Chef left ‘gobsmacked’ by closure of his former pub

CHEF Antony Worrall Thompson has said he is “gobsmacked” that his old pub-restaurant has closed permanently just 14 months after stepping away from the business.

He had been the proprietor of the Greyhound in Peppard for almost 20 years before handing it over to David Brown last summer.

But Mr Brown wrote on the restaurant’s website that he had closed it on Monday this week due to difficult trading conditions.

He said: “With a heavy heart, due to continuingly difficult trading conditions and next year’s budget changes, I’ve taken the hard decision to close the Greyhound permanently.”

Mr Brown, who had previously run the award-winning Royal Oak in Marlow, added: “Thank you to all of you who've enjoyed and supported the Greyhound over the years.”

Worrall Thompson, 73, who still runs the Grill Off the Green restaurant in Kew, said that he understood the pressures the hospitality industry was facing.

He said: “You spend 18 years in love with a place and then within 18 months it disappears. It’s a crying shame really as it’s such a lovely place.

“It was a fairly quick decision. It’s his money, he made the decision and I’m too old to take it back. I love the place but I’ve got too much on now with other things.

“I knew they were having staff problems, which a lot of places are having nowadays, but I didn’t know he was going to close the place down.

“He was a bit laden by lack of staff and lack of knowledge of the industry because the industry he was in before he bought this was totally different.

“As a consultant you can only advise so much, so he has to make decisions, he obviously signed the lease and that choice had to be his.

“I would imagine he will be looking for someone to take it on in the next few months and rebuild from the start really. It’s not easy to sell a restaurant that’s closed, it’s going to be a tough one for him but if I can help him with it in any way I will.

“I’m there to give advice if he wants it, he’s a really nice guy, it’s a great shame that it’s come to pass this way but it’s a tough business out there at the moment.”

Worrall Thompson said that the hospitality industry was struggling in the wake of recent government policies and the prolonged impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

He said: “It’s tough to get staff and it’s tough to get customers and it’s going to be a very lean 2025 I think so, at the moment, I think it might be quite hard to sell the property. You hear so many pubs have gone down the tubes and so many pubs are going to go down the tubes because of the new Labour policies on the minimum wage and national insurance contributions.

“The ability to take on youngsters and train them is going to go out the window because who’s going to pay the same wage for a youngster as you would for a 30-year-old?

“Brexit didn’t help, covid didn’t help and people got very lazy during the pandemic where they were getting 80 per cent of their salaries and they didn’t want to work that hard.”

Mr Worrall Thompson said that if the VAT rate could be reduced, people would be encouraged to dine out in greater numbers.

He said: “I personally think that if VAT on food could be cut to 10 per cent and then, if they want to get a little bit back, they can put the booze side up by say 25 per cent, so you’re trying to keep people healthier on the alcohol front, you’re giving people the opportunity to go out and eat at a reduced price.

“I think increasing the national insurance contributions was not the best way of raising money. There are better ways of raising money such as by taxing ultra-processed food and things like that and that would make the country healthier as well.”

Mr Brown did not want to talk further about the reasons behind the closure.