The first six months

Well, here we are. 6 months of existing as Pancho Tapas. We are still afloat. Just. No thanks to lots of people who you would think would have our best intentions at their heart. No names....

We have our name out there, people are talking about Pancho both locally, and all over the country. I have friends all over the place who whenever anyone mentions somewhere within a 10 mile radius of Warwick brings up Pancho. Often people offer their thoughts on our little piece of the culinary map. Usually positive, with regard to our food, it is hard to fault, occasionally someone will find fault with the service. Almost always it is someone who has worked in the trade, and has opinions on how things should be done. It is often hard to not suggest that maybe there is a reason you don't work in the trade anymore. I have to admit to being sick of the "I used to run a restaurant...." line. The key being 'used to', why did your business fail? In this weekend's episode of the "tell Dale where he is going wrong" soap opera, a chap whose 3 months foray into the restaurant trade ended a week ago with his company going under, told me what I need to be doing. I wish I could record some of the advise I get to post a V-log.

The comparisons to other places in Warwick are completely pointless. We have no competition in Warwick, we are not competition for anyone else in Warwick. People draw comparisons between Pancho and Catalan. We are very very different. Catalan are a Catalunyan restaurant who do tapas, Pancho is a Tapas bar. It's all we do. Pancho sends people to Catalan frequently, as we do to AquaFM, Restaurant 23 and other places locally that we rate. If someone comes to Pancho and doesn't want/understand tapas, rather are looking for a more traditional style of eating, we are more than happy to recommend other places. Thankfully the places we recommend offer something different to the norm, but together we offer a great selection, I just wish we could all work together a bit. That is for the next blog anyway.

The team at Pancho are very proud of our first 6 months, and we all feel we have made a lot of friends. We want to thanks everyone for sticking by us. It's been hard, and thankfully we have a great bunch of people around us. Our suppliers know we wouldn't be here without their understanding, and we are forever indebted. Pancho, in whatever form we take going forward look forward to taking you along for the ride.

Pancho Restaurants have some exciting plans in the offing for 2012, having already discussed further projects, we have a lot of options, and are looking at what suits next. We are going from strength to strength, and we couldn't have done it without the help of our loyal customers, patient suppliers, and without the best staff in Warwick. Bar none.