Ever since farm labour became largely a thing of
the past in the 1970s, village pubs and shops have been disappearing with monotonous regularity throughout the county.

But this Easter weekend sees one rural community in North Yorkshire welcoming back its village shop for the first time in many years.

David and Kate Deacon are the licensees at The Shoulder of Mutton in Kirkby Overblow, roughly halfway between Harrogate and Wetherby, and having established themselves in the village over the last four and a half years, along with their young family, they have decided to open up a small retail establishment alongside the pub.

If figures alone were to be the determining factor then on the face of it everything is against them. The village they serve has a population of no more than 400, they are not on a main thoroughfare to pick up significant passing trade and, with food prices presently on the increase, there is always a danger that the supermarkets in the local towns just five miles either side will mop up even further business.

However, David and Kate have a belief that success is more down to good management and maintaining quality rather than purely looking at the village's numbers.

"We realise that the first year will be a massive learning curve for us," says Kate. "But we're fast learners. We had never run our own business, let alone a pub, before we came here and yet we have made that a success.

"Because the shop is on the pub site, and we're already being charged rent for the area we have, the shop will share the overheads with the pub rather than having to survive as a stand-alone business.

"The village school has 90 children and we hope that many of their parents will visit. We have something like 500-700 customers a week in the pub, so hopefully that will help too. The reason why the previous shop in the village died was that it was a stand-alone business."

David says: "There has been a very real air of anticipation over the shop opening. They have been excited about it.

"Up to the 1920s the village had a post office, three shops, a tearoom, blacksmiths, joiners and cobblers. We are really pleased to be bringing at least one of those back."

It has been quite an undertaking for David and Kate, but also one that they had planned on right from the beginning, as Kate explains. "We had the idea before we came here, but because of the realities of running a pub, especially being new to it, you soon find that a year has gone by. In our case it was two years before we were able to look at the shop idea again.

"When we did we tried accessing funding from the organisation 'Pub is the Hub' who were very supportive. John Longden gave us a lot of advice, but then it all suddenly started to snowball and we were ready to go ahead with the conversion but hadn't found the funding.

"You can't get it granted retrospectively unfortunately. So we had to make the decision to go ahead and spend the money ourselves."

A mere £30,000 later, The Shoulder Shop is now ready to serve its village and surrounding community.

David believes their existing contacts at the pub, which has won a shoal of awards recently, will stand them in good stead with the shop trade.

"We already have quality suppliers to the pub, whose produce we intend to sell through the shop as well.

"We are providing a meat and fish service, but we won't have either on display. We will have a blackboard showing what people can order, from rib-eye steaks and sirloins to all types of fish. We will then make sure we fulfil the orders in 24 hours.

"Existing relationships we have with Ramus Seafoods in Harrogate and butchers R & J Atkinson in Kirkby Malzeard mean that what our customers already enjoy in the pub will then be able to be enjoyed at home, and customers will also be able to order on-line."

The intention is that the shop will serve as a village convenience store for everything from cereals, cakes, jams and butter to
fish and meat, even supplying pet foods too.

For Kate it is a return home. She grew up in the village and has worked here for many years with her brother's landscaping business, and remembers buying sweets from the old village shop when she was a little girl.

David and Kate's current run of awards for the pub is impressive. It includes the Northern Hospitality Award in 2008, the Punch Taverns "Pub in Bloom" winner for North Yorkshire 2008, the Cask Marque Award, for real ale for each of the past three years, the Beautiful Beer Award, for all of their beers, and last week a Highly Commended Award in the 2009 Bll Licensee of the Year's "Oscars". Their chef, Michael McBride, has won one too.

It seems David and Kate are applying themselves in the same way to the shop as they have to the pub.

"We wanted to come straight in and set our own standard, maintaining it from day one. We knew that by not doing that we might just have been seen as something a little bit run of the mill, and we didn't want that. It's not rocket science what we have done, it's just a matter of having standards."

David was formerly a college lecturer in food and cookery at Huddersfield Technical College.

The Shoulder of Mutton's trade is now more 70/30 in favour of food (dry trade) rather than drink, and wine actually outperformed beer for sales in the pub for the first time last year, but they have been keen to ensure their beers are of excellent quality.

"You've got to be realistic, in this day and age, that in a village pub you must concentrate on the food side.

"We're not going to make a living if we are wet-led, but our beers are still very important to us. We're not a gastro-pub, we're not a restaurant. We're a pub that serves great food and our village business has grown massively since we came here."

Although Kirkby Overblow has little in the way of facilities these days, it does have two pubs, the other being The Star and Garter. Both appear to be bucking the trend of closures.

David and Kate are aiming to do the same as they grow their new village shop, – which opened its doors for the first time yesterday.