What It Takes to Run One of London's Most Popular Pubs

What It Covers

Oisin Rogers, cofounder of The Devonshire pub near Piccadilly Circus, explains the operational, economic, and cultural mechanics of running one of London's most popular pubs, covering Guinness science, menu pricing strategy, labor sourcing post-Brexit, licensing constraints, sound design, and how complementary co-founder skills drive the business.

Key Questions Answered

• •Guinness optimization: Achieving a consistent pour requires controlling roughly 30 variables: keg temperature, pipe width, line length, gas mixture ratio, cooler temperature, and flow speed. The Devonshire uses a custom 82% nitrogen / 18% CO2 blend rather than the standard UK premix of 75/25, pours to the harp in 13-14 seconds, then rests 90 seconds on the font before topping off.
• •Pricing power and volume strategy: Rather than raising menu prices frequently, The Devonshire has adjusted prices only once across two and a half years of operation. The preferred lever for offsetting rising input costs is volume — when covers are high, margin pressure eases. Secondary levers include smarter purchasing, waste reduction, and small labor scheduling adjustments rather than passing costs directly to customers.
• •Co-founder skill differentiation: The Devonshire's three-partner structure works because each founder covers a distinct domain: one handles commercial and financial oversight, one manages food, sourcing, and kitchen systems, and one runs front-of-house operations and culture. Rogers advises against partnering with someone who duplicates your own skills, framing the ideal structure as three non-overlapping corners of a working triangle.
• •Smoking ban as structural inflection point: The 2007 UK indoor smoking ban functioned as an economic earthquake for pubs, driving away older drinkers while opening the door to a younger demographic expecting cocktails and food. This shift directly catalyzed the gastropub model, which now spans a wide spectrum from casual food-serving pubs to near-restaurant operations, making the term "gastropub" functionally meaningless without further specification.
• •Scalable menu design: Dishes that work at 650 covers per day require measurable, step-by-step recipes that eliminate assumption and minimize error. The Devonshire splits cooking stages — a high-heat grill station creates the crust and sear, then a separate kitchen station controls final doneness — allowing throughput that a single-station approach could not achieve. Selecting year-round dishes eliminates seasonal menu changes and reduces cost volatility.
• •Pub licensing scarcity: In Westminster, pub licenses are location-specific and non-transferable. When a license lapses, it is permanently lost. Obtaining a new pub license in central London is rare enough that The Devonshire team spent years persuading the landlord to convert the former Jamie's Italian site — originally the old Devonshire pub closed in 2009 — back into a licensed pub before opening in November 2023.