Agility is a Strategic Advantage in Small Hospitality

When my husband Tim and I decided to leave our secure, well-paid jobs to open a bar, most people thought we were mad. We’d spent years talking about it – what we’d do differently, what we felt was missing locally – but it took a family bereavement and a milestone birthday to make us realise that if we didn’t give it a go now, we might never do it.

We had no background in hospitality beyond being customers. But we knew what kind of place we wanted to create. And we were willing to put everything we had into it. We self-funded the whole venture, didn’t take on debt, and opened Craft Republic in Barry in 2020, right between two lockdowns.

The timing wasn’t ideal. When the first lockdown happened we’d just taken on a unit in the Goodsheds development, Tim had left his job – and then the world shut down. But being a husband-and-wife team and living close by meant we could keep progressing with the fit-out safely during lockdown. We did most of the work ourselves. Tim built the bar, we painted and wallpapered, and we figured things out as we went along.

Opening during a pandemic wasn’t in the business plan, but we adapted. I come from a digital marketing background, so when another lockdown hit at Christmas, I quickly spun up an online shop. We offered click-and-collect, local deliveries and even invested in a canning machine to package draught beer. While many pubs were throwing away unsold stock, we were buying it. One of our suppliers told us we were their only active customer at the time.

That approach – of being agile, keeping things lean and responding quickly to change – has stuck with us. It helped us build a customer base and then a second business: Barry Island Spirits Co. What started as a house gin for Craft Republic became a separate product line that helped sustain us through restrictions and beyond.

More recently, the cost-of-living crisis has brought new challenges. The atmosphere has shifted. People are still going out but are spending more cautiously. Instead of drinks before dinner out, it's now drinks before dinner at home. The knock-on effect is subtle but real. And as a wet-led bar, we felt it.

We were also in the middle of opening a new venue, a retail shop for our spirits, which meant our attention was divided. But being a micro business – just the two of us as directors – meant we could move quickly. We launched new events to shift stock and boost cash flow. We listened to our customers and looked closely at data to understand what was changing.

Now, we’re entering a new phase. We’ve moved the spirits business into a new wine bar, Môr by Barry Island Spirits Co, on the High Street in Barry, and we are relocating Craft Republic to a unit we’ve bought at the waterfront. That gives us long-term security and room to grow. We never thought we’d open a second bar, let alone buy a building. But we’ve learned to stay open to change.

Resilience doesn’t mean having all the answers. It means being willing to act when things change – even when you don’t feel ready. And agility doesn’t have to mean reinventing the wheel. It just means listening, looking at the data, and having the confidence to tweak the plan.

We’re still learning, but what’s carried us through so far is staying close to our customers, being willing to adapt, and not being afraid to do things differently.