We was fortunate to sit down with Jack, co-owner and general manager at The Pig’s Head, as part of our Support Your Local series. The pub industry is a cornerstone of British culture, meaning something different to every customer who walks through its doors. With the industry facing particularly challenging times, we wanted to learn from and be inspired by those who show up every single day.
The Pig’s Head is a true farm-to-fork pub in Clapham, doing everything right. Their mission is simple: to be the best pub in Clapham. They are also leading the way in sustainability, with a range of initiatives that earned them Best Sustainable Pub at the British Pub Awards 2024. It was a pleasure speaking with Jack and experiencing the genuine passion that drives the pub behind the scenes.
Sarah, our Key Account Manager here, had the absolute pleasure of chatting to Jack in his pub.
(Sarah) First of all, I just wanted to ask you to tell us a little bit more about your pub and what it means to you?
(Jack) So we’re The Pig’s Head and we are a gastropub. We’re one that focuses around sustainability. I think the first thing is to be a great pub, being a place where people can come and enjoy themselves. And then the background, what we’ve got going on is a lot about our sustainability.
We recently won an award for being the best sustainable pub in the UK at The British Pub Awards, which was fantastic. But that’s not what we’re about. The main thing we’re about is being an amazing pub and that’s the prime thing. And then all of the sustainability around the initiatives that we have, they’re all working in the background just to help us be an amazing, even better pub.
Can you tell us a little bit more about what your pub means to your customers?
We’re a place for amazing food. We have some amazing products, both wet and dry. So it’s a lot about where things come from, and we care about that. So we do a lot of work around making sure that it is an amazing place to come. And our guests trust us. And I think that’s a really important thing. They come here for fun, great products and for us to do all the caring for them without them actually having to worry about that. I think we are also doing, going back to the sustainability thing, we’re doing all the right things as well. And it’s not easy either. Being a sustainable pub in the UK is difficult, but we’re working on those things so that people can come here and have an amazing time but also know that we’re doing all those other things as well.
Can you give us a bit of an overview as to your customer base? What sort of customers do you get here in the Pig’s Head?
We get a huge range, so we get young people coming to meet with their friends. We get young people bringing their parents. We get a lot of friend groups. I think that’s really important. We are a place where people come to celebrate events. If I sing Happy Birthday, 50 times a week, it was probably a rough estimate on how often said.
We’re a place where people come to celebrate. I think we are also a place where people come to enjoy great British produce as well. We have a huge British wine list. We source all of our ingredients from the UK as well. And I think that’s one of the things that people really, really love about us and that fact that it’s the produce and the product that we have is fantastic and people love it.
How do you feel pubs, as a British institution, contribute to communities not just here in London, but across the UK as a whole?
For me, being part of the community is really important. I think that’s the key thing. We have a struggle in the fact that we are seen as a restaurant, but we, for me were a pub. I think a pub is a place nobody ever goes to a pub for a bad time. People always go to the pub for a great time. Now it’s a little bit like, it’s a place, it’s an institution. It really, really is. And I think it’s a place where you can come and meet your friends. You can come and read a book. You can come and have a coffee, you can come and have a pint. You can come and have a glass of wine. It’s all things to all men and woman of course. But for me, it’s a safe place. But it’s not a safe place on purpose. It’s just a safe place. People feel that they can go to a pub. It’s one of those places where it’s a cornerstone of the community. It adds to the community. It is a place people love to go to.
And can you give us any examples from your own pub here at the Pig’s Head about how you feel you’ve contributed to the community as a whole here in Clapham?
I think a lot of the things that we do, we have a really tight community here, but we also have whenever anything’s mentioned about sustainability, people come to see us, which is really, really nice. And, we compost all of our own food waste here. Any of our paper waste, all that sort of stuff. We give that away to the community.
So we’ve got lots of gardeners and community groups that will come by and grab big bags, but we give away small bags. I think one of our big contributions is, we filter all of our own water here. We charge £1.50, and then we give all the profits to Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital. That’s a really important one for us. One, because by filtering the water here, we’re not importing glass bottles all around the country. So it removes about eight and a half tonnes from our carbon footprint on a yearly basis. Plus, we give all that money to Great Ormond Street. So we’ve actually donated. Well, we haven’t, our guests have donated over £27,500 to Great Ormond Street Hospital, which is fantastic.
But we also have lots of small community groups that will come to us and ask for charitable donations. So we do raffle prizes for the local schools, for the local church and also local hospice. We have a really good community, relationship with those establishments as well, which is really, really good.
We’re being squeezed everywhere where we can. But it’s really, really nice. And I think the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital one is a great, we advertise it on the menu, and it’s just such a really, really nice thing because you can go out and can spend an absolute fortune on mineral water etc. But by having the filtered water here, it’s just so nice.
And it’s just £27,500 pounds, the easiest check in the world ever, right?
The British pub really has it holds a unique position in the world as being quite a unique institution. What do you love about it the most?
A little bit like nobody ever goes to the pub for a badtime. I think. You see smiles, you see experiences. I get to watch little kids grow up. We’ve been here for four years. We’ve got families coming through who’ve been here when they were pregnant. They had their little kids. Your watching people grow up
I think the other thing for us is around the team as well. We employ young people who are getting to experience an amazing industry. They’re learning really, really good life skills. I like everybody like to work in the hospitality industry. Before they it almost like a life skill. We have to learn, because I think that’s the other thing.
We’ve got some amazing young people working for us. They learn great life skills. They add to our business. But they add to our everything that we do. We’d be nothing without our people. Our guests are amazing and staff are amazing. All of those combinations are really, really great and it’s just lovely to be able to see people smile.
I work every Sunday. Sunday is our busiest day. The reason I work every Sunday is because people are here to have a great time, and we’re facilitators. People come in, they could have one experience. We’re just four walls. It’s an old building. You can come in here and have any experience you want. We really add to people’s experience.
We give them a little bit of insight into what we do, but also we make their experience better and they walk out better for it. I think that’s really important.
So working here is an experience. They pick up all those life skills. The guests come here and they have an amazing experience. And for me it’s a really amazing thing. We’re constantly developing ourselves by challenging ourselves. We challenge ourselves to get better for the guests.
And they see that we challenge themselves for the team. They’re seeing that. I think that’s really, really important. I love this industry. Always have. Always will. I look forward to going to work. It’s just one of those things where I don’t think I could ever get this experience working in another industry.
That’s right. And this is really a keystone of the local community, isn’t it? Jack, thank you so much for your time in your wonderful pub.
This January, check out your locals. Whether it be for a pint, a coffee or some food, it is always worth supporting.
