so much food out so fast? I don't really understand how steakhouses work. Talk to us about building the repetition process.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

Yeah, so, I mean, it's about experience. Experience and knowledge is probably the most powerful thing that you gain through your career. You think you know everything at 25. Reality is 20 years later. You know a lot more. I think it's about understanding how things work and where mistakes can happen, where gaps are that allow those mistakes to happen and fix in the root cause. So reducing down mistakes gives you greater consistency. So when I am building recipes around a dish, you want to put as much measurable control in there as possible. Clear, simple, step by step approach. No information is stupid, really, because you don't want to assume that people know something that you don't make clear to them in the first place. And then it's about, for example, all the beef that we have. We have a room probably a bit bigger than this stage, where all the beef is aged. Downstairs, we have a grill in one of the dining rooms called the grill room. And we burn oak and beech in a massive kiln. It runs at 8, 900 degrees. We knock the wood down into embers, and then we lift them onto the ember beds. And we cook at different heights and temperatures. And so you can cook the whole way. If you wanted a medium steak or a medium beef chop, you could do that the whole way. But it would be a much more gentle process, slower, because you've got to allow that heat to transfer in. We've set it up slightly differently. We cook very quickly and quite hot so that we create the crust, we create the sear, then it goes on to the next person which is in the kitchen, and they control medium, medium, well, medium, rare. Rare. And they look after it from there, because to do that for this many covers all the way on the grill would be impossible. You would need a grill five times the size.

[Tracy Alloway]

Joe, why did we decide to record this conversation at dinner time? I know you were talking about beef just then, and clearly earlier in the conversation we were talking about higher beef prices. How much of an issue is that for someone who is actually serving that meat at the restaurant?

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

Yeah, I mean, it is a challenge. I mean, it went up quite a lot over the last couple of years.

[Tracy Alloway]

Yeah. And you specialize in beef. You have a whole room dedicated.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

It doesn't come down. Nothing ever comes down, to be fair. Occasionally fish will come down, but, you know, pretty much, you know, we're now seeing the effects. Like the guys were saying earlier, you know, the fuel and prices are going up. You know, another 30p on a scallop. It's quite a lot. You know, I think you just got to be clever. I mean, we buy direct from abattoirs because of the scale that we can and Charlie's relationships with different beef producers. But it's about having an entry level. So we use skirt steak, which is on our 29 pound menu, for three courses, steak and chips, prawn cocktail and then sticky toffee. And it's about utilizing the right cut at the right price for accessibility. And a sort of anyone can come to our restaurant. It's not expensive, but then you can come and spend £100 on a beef chop, for example. So there's that range. You know, it's top and bottom.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Wait, this. Actually, I forget who we were talking about this earlier, but we need to clear something up. Is it true?

[Tracy Alloway]

Oh, this was with Francine this morning.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Is it true that it's a really bad idea to order the second most expensive wine on the menu? This is a thing that they always say that that is there for suckers and that that's the one with the highest margin. Can you talk about wine pricing? Is it true that you're fooled to buy the second most expensive one?

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

Well, I'm sure in some places he could be right, but I mean, I can only talk about, you know, what we do and, you know, we have a nice list and it does range, but it really does focus on that entry level. So instead of, you know, that old thing of, you know, having your house wine and it's the cheapest one and no one orders it because it's the cheapest one and go for the other one. We actually work with one of Osh's friends in Portugal and he makes our Devonshire wine. Now, it's not our house wine, it punches a little bit higher up the list than that, but the prices are down where house wines are because we don't want to penalize people for coming in at entry level. But I think when you construct a wine list, the higher you go up in the value, the sort of better value you get, the margins are less. We don't apply a whole three or four times across the whole thing and, you know, hope for the best. It's, you want to be smart, you want to reward people and encourage people to drink better.

[Tracy Alloway]

How do you actually source new drink better? That's right. How do you source new wine or new ingredients? New suppliers. Are people pitching to you all the time? Do they come to the Devonshire and they're like, we have some great scallops from, you know, the following origin at this particular price or do you go out and try to find them?

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

A bit of both. But I mean, a lot of suppliers, when you do speak to someone, you say, you know, you sure you can do the volume? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're going to need like 3,000 scallops a week. Yeah, yeah, it's not a problem. And then you order 3,000 and they're like, you actually do want 3,000. I'm like, of course I'm not trying. I'm not telling you 3,000 to get them 10p cheaper. It's, you know, it's all about paying the right price, the fair price for the best quality. And that's what we're about. You know, if you're trying to drive the price down on everything all the time, you're never going to have the best relationship with the people that either are farming it, catching it and giving it to you.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Wait, actually, this is really interesting about that relationship. How often are suppliers changing? Or when you come to an agreement with a supplier, let's say, okay, you find your scallop provider who can deliver that volume. Do you lock it in? Do you say, okay, we're going to do this for six months? Is it for a week? You come to an agreement, Maybe you come to a price. What is the duration of that agreement?

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

I mean, it varies massively. You know, the scallops, for example, it was last week, you know, the fuel went up and, you know, I'm going to have to put, you know, 30 pence on a scallop. Listening to the guys on before me, you know, we listen to those guys. So when it comes down again, you know, fair's fair, but I think there are people out there that take the opportunity and, you know, exploit that a little bit. I would say we like to build relationships that last and mean something. And we bring a lot of our suppliers in to the Devonshire. Most people come and enjoy it as a place to come, and you just hope that you have this really great honesty and integrity with these guys and everything's fair.

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[Chase for Business / JPMorgan Chase Representative]

business owner isn't just a career, it's a calling. Chase for Business knows how much heart and effort go into building something of your own. That's why they make business growth their priority. The Chase team takes the time to understand your mission, where you are now and where you want to go. Their broad range of solutions is designed with you in mind so you can bring your ideas to life. From banking to payment acceptance to credit cards, you can conveniently manage all your business finances all in one place. With their digital tools looking for tips and advice, their online resources are always available to give you the solutions you need to help your business thrive. See how your business can get stronger and go farther with Chase for Business. Learn [e-mail] business chase for business Make More of what's Yours the Chase Mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply JPMorgan Chase Bank NA Member FDIC Copyright 2026 JPMorgan Chase Co. If you follow markets, you know the value of long term thinking. You plan, you diversify, you you prepare for volatility. But even the best strategies can't prevent every bad day. For more than 75 years, Cincinnati Insurance has helped individuals and businesses navigate tough moments with expertise, personal attention and independent agents who focus on relationships, not transactions, the Cincinnati insurance companies let them make your bad day better. Find an agent at C I N F I n dot com the Bear

[Tracy Alloway]

has taught me that every restaurant is always, you know, one disaster away from absolute chaos and probably bankruptcy and failure. When something does happen, first of all, you have to say whether or not you think the Bear is a realistic take on the show. If you've seen it, yeah. But secondly, when something does happen, like if a supplier fails to deliver or if, you know, you expect to get, I don't know, a load of spinach one week and it shows up and it's terribly wilted and you can't use it, what happens? How do you respond to those kind of issues generally?

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

I mean, I let the team deal with Most of it, but we have. It's not an estate, but with the caveat that when I step in or Osh steps in or Charlie steps in, you know, it's pretty serious. And if it's repeated, there's always going to be mistakes. It's how we rectify those and make sure that it doesn't happen again, or we minimalize that. But I always keep an eye on the messages that are going between all the top chefs, I call them. We've got a group called the top dogs in the kitchen, and you step in when you need to step in. And if I only phone the fish supplier or whatever, it's a serious conversation, but it's not. I don't blast them down the phone. It's just like, hey, look, what is going on? And there's often, you know, there's two sides to everything. And, you know, it's just the way it is. In terms of the bell, I've not really got past episode two.

[Tracy Alloway]

Really?

[Joe Weisenthal]

That probably says something too close to home.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

No, I don't know. I think this. There's one of these things. I mean, it'd be like these guys watching a trading film, you know, or a racing driver watching a Formula One film. It's never going to be 100% as it is.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

But, I mean, you've got to make something that people are going to be interested in and watch, and that's going to be sensationalized, and it's going to be dramatic and. But restaurants are hard. Pubs are, you know, we're in a hard business. Yeah.

[Tracy Alloway]

Do you yell as much as the chefs on the bear?

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

I don't yell, to be honest. It's much better to be silent, and,

[Joe Weisenthal]

you know, oh, that's more intimidating.

[Tracy Alloway]

Have the gravitas.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

But I try, and I try and do things a different way. Encourage people to. You get young chefs that are a little bit afraid when you're around, and I can't compute why. I just want to make them happy and do a great job, which is what we're all about.

[Joe Weisenthal]

All right, I totally believe you that it's. No, I totally believe you that you want to be accessible to rich and poor and that you want fair relationships or fair agreements, all this stuff. You want to be accessible. It's part of the ethos of the pubs in general, et cetera. Okay. All that being said, there have to be times where, okay, your suppliers. Prices go up, so you have to raise menu prices. Right. How do you decide when to make that decision? This is the question that people from the bank of England might be listening because they're trying to understand about how much inflation pricing power retail establishments have. How do you think about when that. To make that decision? It's like, you know what, we're going to have to adjust to higher prices.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

We've only done it once on a few things really since we opened. Yeah.

[Chase for Business / JPMorgan Chase Representative]

Wow.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

Yeah. We operate slightly. We're not a massive group. We're not run by the accounts department. We're run by giving people the best time. What do we think that we can. That's acceptable to pass on and it won't be at the rate of inflation. Some things haven't changed but it's. Can we put 50 pence on a side order? You know, it's 10% but it's 10% over two and a half years and that probably won't change this year either. How do we become more clever with our purchasing? Do we need to look at it? How can we be more efficient in production? How can we waste less? You know, these are all things. How can we look at labor in a slightly different way? You know, if we make this small change and Someone. We have two people in at 6 o' clock instead of one at 5 and one at 7, is that more productive when it comes to making bread, for example. So it's really not run on that economic side. It's more about what are we comfortable charging for that. And we never want to be thought of as expensive or exclusive or excluding people from coming in.

[Tracy Alloway]

That's interesting. So some of the most important levers you have to offset higher costs don't have anything to do with actually raising menu prices.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

No.

[Tracy Alloway]

Talk to us about, I don't know if you like this label or not, but the rise of the gastropub in the UK because it does feel like you have this sort of division now between pubs that are all liquid, that don't sell food except for bags of like Walker Crisps or something. And they're not doing very well. They're closing a lot and then you have the successful pubs and all of them seem to serve food.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

Yeah, I mean, you know, there's a, there's a big range there. I mean wet led pubs are really popular. You know, our local is in Soho and it's really busy. It's a great place to go but it's really kind of old fashioned in a way. I think the danger is when you have people driving the economics of menus. Examples purchasing departments are dictating to, you know, maybe small Mid large groups that have, let's say, chefs that run the kitchen with some sort of autonomy, but actually they're being told what to have. And actually this comes from a central kitchen. And I do understand it. I'm lucky I don't live in that world. It would be very painful, I'd imagine, and probably not how a real chef would want to do it. And I think those things are very difficult because it's easy to cut quality, cut cost, put the price up, and none of that. That's a race to the bottom. But I think depending on who those people are and how your little micro climate of a business is, it's hard to fight against that when you're just a chef, when you've got a big group and you've got a board and returns, et cetera. So we're lucky we're not in that at the moment. And, well, we will never be, which is good. And that's the way we focus on why people want to come to us. And that's why we've got 650 people in for dinner, lunch and dinner today. They want to be there. It's the right price and they have a great time. We make them feel good.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Is there a difference between just sort of conceptually or menu design or anything between how you think about the business of a true local, where everywhere it's the same people day in and day out, and it's their pub versus a place such as yours, where, yes, of course you have regulars, but also you're going to have people who are just only going to be there one time in their life.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

Yeah. I mean, the one surprising thing with the Devonshire is I thought there wouldn't be this local thing, you know, because it's London, it's busy, you wouldn't see those locals. There are so many locals that come, you know, as part of our inner circle, but then also customers from all over the country, from Europe, that even Australia, the first place they come when they come here every year, they come to Devonshire. So I consider them a local when they come, you know, when they can only come once or twice a year, they're in as well. And I think it's about a real eclectic bunch of cool people that just want to have a bit of escapism time, you know.

[Tracy Alloway]

Wait, how are the locals getting reservations consistently? Because when I told everyone we were going to interview you, the first question they had was, oh, can he, like, get us into the Devonshire?

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

Yeah, it's a bit of a tricky one this well, the best way is to book online. We release tables every Thursday at 10:30 in the morning. We release a whole week's worth in three weeks. But you need to be ready, card ready, etc. Etc. If you can't do that, we do take about 100 walk ins a day, which is quite a lot, you know. So if people are patient, they're polite to the team, you know, they're happy to have a drink, wait 10, 15 minutes, we will take as many people as we possibly can. We hate saying no. So those that persist a little bit more than others, they do. Get in.

[Tracy Alloway]

We recorded earlier with your co founder Oishin and he told us to ask you this question and I'm not sure he thought we were actually going to ask you it or if he meant for us to actually ask you it live on stage. But I'm going to give it a go. He said that we should ask you about gifts for the guys from Apple while you were at the Fat Duck.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

Oh yes. Oh that's a good one. Actually he loves all the stories. Right. And I think that's a big part of what we do is about storytelling. I'll come back to that. On the menu, what was it? I was in the office one day, I was in Bray. So we have this corner office, Fat Duck's over there, Hinds Head's there, the crown's down there. And we got a call in from Jony Ives PA saying listen, Johnny's just finishing his British holiday, he's going back on his private jet. We'll be able to buy some food from dinner by Heston, which was my restaurant in London. Yeah, the Hinds Head. And we serve it on the plane on the way back and we're like, yeah, why not, let's do it. So I had about a week and a half and I thought one of our famous dishes at dinner was, is called a meat fruit, which is from the 1500s when Victorians used to make meat and fish look like fruit. So when you cut into it it's something else. So we put a duck liver parfait inside a mandarin jelly and it even had the dimples on and everything. The most incredible textured pate. But of course it was an orange. So I thought, wow, it'd be amazing if we could make an apple. And so went into the development kitchen, I had one guy working with me on a day to day basis. I said look, we gotta make an apple in a week and a half and it's gonna be served on this plane for Jony, I've. This is going to be brilliant. But as you know, apple, as soon as you cut into it, it discolors the oxidizes. So how do you make a really green apple that doesn't taste oxidized or look oxidized? Anyway, we made this thing look like a Granny Smith with even the air bubbles, like the little sort of dots on it. And so I sent five oranges and one apple in the middle, and I thought, this is it. He's going to be on the phone going, this is bloody brilliant. You need to come out. The apple didn't hear a word. So I will see him one day, I'll remind him.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Maybe one day he'll come on, if he ever comes on our podcast.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

But going back to that menu thing when we were doing this, when you construct your menu and you lay out your stall of your restaurant and what you want to give people, it's really important to look at 10, 15 things that you really want to drive home. So there's a bakery downstairs, you know, for the bacon sandwich, which is on the bar menu, we make the bread, we make the bacon, we make the butter. That's a great little story and it's not groundbreaking or anything, but most people aren't doing that. So it becomes real. There becomes this value in the storytelling that you're actually doing. It's no good making up fake things that you don't do because you will get caught. But, yeah, it's about, what are those stories?

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, I can't imagine there are many places making their own butter and making their own bacon. You're talking about the designing of the apple and the oranges actually reminded me of a question I wanted to ask in the pub context. How much creativity can you have in the food beyond? Which is like, this isn't pub food anymore, is there? There's so much tradition bound up in the concept of a pub. How far can you push. How do you think about pushing the edges of what is pub food?

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

It's a real tricky one that. Because, like, for me, I grew up in Dorset and pub food was scampi and chips, fish and chips, sausage and mash. That's not what we do at the Devonshire, but we're in a completely different time. You know, food is always evolving. Obviously, I think it's about simplicity, it's about quality, boldness with hidden things that make things taste good. So, for example, if you come to the Devonshire and you order the lamb cutlets, for example, we hang the lamb 14 days. So you get really great flavor. The lamb comes from Cornwall, beautifully French trimmed. And then we take the fat from the bone and then we render that down and then I don't know if this is an American thing or not, but it definitely is here. English. We have mint sauce with lamb, right?

[Joe Weisenthal]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

So we take the lamb fat and then we pick mint leaves and then when the lamb fat is cool, we add the mint leaves in. So it's cold infused. You get all the sort of volatile aromas from the mint into the lamb fat. And we simply brush that on to the lamb just before serving. Right. So you can imagine it's this fat. There's lamb, there's mint, there's salt and there's a bit of pepper. That's it. It just looks like a lamb chop. But the actual impact of that is so much greater than what you see and feel, you know.

[Tracy Alloway]

All right, everyone go see this man. For reservations at the Devonshire, ask for

[Joe Weisenthal]

Roshin Ashley Palmer Watts. That was amazing. Thank you so much.

[Ashley Palmer Watts]

Thanks very much.

[Tracy Alloway]

All right, that was our special two part episode recorded in London. All about the Devonshire Pub. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.

[Joe Weisenthal]

And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez at carmenarmon, Dashiell Bennett at dashbot, Kel Brooks, El Brooks and Kevin Lozano at Kevin Lloyd Lozano. And for more odd lots content go to bloomberg.com oddlots where the Daily newsletter and all of our episodes and you can chat about all of these topics 24. 7 in our Discord Discord GG oddlots.

[Tracy Alloway]

And if you enjoy odd lots, if you like it when we talk to publicans, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple podcasts and follow the instructions there.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Thanks for listening, Sam.

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