“Passionate” new owners take on Chesterfield pub – promising relaxed atmosphere at dog and family-friendly venue

Matt Wellington and Andra Gheorghe have taken on the Rising Sun at High Street, New Whittington. Matt is from Birmingham and Andra is originally from Romania. They met five years ago and got married in 2020 – and this is the first pub they have run as a pair.

Matt said: “I ran a bar in the past quite a few years ago. Me and my wife set up a business during the back end of Covid in Oxford. We had a board game cafe but unfortunately, when the second wave of Covid came, it just destroyed us completely.

“We thought about what we wanted to do next. We wanted to be self-employed and we got this opportunity – we feel it’s a way of introducing all of the things we love.”

The venue offers a wide range of drinks – including Guinness, San Miguel, Tetley’s and Somersby ciders. Matt said that some of the aspects of their board game cafe would also be included, offering something different to other pubs.

“We’ve got all of our board games in one of the rooms downstairs – there’s about 50 board games for people to play. We’ve got our own coffee machine and introduced that to the pub as well, so there’s fresh coffee and hot chocolates.

“That’s where it comes from really – and the passion to grow with the community. The pub is dog and child-friendly, there’s no restrictions on the times. We just want it to be a nice village pub where people want to go, chill out and have a chat.

“We had some locals in, they’ve taken a liking to one of our beers on draft – Angelo Poretti – which is a bit of a niche beer.”

Matt said the couple wanted to create a pub with a relaxed atmosphere, and said the response from customers so far had been overwhelmingly positive.

“We don’t really want it to be a party pub, we’re not those sorts of people ourselves. We like the chilled out atmosphere.

“We’ve had a pretty good response on Facebook. On Saturday, we opened and didn’t give people much time to know about it – it was more of a soft opening really. We’ve had a lot of dog walkers, with a lot of dogs in and around the pub, which is what we want.

“It seems like the locals have taken to us quite kindly, we’ve got people coming back and we’ve noticed who the regulars are. We’ll keep going from there and, hopefully, we’ll make it a success.

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“We want to do things like poker nights, quiz nights, board game evenings. We’ve got some plans to do some things over the coming months, but it’s finding our feet and finding the busy and quiet days.”

The Rising Sun will open from midday till 11.30pm between Monday and Saturday, and from midday until 11.00pm on Sundays. More information can be found on the pub’s Facebook page here.