Majority Rules – The Wicked Witch

‘I loved The Wizard of Oz movie when I was a kid but we had a few names in the hat so we got together with some friends and voted on which we liked best. I think the others were a bit unsure of The Wicked Witch at first, especially the villagers, but eventually it won the vote.’

The Fergusons were already familiar with the premises, having visited on several occasions when it was trading as The Millstone. ‘We first moved to the area five years ago when I took on the Peterborough job and we bought a house in Stamford,’ Darren explains. ‘Then I changed jobs and moved to Preston (Ferguson managed Preston North End in 2011) and then came back here again when I went back to managing Peterborough United. We weren’t exactly regulars at The Millstone but we came in occasionally so we knew the potential of it.’

‘It was mostly just a drinking pub so it was dead most of the time,’ Nicola expands. There are another two pubs really close by and not that many people live in the village so we knew we had to offer something different to make this work. We always said that if the place ever came up for sale then we’d be interested in buying it and trying to make a real go of it.’

And judging by the response on the opening night on 11 February, their plans are going to pay off. ‘On our first official Saturday we did something like 78 covers (meals) which was fantastic,’ Dominico explains. ‘We just opened the door and they were flooding in!’

And that’s been without any serious advertising or promotion. The team has so far even refrained from exploiting their famous partner’s name in trying to drum up interest. ‘We’ve not really played on Darren’s name at all,’ Dom says. ‘In fact, between the five of us, we’ve generated a lot of people coming through the doors – just friends and family – without even having started to advertise yet. It’s all been word of mouth so far.’

The Witch isn’t just a restaurant: it functions as a pub too, so customers are more than welcome to just pop in for a few drinks. But great food was always going to be the Witch’s secret weapon and that’s why the owners went out of their way to find the best chef they possibly could. ‘We found our head chef, Dan Gill, through a chef’s agency,’ Nicola explains. ‘Several people sent their CVs through but Dan had worked at Le Manoir in Oxford (Raymond Blanc’s two-Michelin Star restaurant) and Midsummer House in Cambridge (another two-Michelin Star establishment) so he immediately stood out. A few chefs came and cooked for us as part of the selection process but Dan cooked a smoked eel risotto that was just amazing so we knew we had found our man.’

The Fergusons and Bunces ran the premises as The Millstone for a short period over Christmas before closing down for a month for a complete refurbishment. And only then did they realise the enormity of the task they had taken on. ‘We only had a month to do everything and we didn’t really have a detailed plan,’ Mark Bunce explains. ‘We knew we’d have to work out how to do everything ourselves and when it came down to taking things apart and so on, we didn’t know if a month was going to be enough. In the end, it just about was, but it was close. Very close! We had advertised the opening date so all the work had to be done in time for that.’

The first few weeks we had the pub, I thought it was really good fun. On the Saturday night when we took it over we had no staff so the four of us had to work behind the bar. We couldn’t even figure out how to work the till properly so I think it ended up costing us!

‘I thought that was really good fun actually!’ Darren says, before his brow furrows. ‘But we got a bit stressed towards the end of the refurb. I think I can speak for all of us on that count.’