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The pub · 2025-08-02

Why There Is No Telephone

The single most common complaint about The Farmer’s Dog, and the reason it is not going to change.

Subject
The pub
Published
2025-08-02

We do not take bookings via email, social media direct message, postcard, telegram, carrier pigeon or by phone. In fact we do not even have a phone number.

This annoys people, and the annoyance is entirely reasonable. It is normal to expect a pub to have a telephone.

The arithmetic is this. The restaurant has roughly eighty covers. The audience is national. On the first of every month, when tables release for the following month, they are gone within hours and the Sunday roasts within minutes. A telephone would mean one person, all day, every day, doing nothing but telling people there is no table.

That is a miserable job, it would not create a single additional seat, and it would take somebody off the floor who could otherwise be serving. So instead: the bar, the garden bars, the Tent, the Farmer’s Puppy and the Farmer’s Dough are all walk-in, every single day, and that is genuinely where the best of this place happens.

At a glance

Subject

The pub

Published

2025-08-02

Written by

Somebody who was there

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