Life's just peachy for pub owner Jo Eames

The best thing about having your own gastro pub? Surely it’s the possibility of an endless supply of champagne or the need never to set foot in the kitchen again.

So the answer from Jo Eames, who is co-owner of not one but 16 hostelries, comes as a bit of a surprise.

“It’s seeing kids come in, and grow up and turn into wonderful professionals,” says Jo, whose Peach Pub chain employs about 450 people.

“It can be a very exploitative industry; we wanted a company that had a professional and caring feeling and we have managed to do it – that’s what we are most proud of.”

The ethos is to make the pubs’ teams feel as much at home as the guests, giving them a real share in what they do, including a bonus scheme.

It’s one that – coupled with sourcing good food, caring for the environment and supporting local enterprise – has fulfilled its founders’ vision to make great individual places to eat, drink and sleep and led to award-winning success.

The “we” behind Peach Pubs are Jo, husband Hamish Stoddart and Lee Cash, who together opened their first pub – the Rose and Crown in Warwick in 2002.

As well as helping to grow the business Jo, 49, who is the group’s wine buyer and designs and decorates the pubs, has also found time to be mum to Wilf, 16... and to write two novels.

The Cambridge graduate also practised as a solicitor for 15 years, so I suggest she’s clearly something of a Renaissance woman, able to turn her hand to a wide variety of skills.

“I’m not that old!” she shoots back but admits that her days are busy and full of different challenges.

A typical one might see her meeting with a team finding out about a possible new pub to aquire; looking at mood boards to decide on decor; a site visit with builders working on a property and a menu tasting for new dishes.

Trying the food at the gastro pubs sounds like a dream job but when you factor in the matter of 16 pubs having four menu changes a year each, that’s 64 tastings of up to a dozen dishes “from beetroot dip to rum trifle”.

It’s a far cry from her days as a solicitor in Manchester, where she was partner in a firm and specialised in listed buildings, planning and property, although it’s something that has come in handy in her new role.

At that time Hamish was the fourth generation to work for his family’s business, a wholesale grocers. When that was sold due to competition from major players, Jo “retired” from law aged 35 and the couple considered their next move.

“Hamish wanted to stay in the food business but thought it would be more fun to be on the front end,” says Jo.

Not sure where that would be and, while visiting, taking a fancy to the Oxford area, they drew a circle around places within an hour of the city.

Driving through Deddington, Jo fell in love with what is now the family home which was luckily on the market. “It’s the sort of place that doesn’t come up very often as people live in it for 20 or 30 years,” she explains.

Looking into its 700-year history and being intrigued by one of its previous occupants Major-General Percy Hobart, Jo – who had already written one book – resolved to use him in a novel.

But that had to wait as in the meantime chartered accountant Hamish had met Lee Cash, who had worked for Raymond Blanc for five years, and the couple decided to go into business with him.

Jo took on the role of wine buyer, “I wasn’t an expert but I knew more than anyone else,” she says. As well as studying to improve her knowlege, she also had responsibility for the look of the rapidly expanding pub group, which includes The Fishes in North Hinksey, The Fleece in Witney and The Thatch and The James Figg in Thame.

Jo now tries to work for three days a week for Peach, leaving time to write, but it doesn’t always work out like that, especially in the run-up to a new opening.

So every now and then she escapes to London. “I lock myself away in a hotel and write for 16 hours a day,” she says. “I get a lot done in that time.”

She’ll be juggling things for a while longer as Peach prepares to open its 17th gastropub, in Edgbaston, Birmingham.

But although being literally married to the business may eat up a lot of her time, Jo is passionate about her Peach “family”.

“I love the variety of it, there’s never a dull moment,” she says.

“I wouldn’t swap it, it’s really exciting.”

Uncovering story of an unsung hero

“It was while renovating my house that I discovered a link to the Major-General that compelled me to want to tell Hobo’s story 70 years on from the historic day on which he faced his sternest test,” says author Jo Eames.

The Major-General in question was Percy Hobart, pictured, whose range of experimental tanks, strange Heath-Robinson devices known as Hobo’s Funnies, played a crucial part in the D-Day landings and arguably changed the direction of the war.

“Under the bathroom lino I found some Egyptian newspapers dated 1939, and I was intrigued as to who had left them there,” says Jo.

Then she found Major-General Hobart’s name on a document relating to a dispute with a neighbour about a bathroom window and discovered he had lived in the house with his family between 1940 and 1948.

Researching the largely unsung hero she says what she discovered “haunted me for several years before I had the idea of seeking to make Hobo’s story better known by including him as a character in a novel”.

The result is Not Only The Good Boys, which weaves fact and fiction to create a book which is part romance, part war story and part biography. The timing for publication is particularly apt to tie in with the 70th anniversary of D-Day and the Battle of Normandy.

Like her first novel, The Faithless Wife, which explored the Spanish Civil War on Menorca, her new book is self-published – although professionally edited.

“I enjoyed the process last time and the economics of publishing now are rubbish,” she says. She likes the freedom it gives her over the creative process to write what she wants rather than for a particular target audience.

“It doesn’t have a niche but it seems to appeal to a wide range of people,” says Jo, whose pre-publication readers have been men and women ranging in age from 15 to 82.

* Not Only The Good Boys will be on sale in all Peach pubs and selected independent book shops from June 1, priced £9.99. It will also be available as an ebook.

* There will be a 1940s style garden party at The Fishes in North Hinksey on Sunday, June 8, for the launch of Not Only The Good Boys. The pub’s riverside gardens will be the scene for live swing music, street party food and readings from the book by actors in period dress, with rewards for guests who come in the best 1940s outfits. The Fishes Forties Festival kicks off at noon and runs until 6pm. For details see fishesoxford.co.uk or peachpubs.com