Pete Jones didn’t set out to open a pub. A factory closure and a father’s ultimatum got him there instead.
“I worked in a factory before, and then life circumstances changed a whole lot,” said Pete, owner of The Drumbo Pub. When the plant he worked at shut down, he found himself at a crossroads his father had unknowingly already set up. Pete’s father had loaned money to a group doing renovation work on the Drumbo building, and with Pete suddenly out of work, he saw an opening: pay off that loan, and become a partner in whatever came next. Pete took the deal, paid off the debt, and quickly discovered the arrangement had a catch. “I found out very quickly that they had no money and that the partnership wasn’t going according to plan.” he said. Rather than get dragged down with them, he eliminated them from the equation entirely and pressed on alone.
What followed was a full year spent working toward opening. Securing a liquor licence involved navigating formal objections from local residents, who raised concerns about the pub potentially serving minors, over-serving patrons, and requiring children to walk past a bar on their way to the library. Pete recalls the process as a challenging period for the business.
He opened anyway. On December 6, 2002, the call finally came through approving his license. “I says, I will be down there within about two hours, and pick it up, and stop at the liquor store and beer store on the way back,” he said. He opened that same day.
The pub Pete built has grown considerably since then. He started with little more than a personal deep fryer and a George Foreman grill; today, following his own kitchen addition, The Drumbo Pub runs a full kitchen with a pizza oven and a genuinely sizable menu. Alongside cold beer, the pub now serves lunch and dinner — fresh-cooked roast beef sandwiches, pizza, quartered chicken dinners, half-pound hamburgers, and smaller items like nachos and giant pretzels — available to dine in or take home. Fridays have their own tradition entirely, with fish and chips drawing a steady stream of takeout orders week after week.
What Pete is proudest of, though, has little to do with the menu. “I am especially proud of what we’ve provided to the community,” he said. Drumbo is a small place, and Pete sees the pub as a genuine hub for a community with limited gathering spots — a place locals bring visiting family and friends when there’s nowhere else obvious to go, and a spot where familiar faces know they can always find each other. In a small town with few places to gather, that role matters more than any single item on the menu.
More than two decades in, Pete’s hardest-earned lesson is simple: you need fortitude. “You have to stick with it and be able to fight through the ups and downs because nothing comes easy,” he said. Running a small-town pub, he’s found, pays off in ways that have little to do with money. Regulars become genuine friends over the years — which cuts both ways, since it makes losing a customer that much harder. “It’s a lifestyle business,” he said, one measured as much in relationships built as in receipts.
That same directness shapes his advice for anyone considering starting their own venture: be ready for long hours and very little pay, at least at first. It’s not glamorous advice, and Pete doesn’t dress it up — but it’s honest, and it’s exactly the kind of grit that got The Drumbo Pub through its own rocky, year-long opening. He’s not one to sugarcoat the realities of small business ownership for anyone considering the same path, having lived through the slow, uncertain climb himself.
Looking ahead, Pete is exploring a new addition to the pub’s offerings: breakfast. A restaurant a couple of doors down used to fill that role in Drumbo before closing years ago, leaving the building sitting empty since. Pete’s been working through what it would take to bring breakfast service to the pub itself, figuring out the logistics needed to make it a success rather than rushing into it.
For Pete, what makes running a business in Drumbo, Ontario worthwhile comes down to the people who walk through the door. “The gratifying part of this is meeting people from all walks of life,” he said — and learning, again and again, not to make assumptions about anyone based on appearances. Some of his regulars, he notes, are quietly far more successful than they’d ever let on. “You would never know it,” he said, a reminder he’s carried with him through two decades of pouring pints and getting to know a whole town’s worth of customers, one order at a time.
The Drumbo Pub is open Monday to Saturday from noon to 9 p.m., staying open until 10 p.m. on nights with live music, and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. Six employees keep things running day to day, with a few more kept on call to step in whenever the pub gets busy.
More than 23 years after that same-day opening, Pete’s pub remains exactly what he set out to build almost by accident — not just a place to grab a beer and a plate of fish and chips, but a genuine gathering place for a small community that needed one.
The Drumbo Pub
Pete Jones
7 Wilmot St, Drumbo, ON
Blandford-Blenheim Township
Established 2002
519-463-6274
thedrumbopub.com
facebook.com/DrumboPub
