Banbury area pub raises more than £1,000 for charity

The Saye & Sele Arms pub, located on the B4035 in the village of Broughton three miles of the Banbury town centre, is still open but with modified services, which include hot food takeaway and delivery as well as a shop for household essentials.

Paul Hawkins-Rowe, who owns and runs the Saye & Sele Arms pub with his partner Gale Issitt, said: "As for the pub itself, clearly, we cannot operate as normal, so we looked at what the village community needed and what we were able to do instead.

"As the village has a lot of elderly and or vulnerable residents and no village store, we decided the best thing we could do would be to supply some household essentials, using our existing wholesale suppliers and repacking the goods into smaller retail sized amounts."

The pub has organised a takeaway and delivery menu, which includes offering draught ales on a takeaway basis using sterilised milk containers to supply in 2, 4 and 6 pint quantities.

Paul added: "This was set up using our original ethos of using fresh, quality produce, sourced from local suppliers and prepared by people who care about what they produce.

"Although, we have significantly reduced our range and concentrated on foods that are relatively easy to prepare and keep hot, we still believe we offer excellent quality at a reasonable price.

"We also re-purposed some of our front of house staff to delivering the food in order to keep them employed too.

"We were able to deliver the goods without making any direct contact with the recipients by taking payments by card over the phone and our gloved delivery personnel were knocking on the doors and stepping back to allow full distancing.

"So, we currently have a business that is basically ticking over and covering its costs, but keeping the local community supplied and the staff employed, which we believe will put us in a good position to restart the business once the current crisis is over."

The pub is also planning a special VE Day menu, which will be loosely based on traditional wartime fare. The Chef Specials on Friday and Saturday will be steak and kidney pudding (suet top), faggots and peas, corned beef hash with crispy bread. The specials will be in addition to the normal menu.

Pub officials will also be checking with its neighbour to see if he will lend them his armoured car again to put outside the pub as he did for their Armistice weekend special last year.

During the lockdown the pub has also worked to raise money for charity too.

Paul said: "Throughout the year, we raise money for various charities, including the The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Help for Heroes, The Royal British Legion, Katherine House Hospice and our current main charity, The Alzheimer's Society.

"We chose Alzheimer's as our main charity as unfortunately, our Quiz Master's wife suffers from this cruel, debilitating, life stealing disease.

"In our first year of owning the pub, we managed to raise £1,400 for the charity and this year, we were on track to improve on that even further.

"Unfortunately, the COVID-19 restrictions have been a major setback, with having no footfall through the pub.

"We did however, organise an Easter Raffle and continued to market the tickets through social media, on our Facebook page and Google account.

"We asked one of our regulars, who is also a phenomenal force for good in our local community, a real live wire who spends her time helping others and member of the local council - Sue Leech - to come along to draw the raffle for us.

"Due to the restrictions in place, we held the drawing live on Facebook in the car park of the pub.

"From the raffle, we managed to raise over £270, which brought our total to an excess of £1,100 so far this year despite the difficulties."

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