A Congleton pub has announced that they are already at 60% capacity ahead of their reopening to the public on Saturday 4th July due to the number of bookings they have received.

The Cheshire Tavern, situated on West Road, will be reopening with a bigger beer garden, which has been extended into the onsite car park.

To ensure they can maintain capacity the pub has temporarily converted their function room into a secondary restaurant.

Matt Oliver-Eaton, co-manager of Cheshire Tavern, told Nub News: "With people feeling more comfortable outside where there is more space, we've extended our beer garden into part of the car park area.

"We have removed some tables from our restaurant and added them to the car park to accommodate everyone in a safe manner.

"The most important thing is making our customers and staff feel as safe as possible and putting their minds at ease, we don't want people going away and saying we weren't abiding by the rules because all that would end up happening is we would lose customers."

Matt and Adam-Oliver Eaton had only taken over at the Cheshire Tavern on 18th February and it was only a month later that Prime Minister Boris Johnson was implementing lockdown.

Matt added: "We had started to put our own imprint on the pub before Covid-19 had a massive impact, but we have a great opportunity now to make the place our own."

During lockdown, the pub trialled a takeaway service for two weeks, but it didn't prove viable, as they were losing money.

However, to ensure they helped the elderly residents within the community who were shielding, Cheshire Tavern delivered free meals for over 70s on a self-referral basis until stock ran out. The items delivered included soups, pies, stews and toilet rolls.

Despite Boris Johnson reducing the social distancing guidelines to one metre, Adam stated that the Cheshire Tavern would be ensuring that all tables remained two metres apart because they had the space to adhere to those measures whilst "maintaining capacity".

The upstairs area within the public house will remain vacant, but it will be used as an overspill if the weather took a turn for the worse.

Other measures that the pub have introduced will see all staff wearing visors, toilets being checked on a regular basis, sanitising stations visible throughout the premises and 15 minutes being spent on clearing each table in between bookings.

There will also be a capacity control co-ordinator in place at the lobby to ensure everyone is maintaining social distancing and that no one enters the pub without a prior booking.

In order to limit the contact between staff and customers, a table ordering service which will allow customers to text their orders to the bar via their mobile phones will be created.

Adam told Nub News: "The table ordering service will come into place after a member of staff has taken a table's first round of drinks orders.

"We want to ensure that everyone who comes through our doors feels comfortable, there will be signage throughout the pub and social distancing tape in place.

"We've replaced all the old plastic and fabric highchairs for children with brand new wood ones, it makes sanitisation easier."

Residents who haven't already booked ahead of 4th July will need to do so whether they are having a full meal or just planning on having one drink.

Adam concluded: "It has been a very good response, we kept in contact with our customers throughout the lockdown and we've a really nice close-knit community at the pub.

"There have been a lot of bookings and we are probably already at 60% capacity. We cannot wait to see everybody, it's felt like forever."

You can book by sending Cheshire Tavern a message through their Facebook page or by calling 01260 279637.