The Patch - Mag

[nonold]

Dear all,

Many thanks for the continuing interest in The Patch. As there has been much speculation and comment I thought I would provide an update.

LEASE

We haven?t as yet signed the lease for the pub currently known as the Mag, but are very close to doing so. We are in negotiations with Enterprise Inns about some of the detail to ensure it meets our needs, so this is sensitive, and an ongoing process. What we can say is they are very keen to support our concept vs. some of the other offers from larger chains and multiple operators.

COMMUNITY ASPECT & SELF-SUSTAINABILITY

Our vision is to make The Patch a community asset. Myself and the other two colleagues involved in this project live locally. I have lived in the area for 17 years. All the funding to date comes from ourselves who want to see this new concept in pubs work on our doorstep. As residents we want to involve the local community and had hoped to crowd fund some of the project, hence the Kickstarter initiative. Although we didn?t reach our target we are confident that, by the amount of interest it generated, that local people do want to get involved and will honour these pledges. We will now be looking at other ways to get, you, the local community involved.

In terms of self sustainability our vision is to grow as much fruit and veg as possible on site using the latest sustainable vertical farming technology. Our aim is to produce 50% of this. The rest of the fruit and veg will buy from immediate local growers, ie the local community, many of whom we have already approached. We will widen this out to a 25 mile radius of farms and smallholdings when we need to. We will also source all other food from local artisan producers and all our meat and fish as close as possible endeavouring to do this within a 25 mile radius. Informing our customers of its local provenance is key as we are launching The Patch because we have a very strong personal belief in taking control of our food supply, as well as tapping into the talent and energy of our local community.

We love the idea of running the best pub possible and cannot think of a better place to prove this concept than right here in East Dulwich.

If you have further questions, please contact us through our FB page (www.facebook.com/dulwichpatch). We welcome any suggestions and feedback through this page but won?t be posting further on the ED forum until we have a launch date.

Many thanks for your continued support.

The Patch