From the https://www.kentlive.news By Kieran Graves, 26 November 2022.

The Headcorn microbar ‘bucking the trend’ that people drive an hour to visit.

Regulars come from as far away as Eastbourne.

Tap 17 in Headcorn is a popular venue in the village with live music two times a week. (Image: Paul Newman/Tap 17).

A Headcorn microbar with a friendly community feel is “bucking the trend”, according to its owner and landlord Paul Newman. Customers to Tap 17 on the village’s high street will rarely be able to order the same drink from day to day thanks to the venue’s locally-supported and ever-changing drinks list.

“I think at the moment people are feeling the pinch a little bit on the wallet and yet we’re bucking the trend of the general pub,” Paul said who opened Tap 17 with his wife a year and a half ago. “[It’s] because I think we’re just so different in what we do that people are coming out and enjoying our place.”

Paul, 39, and his wife Kelli, 38, both come from pub-running families and said they made the move to Headcorn six years ago. Then in the spring of 2021 they decided to follow in their parent's footsteps and set up passion project Tap 17.

“This is more of a lifestyle business and doesn’t pay me a wage as such,” Paul, who works as a builder, continued. “It pays a few people’s wages that do a few shifts here and there but I never opened it as a profit-making venture.

Paul and Kelli Newman opened Tap 17 a year and a half ago. (Image: Paul Newman)

“That wasn’t the point of opening Tap. It was always to have somewhere that me and my friends could go and drink the beers that we like, in an atmosphere that we like.”

Paul said that since he and Kelli opened their microbar “people have embraced it” and the couple has been able to create somewhere that is friendly and has a community feel. “It’s just a great package that seems to be working really well.”

Among regulars to Tap 17 is a couple who travel more than an hour each way from Eastbourne. “They said they stumbled across this place because we were passing through, and this is their fifth visit,” Paul said after speaking to the pair this week.

The couple told him they are happy to make the journey and take it in turns to drive because “they really love it”. Paul said Tap 17 competes with big breweries and large pub chains in a way he described as fairly unique in Kent.

The beers on offer at the microbar constantly change and the same beer is rarely put back on when a keg is finished. The pub also has a selection of wines and gins. And through all of its products owners said they support local producers.

Paul added: “We have six taps, so six beers that are constantly rolling. You could come in on a Monday and you might have six beers, and then you come in on that Friday and you would have six totally different beers.”

He continued: “Beer to me, what craft beer actually is is beer that’s brewed for taste and flavour and quality, rather than for profit. That is basically what Tap 17 is born out of.

The prices at Tap 17 have remained the same since the venue opened and any increases have been put off until at least the start of 2023. “I think people are struggling and do have less money to spend,” Paul said.

“But what I think that makes them do is choose where they want to spend their money more carefully.” At Tap 17 - where there is also live music twice a week - “they’re getting more for their money” and that “on that basis, they’re happy to spend a bit more.”