Latest news with #TheFarmersDog
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Jeremy Clarkson fans divided after pub visitor shares receipt for Sunday roasts at The Farmer's Dog
He's been taking a hard line on moaning diners lately, going so far as to ban one from his pub when they complained about high prices. And now a string of Jeremy Clarkson fans have risked igniting the wrath of their hero as they took to Facebook to pick apart another customer's receipt. Joanna Teresa, a visitor to The Farmer's Dog in Asthall, Oxfordshire posted a picture of her bill to the social media site after a Sunday lunch at the establishment on June 8. The hearty family meal out came to £174.04 including five roasts, some drinks, sides and a service charge. Bravely defending the price of her feast at The Farmer's Dog, the customer gushed about her culinary experience once she had made it into the packed pub. 'Went to the farmers dog yesterday, what a lovely experience,' she said. 'Very busy but once we were in the pub for our meal it was a relaxed atmosphere, the food was delicious staff were brilliant. 'Great price for 6 roast dinners & drinks. Highly recommend.' Joanna coughed up £24 for a roast beef dinner, with those looking to tuck in to a beef and pork medley required to part with £26. A portion of honey and mustard chipolatas cost £5 while an extra Yorkshire pudding added £1.50 onto the bill. When it came to drinks, Clarkson's Hawkstone Premium lager were priced at £7 per pint - Joanna's group indulged in two of these - while a medium glass of white wine set the group back another tenner. Fizzy drinks and apple juice were £3.40 each, bringing the total to £154.70 before a 12.5 per cent service charge was slapped on. Fans were left bitterly split when an inevitable debate over the pub's prices kicked off, with a group of critics picking holes in the receipt. One said: 'Why add a service charge. You can't get your food unless they serve it and walking from kitchen to table is the same whether cost of food is £10 or £100. Why can't restaurants just price the food including their overheads?' Another added: '£7 for a pint is a bit excessive.' A third posted: 'Looks great but £24 for a Sunday lunch should include the Yorkshire pud.' Fans were left bitterly split when an inevitable debate over the pub's prices kicked off, with a group of critics picking holes in the receipt Another said: 'Your having a laugh if you think paying £24 just for a roast beef is value fk that I won't be visiting any time soon at them prices.' And a fifth added: 'My wife's serves up better portions than that! Looks average at best.' But a rebel group of Facebook users boldly backed Clarkson and the prices at his farm pub. One follower posted: 'Six drinks and six meals. Not bad price.' Another said: 'You guys moaning about the price - don't go, its not compulsory geez.' One added: 'A lot of whinging going on here…Geee you lot better not come to Australia, that's cheap.' A fourth posted: 'It's the whole experience you're paying for So really it's Great Value.' And another user said: 'You're paying a bit extra to help British farming and support British produce, that's fine by me.' But a rebel group of Facebook users boldly backed Clarkson and the prices at his farm pub A sign near the bar of The Farmer's Dog makes it clear that the establishment is '100% British', meaning it is teeming with fresh local produce but there is no Coca-Cola or lemonade available. It comes after Clarkson banned a customer from his pub for complaining about the high prices on his menu - and it's not for the first time. Fellow names on the exile list from The Farmers Dog in Asthall, Oxfordshire include Keir Starmer, James May, and Richard Hammond. But the most recent customer to incur the wrath of the former Top Gear presenter, 64, is not quite as famous. The spat occurred after one visitor accused the TV presenter of not caring about his customers. They took to X to share their shock at paying £24 for a pie and vegetables and wrote: 'Thought @JeremyClarkson wanted an affordable pub for customers. £24 for pie and veg is a bit much.' And another X user piled on, claiming they couldn't wait for cheaper US cuts of beef to bring down the price. They wrote: 'Dead weight for British beef is far too expensive £6.89/kg for R4L down from the record high £6.98/kg earlier in the month. 'I can't wait till we get US beef cuts here because British beef industry is now taking the piss at those prices.' And the suggestion didn't go down well with the Clarkson's Farm show host who simply wrote: 'You are now banned from the pub.' Since it opened last summer, Clarkson has made sure to only use British products in his meals but his approach has not always gone down well with customers. Earlier this year visitors revealed they were unimpressed after noticing several items, including ketchup and Coca-Cola, were missing from the menu. Because Clarkson's pub only uses Great Britain's produce to support British farmers - some common condiments aren't on offer. Clarkson's reluctance to make any small exceptions to the rule means he loses £10 for every customer who eats at his restaurant, as home-grown products are much more expensive. He said in a column for The Times: 'Now, a business-minded person would look at these costs and realise that with British-only rules in place, a hotdog was going be priced at about £45. 'But I'm not a business-minded person. So I just filled my heart with hope, asked an AI program to work out what the average price of lunch in a Cotswolds pub is and just charged that. 'It's possible that for every customer who comes through the door I'd lose about £10.' Prices for a main meal at the picturesque pub start at £20 for Wye Valley asparagus and garden pea Pearl barley. For a steak pie, masked potato, carrots, seasonal greens and gravy, customers have to fork out £24 and for sausage and mash, it'll set them back £21. The soup of the day starter with sourdough bread and butter costs £8.50 while the ham hock terrine costs an eye-brow raising £11. But the prices don't seem to have put customers off and it seems locals and tourists alike are flocking to The Farmer's Dog - at the expense of other local boozers. Earlier this year it was revealed that a historic country pub in the nearby village is up for sale after their business dropped dramatically. The Three Horseshoes has been serving the quaint Cotswolds community since the 18th century - but since Clarkson's latest venture just a mile away has proved the more popular.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
ARL, DMARC host first drive-through pet food giveaway
DES MOINES, Iowa — The Animal Rescue League of Iowa and the Des Moines Area Religious Council partnered to help spread 65,000 pounds of pet food to the community on Saturday. Held at DMARC, cars drove through on Saturday morning and received a case of dog food, which can feed a dog for around a month. The ten pallets, which contained around 65,000 meals, were donated by The Farmer's Dog. Orient-Macksburg Farewell Celebration draws out generations of Alumni 'The need for pet food is increasing every day, it's sad, we are seeing people come to the shelter every day because they aren't able to afford their pets anymore. So doing things like this just help keep people and their pets together and pets in the homes of the people that they love,' said Abigail Youker, ARL Pet Support Services Coordinator. The DMARC Food Pantry and ARL of Iowa partnered in 2023 to help spread supplies across food pantries more efficiently. The ARL of Iowa says the partnership has helped spread 40,000 pounds of pet food this year alone. 'When you visit a DMARC food pantry, we try and make the shopping experience feel as if you were visiting any other grocery store,' said Matt Unger, DMARC CEO. 'The key to that is making sure all the pantry basics, including items like pet food, are available to the households that need them. We are so thankful for this partnership with the ARL and invite the community to join us in providing support to our four-legged friends and neighbors.' Those unable to attend Saturday's giveaway are still able to visit DMARC Food Pantry locations for help with pet food and other items. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Daily Mail
5 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Jeremy Clarkson bans customer from his pub for complaining about the high prices thanks to his British-only menu
Jeremy Clarkson has banned a customer from his pub for complaining about the high prices on his menu - and it's not for the first time. Fellow customers now barred from stepping inside Clarkson's pub The Farmers Dog in Asthall, Oxfordshire include Keir Starmer, James May, and Richard Hammond. But the most recent customer to incur the wrath of the former Top Gear presenter, 64, is not quite as famous. The spat occurred after one customer accused the TV presenter of not caring about his customers. They took to X to share their shock at paying £24 for a pie and vegetables and wrote: 'Thought @JeremyClarkson wanted an affordable pub for customers. £24 for pie and veg is a bit much.' And another X user piled on, claiming they couldn't wait for cheaper US cuts of beef to bring down the price. They wrote: 'Dead weight for British beef is far too expensive £6.89/kg for R4L down from the record high £6.98/kg earlier in the month. 'I can't wait till we get US beef cuts here because British beef industry is now taking the piss at those prices.' The spat occurred after one customer accused the TV presenter of not caring about his customers by charging them £24 for a pie and some vegetables And the suggestion didn't go down well with the Clarkson's Farm show host who simply wrote: 'You are now banned from the pub.' Since it opened last summer, Clarkson has made sure to only use British products in his meals but his approach has not always gone down well with customers. Earlier this year visitors revealed they were unimpressed after noticing several items, including ketchup and Coca-Cola, were missing from the menu. Because Clarkson's pub only uses Great Britain's produce to support British farmers - some common condiments aren't on offer. Although the former Top Gear host regularly discusses the importance of his strict business model, it seems some customers didn't get the memo. One reviewer complained that 'drinks are limited, no cola, pepsi, lemonade or coffee', whilst another said: '(I) asked for some pepper and was told, "sorry no!!". 'Ate 3 mouthfuls and that was enough'. A third person gave positive feedback before complaining: 'Sadly they do not have pepper or coffee - both items I really missed. 'It was strange not to have a coffee after my meal, and I always have pepper on my veg.' They added how although they 'respect' Clarkson's decision to use local produce it was 'extreme' to not have pepper and coffee. Clarkson's reluctance to make any small exceptions to the rule means he loses £10 for every customer who eats at his restaurant, as home-grown products are much more expensive. He said in a column for The Times: 'Now, a business-minded person would look at these costs and realise that with British-only rules in place, a hotdog was going be priced at about £45. 'But I'm not a business-minded person. So I just filled my heart with hope, asked an AI program to work out what the average price of lunch in a Cotswolds pub is and just charged that. 'It's possible that for every customer who comes through the door I'd lose about £10.' Prices for a main meal at the picturesque pub start at £20 for Wye Valley asparagus and garden pea Pearl barley. For a steak pie, masked potato, carrots, seasonal greens and gravy, customers have to fork out £24 and for sausage and mash, it'll set them back £21. The soup of the day starter with sourdough bread and butter costs £8.50 while the ham hock terrine costs an eye-brow raising £11. But the prices don't seem to have put customers off and it seems locals and tourists alike are flocking to The Farmer's Dog - at the expense of other local boozers. Earlier this year it was revealed that a historic country pub in the nearby village is up for sale after their business dropped dramatically. The Three Horseshoes has been serving the quaint Cotswolds community since the 18th century - but since Clarkson's latest venture just a mile away has proved the more popular.
The Independent
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Chaos at Jeremy Clarkson's new pub in season finale
Jeremy Clarkson 's new Pub, The Farmer's Dog, faces chaotic preparations ahead of its opening in the season finale of Clarkson's Farm. Clarkson mistakenly believes the August bank holiday, the Pub 's opening date, is a week later than it is, causing a rush to prepare. The finale, titled "Landlording," depicts Clarkson and Kaleb Cooper struggling to hang the Pub 's sign amidst a long queue of waiting customers. Clarkson purchased The Windmill in Asthall, Oxfordshire, for under £1 million in August 2024, renaming it The Farmer's Dog. The Pub 's name was inspired by the discovery that the surrounding area is known for public sex, with Clarkson finding discarded underwear in the trees.
Telegraph
6 days ago
- Business
- Telegraph
Britain's pubs are being ‘taxed out of existence'. Can Clarkson's Farm help?
Jeremy Clarkson seems determined to find an answer to that age-old question: how do you make a small fortune? After he first tried by starting with a large fortune and buying a farm, he then turned his attention to running a pub, that other once-great British totem that has fallen on hard times. Perhaps an airline or football club is next. In the latest series of Clarkson's Farm, which chronicles the petrol-head's life as he brings his Top Gear sensibility to the Oxfordshire countryside, we see him attempt to transform a knackered old boozer off the A40 into a thriving pub that serves the produce of local farms. On the hunt for his ideal site, as chronicled on Prime Video, Clarkson sees a staggering number of pubs that are either up for sale or have been left empty by owners unable to make ends meet. Things do not get off to a great start: one has so many health-and-safety signs which assault his senses as he crosses the threshold that he immediately feels unwelcome. 'What's stark about his search for his pub is just how many pubs are vacant or available,' says Emma McClarkin, chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) who lives near the presenter in the Cotswolds. 'As Clarkson says, 'What would a village be without its village pub? It would just be a collection of houses.'' After deciding to buy The Windmill in the market town of Burford – which he has since opened and renamed The Farmer's Dog – last July, Clarkson solicits advice from his celebrity friends about what challenges await him as he tries to turn his 'farm-to-fork' idea from a dream into reality. We see Piers Morgan – whom he once thumped on Concorde – warn him that punters will almost certainly try to steal things, from cutlery and salt shakers to the art off the walls. James Blunt says he will have to worry about drink-drivers and struggles hiring staff. Clarkson's erstwhile Top Gear chum, James May, droned on about how expensive everything was, especially accountancy fees, insurance premiums and employee wages. But it was film director Guy Ritchie who put it in the starkest terms, when he warned that sometimes 'it looks like you're making £50k a week but it transpires you're losing £10k a week'. No wonder, then, that the number of British pubs is collapsing. There were more than 60,000 pubs in Britain at the turn of the millennium, but today that number has fallen by a quarter to 45,000, according to the BBPA. Publicans have had to put up with steeper taxes, the pandemic lockdowns, surging energy prices and, most recently, Rachel Reeves's hike in National Insurance contributions on employers, which has pushed up staff costs. The BBPA estimates that £1 in every £3 taken at the bar goes straight to the taxman: of the surviving pubs and bars, one third are operating at a loss as a result of being so heavily taxed, the UK Hospitality trade group reckons. So it is perhaps no surprise that Clarkson found so many pubs available to buy when he started looking. 'There are always, sadly, businesses that fail: you will always get closures in any given year. Normally you would expect them to be brought back to life. The cost pressures that the Chancellor has imposed makes that impossible,' says Kate Nicholls, UK Hospitality's chief executive. 'What Clarkson's demonstrating is this is the most highly taxed, highly regulated sector of the economy, and we're taxing too many businesses out of existence altogether.' Pubs can be a money sink, meaning that any aspiring pint-pullers do need some serious cash to get things going in the first place. Clarkson, for instance, was told by his surveyor before buying the pub that he would need to spend £150,000 to repair the roof and £100,000 to upgrade the lavatories. In typical fashion, he ignores all of this advice – saying that such surveys were an exercise in 'a--e-covering' – and sets about trying to do up his pub at six weeks' notice with a budget of no more than £25,000. And yet, as has become routine in his series, it turns out to be much more complicated than that. For instance, having assumed that his kitchen was good to go, he was told that he might have to spend as much as £100,000 upgrading the kit – including a £7,000 oven – which could be cut to about £40,000 if he bought refurbished goods. Rachel Hawkins, a consultant Clarkson employs to help him get his pub up and running, tells him that managing a hostelry is more complicated than it looks. 'You see a smiley waitress pulling a pint. That is about 1 per cent of it.' The fact that Clarkson struggles so much underlines how precarious the wider industry is. 'What the programme highlights very well is that if you've got a lot of money and you've got that name, then you can probably try to make a go of it; you can take one of these sites and turn it around, but it's going to need a lot of investment behind it,' says Nicholls. 'Even then, it's still difficult to make a profit and do the altruistic thing of supporting local farmers.' Clarkson's Farm has been lauded for putting the struggles regular farmers face firmly on the agenda. Tim Martin, the founder of Wetherspoons, who is probably Britain's most successful publican, tells me that he hopes what Clarkson has done for farmers could be replicated with the nation's pub landlords – especially when it comes to getting the Government's attention. 'The fact that Clarkson has been frank about the great complexity and costs involved in running a pub is a huge benefit for the industry,' he says. 'Ministers tend to regard pubs as a milch cow that can endure further taxes or regulations ad infinitum. However, thanks to Clarkson's report from the front line, the plight of pubs is becoming clear.' Kris Gumbrell, the founder of Brewhouse & Kitchen, a chain of 21 bars with 500 staff, says that he has been 'addicted' to watching Clarkson's show and reading his stories about running the pub. And he admits that he has raised a 'wry smile' when he hears about issues Clarkson has had – such as sky-high energy bills – that he has also experienced. 'I'm watching it, and a lot of the challenges he's [had] resonate with people in the sector. The good thing is, he's drawing attention to problems that a lot of publicans have, a lot of people in the pub industry are encountering every day and have been for some time,' Gumbrell says. 'It's a great industry and I'm pleased that Jeremy Clarkson has jumped into it, but I've seen his woes and we've all been there.' Having the reality of running a pub depicted in such a popular series – with a figure as famous as Clarkson behind the bar – will also educate punters about how hard the graft can be. 'From a guest point of view, opening up the workings of a pub and to understand what really goes on behind the scenes – the pressures and the challenges we have every day – are good for the guests to understand,' Gumbrell says. 'Everybody knows how to run a pub until they get one. Everybody's got an opinion about how a pub should be run, but it's very different when you're actually at the coal face with your hand in your pocket or writing those cheques. He's very good at exposing the realities.' Though there are so many challenges that publicans face – with pubs closing down every week – those remaining in the industry are a resilient bunch and have a habit of trying to accentuate the positives. 'Despite everything, Clarkson still opened his pub. He still wants to have that, he still wants to serve the community,' says the BBPA's McClarkin. 'There is something in it that makes it worthwhile. People still do want to go to the pub. There is still demand there.' She adds: 'We need to lean in and get behind them. I really hope the programme – just as it did for farming – begins to open everybody's eyes about how you run a pub, how difficult it is and what support we need.'
