A FORMER pub landlord has switched from mixing drinks to serving up fragrant cocktails at a new outlet in the Golden Square.

Ric Neill has opened the first dedicated Scentchips outlet in a UK mall, selling luxury candles and perfumed wax chips, at the shopping centre.

The innovative store allows customers to ‘pick 'n' mix’ different scented chips to mix their own perfumed cocktail of flavours.

Ric, who previously spent 20 years behind the bar at Green Dragon in Lymm and the Stretton Fox in Stretton, retired from the pub trade aged 50.

The 56-year-old said: “I set up a maintenance business with a partner and then left him to run that and opened a shop in Latchford 18 months ago called Boho Kingdom.

“It sells all sorts of ethnic things for the home, mainly from India, Guatemala, places like that and most of it is Fair Trade.

“We started stocking a line of Scentchips and they just took off.

"I had one woman who came over and she was so excited as she had discovered Scentchips in Germany, but has been having to import them from America ever since, and paying the import duty on them too."