Sally Pullen says it is time to celebrate Wild Thyme after seven years in business

In November 2008, right at the height of the worst recession on record, my husband Nick and I, moved to Chipping Norton to live the dream. Nick had dreamt of opening his own restaurant, since the age of 18, when he started out as a young chef. Twenty years later, we fulfilled that dream, although I have subsequently joked on more than one occasion that we are now living the nightmare.

Wild Thyme has been, and continues to be, the greatest adventure of our lives to date. For both of us, it is the accomplishment we are most proud of. But it has also pushed us to our limits, both individually and as a couple. Shortly after opening our 35-cover restaurant with rooms, a customer remarked that had we plotted on a 50-year chart when not to open a restaurant, 2008 would surely be it.

We didn’t intend opening then, but an 18-month planning issue delayed proceedings. We thought about pulling out, but having sold our house and given up our jobs, we decided (maybe stupidly, but love is blind and hey we love this industry) to go ahead.

We opened six weeks later on a wing and a prayer, and already in debt. I worried about everything apart from Nick’s ability to cook, but we were hugely proud of ourselves at getting to this point although the elation was short lived as the daily grind of working 18 hours a day started to take its toll.

One in three new restaurants fails to make its first anniversary so the fact that we are celebrating our seventh this December is no mean feat. However we have come close to going bust several times and the financial pressure has been huge.

I had worked with Nick before, like many in the industry we met at the hotel where he was head chef and I was sales manager. We hit it off straight away and found that we had a good marriage of skills. We haven’t quite come to knife-throwing point, but spent the first year working out our own roles and not treading on each other’s toes, and to this day have something of a feisty working relationship which spills over into personal time, how can it not?

We have managed just one week’s holiday each year and found it hard to juggle family life with running the business.

Our daughter Belle was something of a 40th birthday surprise and while an absolute blessing and delight, not something we factored into the business plan. I worked on the restaurant floor up to 10 days before my due date and was responding to customer e-mails while in labour. Nick was back in the kitchen two hours after our 72-hour extravaganza because it was Friday and we had a full restaurant for dinner.

But if you measure success by everything apart from financial, we have built a really successful small business, have a great reputation locally, are featured in all the main guides, and have more than 300 5* Trip Advisor reviews.

The highs and lows of the first seven years in business?

Serving the Prime Minister, throwing a glass of red wine over a customer, (unintentionally), watching our young team develop and grow up, cooking on camping stoves when the extraction broke during one of our busiest weeks ever, the wonderful array of people we meet daily, the restaurant flooding during dinner service due to a leaky shower and spending every day, and night, doing something we love, together.