June 2014

Chicken and Egg Situation

CAMRA needs to return to its founding principles as a champion of good beer, not just “real ale”

WHAT’S THE purpose of CAMRA? “To campaign for real ale”, of course. However, something that isn’t appreciated as widely as it should be is that CAMRA actually invented “real ale” as a concept – it didn’t spring into life to defend something that was widely understood but felt to be under threat. When the four founder members had their famous discussion in that pub in the west of Ireland, they had a general sense that something was going wrong with British beer, but they didn’t know exactly what. At first, the organisation was called the Campaign for the Revital­isation of Ale. It was only later, once they had looked into the subject more thoroughly, that the current definition of “real ale” was arrived at.

In the context of the British draught beer market at the time, it was actually a pretty good way of sorting out the sheep from the goats. But, even then, the wiser heads knew very well it wasn’t a universal yardstick for good beer. There was effectively no real ale anywhere in the world outside Great Britain, but that didn’t mean there was no good beer. For a period of thirty years, the concept of real ale went largely unchallenged, and even in 2000 there was little “good beer” available on draught in the UK that didn’t qualify. The introduction of nitrokeg “smooth” beers in the 1990s gave a new impetus to the real vs keg battle.

However, in the 21st century, beer has suddenly become fashionable again, and there has been a huge upsurge of interest in new and different styles and flavours, especially amongst younger drinkers. But a growing proportion of this new beer falls outside the definition of real ale, and thus presents CAMRA with a dilemma. Many of these young beer enthusiasts are happily mixing cask and keg in places like the Port Street Beer House or the RedWillow bar in Macclesfield, or even sticking entirely to keg in the BrewDog bar. If you want to get them involved in CAMRA, telling them that all keg beer is chemical fizz isn’t going to get you very far, and saying “that’s nothing to do with us, we campaign for real ale” isn’t much better. And to argue that keg Thornbridge Jaipur is no better than Watneys Red Barrel, or that Moravka lager is on a par with Fosters, is turning what was once a useful yardstick into blinkered dogma.

It is possible to overstate the scale of the issue – after all, many pubgoers will never encounter a “craft keg” tap from one month to the next, while you’ll struggle to find even a half-decent pub without real ale. But it isn’t going to go away, and is likely to grow in importance with the passage of time. In the long term, there is a risk that it will lead to a loss of credibility and marginalisation.

In reality, CAMRA has always campaigned on subjects well beyond real ale, such as opening hours, beer duty and licensing reform, and has also brought cider under its wing even though it has less to do with beer than whisky does. It presents itself as a champion of all beer drinkers and pubgoers, not just real ale drinkers. So, looking forward, surely it should adopt a more open-minded attitude to non-real beers while still retaining its core objective of protecting and promoting British cask beer. It simply needs to accept that CAMRA publications and spokespeople are allowed to discuss, review and praise non-real products rather than just pretending they don’t exist. As private individuals, many of its leading lights do just that, but officially it remains beyond the pale.

In the long term, though, this is probably going to happen through a slow but steady grass-roots revolt rather than by official changes in policy. It could be compared with the way a majority of Catholics have come to embrace contraception despite the official hierarchy of the church remaining dead set against it.

May 2014

Another Country

London is more and more following a different path from the rest of the country, both in general and in beer

IT'S OFTEN SAID that London is becoming increasingly detached in economic and social terms from the rest of the UK. Its economy seems to be more a part of an international world of finance than the realities of workaday provincial life, and it experiences a house price boom while the rest of the country is stagnant. Unlike pretty much any other major city, apart perhaps from Edinburgh, it has a large population of prosperous middle-class people living in inner-urban areas which gives them a distinctly different feel. With so many politicians and journalists being based in London, it is all too easy for them to form the opinion that the capital is typical of the rest of the country when in reality it isn’t.

London is also home to the social phenomenon of the “hipster” which only appears to have spread outwards in a rather half-hearted fashion. This seems to be bound up with the direction that the London beer scene has taken. I get the impression that craft keg ales and lagers have become much more widely available there than anywhere else. The craft beer bar, or the minimalist makeover of an old pub, has become an essential centrepiece for the up-and-coming trendy neighbourhood.

Many of the London microbreweries seem to intent on developing a cutting-edge image rather than brewing a range of conventional, accessible beers. This has given rise to the phenomenon of deliberately cloudy “London murky”, which really is very specific to the capital. And the sky-high property prices make it attractive to convert even thriving pubs for residential use, which is something you don’t see around here, where pubs that have been converted into something else have in general either been obviously struggling or already closed.

It’s sometimes said that, where London leads, the rest of the country eventually follows, but, in wider terms spreading well beyond the world of beer, I get the feeling that the two are increasingly heading in different directions.

Blowing Hot and Cold

Pubs too often get it wrong in responding to changes in the weather

THE BRITISH weather is notoriously fickle, and Spring often brings a dramatic alternation between different conditions, with some days seeing bright, warm sunshine while others are cold, wet and blustery, often with little advance warning. It seems to be a characteristic of pubs nowadays to over-react to changes in the weather, flinging all the doors open at the first sign of sunshine, yet turning the heating on as soon as we get a dull day.

I’ve been in pubs where all the doors have been wedged open because the sun was shining, but it actually wasn’t all that warm, and on the side of the pub away from the sun there was a chilly draught. I’m sure pubs never used to do that thirty years ago, or at least not until the sun was actually cracking the flags. On the other hand, on days which are overcast in comparison to the previous one, but still quite close and muggy, some pubs decide to turn their heating on, making the atmosphere pretty stifling.

In one branch of Wetherspoon’s, again on an overcast but warm and muggy day, the under-seat heating was on full blast in one corner. I went to the bar to complain and was told the system was controlled by Head Office and there was nothing the bar staff could do about it. It turned out that other areas of the pub were unaffected and I was able to move to somewhere more comfortable, but even so the entire situation seemed bonkers.

Surely it would result in a more equable climate inside, and save money on energy bills at the same time, if pubs were less eager both to open all the doors, and to turn up the thermostat.

April 2014

Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width

Too many pubs are prepared to compromise beer quality in an attempt to offer more choice

THERE’S NOTHING to beat a cool, fresh pint of cask beer, bursting with life and flavour. However, unfortunately it’s still a lot more common than it should be to be served with one that doesn’t come anywhere near that description. Over the past few months I’ve had more than one really tired, lukewarm, flat, stale pint in pubs where I might have expected better, and in one high-profile pub on a recent Stagger we were served up with total vinegar in the middle of Friday evening.

So it might be interesting to do some maths on beer turnover in pubs. According to the British Beer and Pub Association, in 2013 there were 13.8 million barrels sold in the on-trade in the UK. The annual Cask Report reckons about a sixth of this is cask beer, or 2.3 million barrels. CAMRA’s What Pub website counts 35,800 pubs across the country selling cask beer. So, given that a barrel contains 288 pints, that makes 64 barrels per pub per year, 354 pints a week or 51 a day.

It’s generally reckoned that you’ll struggle to keep cask beer in good condition beyond three days, four at most, so even if you get your beer in 9-gallon firkins, that means you can only have two beers on before quality begins to suffer. Beer is available in 4½-gallon pins, but they’re far from usual. It’s also the case that pubs typically do half their weekly business on Friday and Saturday nights, leaving only 177 pints for the rest of the week, or 35 a day. So it’s hardly surprising you often get a tired pint early doors on Tuesday evening.

Simple observation suggests that the typical pub selling cask beer has more than two beers on, and in recent years the number has tended to increase even as overall volumes have fallen. Many ordinary pubs now have five, six or seven different beers. Obviously there are some pubs that do have the turnover to keep a lot more beers in good nick, but the law of averages means that others won’t even have the turnover for two. Keeping beers on well above three days must be extremely commonplace.

So perhaps there needs to be more emphasis on quality rather than choice for its own sake, and the automatic praising of a pub for “putting on another handpump” should be replaced by positive references to pubs that limit themselves to one or two well-chosen beers. Both quality and choice are desirable, but choice should never be placed ahead of quality, and it shouldn’t be a matter of pot luck whether or not you get a decent pint. As is often said, the worst enemy of real ale is the bad pint of real ale.

Paradoxically, this doesn’t seem to be a problem that tends to affect the specialist multi-beer pubs with ten or twelve handpumps, probably because they attract an overwhelmingly beer-drinking clientele who ensure the beer turns over quickly enough and because they are run by people who place a high priority on maintaining beer quality. The prime offenders seem to be the more mainstream pubs where a lower proportion of customers are beer drinkers.

One way of addressing this problem would be for pubs to display on every pumpclip the date when the beer was put on sale. Obviously in the real world it’s never going to happen, as it would expose just how long many beers were kept on, but it would certainly give pubs a rocket up the backside to ensure they matched their range to the actual demand, as they would know that beers that had been on too long simply wouldn’t sell.

March 2014

Do Your Duty, George!

Alcohol duty is a highly regressive tax that hits poorer people hardest

IT’S MARCH again, and time for the Chancellor’s annual Budget statement. Last year we got the welcome surprise that, not only did he scrap the hated Beer Duty Escalator, but he also made a small cut to beer duty. Hopefully this year we will see the escalator abandoned for all other categories of alcoholic drink. That will help the pub trade too, as drinks other than beer account for almost half of all alcohol sold in pubs, and whisky and cider are also substantial British industries providing large numbers of jobs.

Alcohol duty is a highly regressive form of taxation with a disproportionate impact on the less well-off. While, on average, higher income groups do drink a little more, alcohol duty (plus the VAT levied on the duty) accounts for two per cent of the disposable income of Britain’s bottom fifth of income earners, but only 0.6 per cent of the income of the top fifth. Taking the foot off the gas on duty is an effective way of helping those on low incomes.

It’s easy for holier-than-thou people to say that if those on low incomes choose to drink it’s their decision, and they have no sympathy, but that line just comes across as patronising and sanctimonious. In the real world, people do drink, and it is generally recognised that the price elasticity of alcoholic drinks is relatively low, so in practice raising duty hits the poor hardest. And who is to say the less well off shouldn’t be allowed a little pleasure in their lives once in a while?

Youth Exclusion Zone

Measures to stop underage drinking have created a less responsible drinking culture amongst the young

AVERAGE alcohol consumption has now been steadily falling for ten years, and the sharpest fall of all has been amongst the 18-24 age group, which doesn’t bode well for the future of the pub trade. However, it has been pointed out to me that the increasingly heavy-handed requirement for age verification is a major factor in deterring young people from using pubs. If you’re constantly being asked your age, even if you look well over 18, it’s inevitably going to put you off.

A generation ago, underage drinking in pubs was widely tolerated so long as no trouble was caused. This taught young people how to drink responsibly, and also got them used to the habit of pubgoing. They knew they were only there on suffrance and so had to fit in and learn the rules of the game. Any trouble, and they were out on their ear. Now, rather than running the gauntlet in the pub, it’s much easier to obtain off-trade alcohol and drink it at home or at private parties. Once you’ve been ID’d once at the off-licence, that’s it, and the flow of your evening is not being constantly interrupted. If you’re under 18, you just get your older mate to buy it.

It’s a classic case of unintended consequences that measures intended aimed with entirely good intentions to curb underage drinking have simply had the effect of shifting it from a controlled to an uncontrolled environment and, while reducing consumption overall, encouraging a less responsible drinking culture amongst young people in general. Yet I doubt whether a deliberate policy of turning a blind eye to well-behaved under-18s in pubs is going to find much favour in official circles.

February 2014

A Warm, Brown Embrace

Samuel Smith’s idiosyncratic approach adds welcome variety to the pub scene

OVER THE YEARS, Samuel Smith’s brewery of Tadcaster in Yorkshire have invested heavily in acquiring a number of high-profile pubs in Greater London. This gave rise to a surprising article in the “Daily Telegraph” last autumn in which the author gave lavish praise to the general ambiance of their pubs and referred to their “warm, brown embrace”. They are certainly a brewery intent on ploughing an individual furrow and you can understand what he meant.

By and large, Sam’s pubs are still proper, traditional boozers, where beer is to the fore, drink and chat predominate, banter passes round the room and TV football and piped music are conspicuous by their absence. At their best they can be busy and boisterous in a way that many Holt’s pubs once were, but which is increasingly rarely seen nowadays. They seem to have been largely immune from the wave of closures that has blighted the pub industry in recent years.

Sam’s are also respectful custodians of their pub estate, rarely carrying out insensitive knock-throughs, and indeed a few years back they actually reinstated some internal walls when refurbishing the Boar’s Head on Stockport Market Place. The Blue Bell in Levenshulme, voted as the local CAMRA Pub of the Month in June last year, received a very smart and tasteful makeover a couple of years ago.

To a degree unparalleled by any other brewery, they exercise tight control over everything sold in their pubs, going well beyond beer to encompass wines, spirits, soft drinks and even own-branded crisps and peanuts. They have recently produced an elaborate “Drinks Menu” to display in their pubs, which in total lists twelve different draught beers (only one of which is cask) and fifteen bottled. Great emphasis is put on authenticity and tradition, stressing that all of the beers are “brewed solely from authentic natural ingredients without any chemical additives, raw material adjuncts, artificial sweeteners, colourings, flavourings or preservatives”. Most are fermented in Yorkshire squares and are suitable for vegans.

Sam’s are often criticised for only producing the one cask beer – Old Brewery Bitter. I remember them also offering two more – Tadcaster Bitter, which suffered from the perennial difficulty of selling a weaker bitter alongside a standard one, and Museum Ale, which some drinkers liked but most found hard work. Because it doesn’t fit in to the modern trend towards ultra-hoppy beers, some people can be rather dismissive of OBB, but in fact it is a well-made, high-quality beer in a distinctive Yorkshire style. The same is true of the bottled beers which are highly regarded as exports in the USA. There are few other tied estates where you will routinely come across a cloudy German-style wheat beer.

They might improve their image if they produced a second cask beer, and many of their pubs certainly have the throughput to sustain it, but it’s difficult to see what would prove a strong seller with their predominantly traditionalist clientele. Personally, I’d like to see the return of Tadcaster Bitter, but I fear it would suffer the same fate as before. Maybe the best option would be a premium bitter of around 4.5% ABV that was a little paler and hoppier than OBB and would fill an obvious gap in their range.

It’s also impossible to discuss Sam’s without mentioning the high-handed and even quasi-feudal management practices that they have been accused of over the years, but you have to ask whether they have really been any worse than some of the much-criticised major leased pub companies. I certainly wouldn’t want every pub to be like a Sam’s pub, but they add much needed variety and distinctiveness to the pub scene, and it would be the poorer without them.

January 2014

A Pattern of Closure

Some areas, and some types of pub, have suffered much more in recent years than others

OVER THE PAST fifteen years or so, there has been a dramatic retrenchment of the British pub trade that has led to the closure of huge numbers of once viable pubs. However, in some types of area pubs continue to thrive, so it’s not just a random or uniform trend. Is it possible to discern any pattern in the wave of closures?

The most obvious is that pubs in working-class areas have suffered worst. In a sense, this is inevitable, as historically most pubs have mainly catered for working-class drinkers but, even so, it seems to be disproportionate. Such areas have been most vulnerable to depopulation and redevelopment, the decline of traditional industries, changes in ethnic mix and the growing gulf between pub and off-trade prices. Smoking prevalence is also higher amongst working-class people, meaning that their pubs have suffered more than the average from the smoking ban.

Second is that big pubs, whether estate pub or roadhouse, are more vulnerable than little ones. They are more attractive for residential redevelopment or conversion to convenience stores, they cost more to run, they need more customers to make them viable and many of them were probably never all that appealing in the first place. For example, in Withington in South Manchester, the massive White Lion and Manor House (ex-Golden Lion) have shut down, but smaller pubs like the Albert, Turnpike and Victoria are still going strong.

Third, and maybe counter-intuitively, isolated pubs in residential areas have suffered worse than those grouped with others. Nearby chimneypots are no guarantee of survival, whereas pubs often seem to prosper by being part of a “circuit”. This applies to some in areas of Victorian housing as well as those on 20th century estates. Returning to Withington, the Cotton Tree, which was in an area of housing about half a mile from the village centre, with no other nearby pubs, has closed down, but there are still five pubs in fairly close proximity in the centre.

The class factor works the other way too, as there seem to be some areas that are quite simply too upmarket to sustain pubs. For example, we have seen the closure of the Bleeding Wolf in Hale, Corbans (the former Unicorn) in Halebarns and the Royal Oak in Alderley Edge, all locations with no shortage of either spending money or potential customers living nearby. The local residents may well socialise in restaurants or each other’s houses, but they no longer do it in pubs.

Market towns in general do not seem to have suffered too badly, likewise the smaller and more isolated coastal resorts. Possibly the existence of a captive market is a factor here, if the nearest big town is too far away to be easily reached for a night out, while they may also function as a hub for surrounding villages. Even here, though, the demise of traditional coaching inns is very noticeable, and peripheral pubs have suffered more than those in town centres.

The growing unwillingness to drink and drive even within the legal limit has undoubtedly led to a general thinning-out of pubs in villages and rural areas, which ironically often means that law-abiding pubgoers end up driving further than they used to. Some pubs have been able to go for the upmarket “country dining” trade, but that is a lot more fickle than local regulars and really only as dependable as the last meal served, and it isn’t an option for all. Some country pubs seem to get into a downward spiral of frequent changes of licensee and format, eventually resulting in closure, whereas those with more continuity and a clear sense of purpose stand a better chance of remaining in business.

December 2013

Reducing Strength, Reducing Choice

Initiatives targeted at street drinkers may also hit responsible consumers

IN AN ATTEMPT to curb the problem of street drinking, a number of local authorities have recently implemented an initiative called “Reducing the Strength”, whereby off-licences are invited to enter into agreements not to sell beers and ciders above a certain strength. Ipswich and Hastings have set the bar at 6.5% ABV, but Newcastle have lowered it to a mere 5%. While these agreements are supposedly voluntary, there is undoubtedly a significant amount of arm-twisting involved.

You may think that this is only aimed at tramps and has nothing to do with you, but many highly-respected beers such as Old Tom and Duvel come in at over this figure, and some of the new-wave craft brewers have made a speciality of distinctive, higher-strength beers. The same is even more true of traditional ciders. Many of the products favoured by street drinkers were originally entirely respectable and were only later adopted by them as their tipple of choice – Carlsberg Special was first brewed to mark the visit of Sir Winston Churchill to Copenhagen. And it would be impossible to come up with a watertight legal definition that put Old Tom in one camp and super lagers in the other.

The risk is that responsible drinkers of high-quality strong beers and ciders will find them more and more difficult to get hold of, and that their consumption in general will increas­ingly be denormalised. This will lead to the disappearance of many excellent, distinctive products and an unwelcome reduction of choice and diversity in the overall market. And it always seems to be beer and cider that are singled out when most wines and all spirits come in at a higher strength and cannot claim to be innocent of involvement in problem drinking.

Building a Customer Base

The development of town-centre housing may lead to fewer pub customers, not more

AN ARGUMENT I’ve often seen advanced, especially in relation to Stockport, is that new residential developments in close proximity to town centres are a way of revitalising their pub trade. On the face of it, this sounds plausible, but in fact it’s another example of the “captive market” fallacy. Being the nearest pub to a large number of homes is no guarantee of success, and indeed one of the most typical patterns of pub closure is of stand-alone pubs in the midst of residential areas, or next to local shopping parades, which will often be the only pub within convenient walking distance for a large number of people. Going directly to the pub from home in the evenings is a far less typical pattern of pubgoing than is often imagined.

While there may be ten thousand people living in Manchester City Centre now, when thirty years ago there were only a few hundred, that is still only the population that would support the handful of pubs in a typical small market town, and in terms of the centre’s overall pub trade is a drop in the ocean. Pubs thrive in the centre of Manchester, and other large cities, because they function as retail, employment, business, cultural and entertainment hubs for a wide surrounding area and thus attract large numbers of people for a wide variety of reasons.

If new flats are built on land on the edge of a town centre that was formerly derelict, or industrial premises, it might give a slight boost to pubs in the vicinity, although probably scarcely so much as you would notice. But if former shops and offices are turned over to housing, it will in fact be bad news for local pubs, as it will signal a retrenchment of the town’s hub function and mean fewer potential pubgoers visiting it from outside.

November 2013

The World Turned Upside Down

The distribution of cask beer in the UK now is a mirror image of that when CAMRA was formed

A STRIKING feature of the British beer scene is how, in the years since the foundation of CAMRA, the pattern of availability of real ale has been dramatically reversed. The four founder members were journalists who had moved from the North-West to London and been shocked by the poor beer they encountered. The 1977 “Good Beer Guide” says that “Greater London is no longer one of the worst counties in England for real ale”, which suggests that a few years previously it had been. Most of the pubs were owned by the “Big Six” national brewers, and the vast majority only sold pressurised beer. Apart from Young’s pubs, all of which sold real ale, there was only a scattering of outlets, and even Fuller’s, who have outlasted Young’s and are now one of the most respected family brewers, only had real ale in 16 out of 111 pubs.

Outside the capital, the situation was often little better, if at all. The 1977 “Guide” still describes North Devon and much of Norfolk as “beer deserts”, and says that, apart from the handful of pubs it lists, there’s little else to be found in any of Northumberland. In the whole of Cornwall, which must have had getting on for a thousand pubs, only 120 had real ale.

In contrast, across large swathes of the industrial Midlands and North, there were major independent breweries who sold real ale in all or virtually all their pubs – Banks’s & Hansons in the Black Country, Hardy’s & Hanson’s, Home and Shipstone’s in Nottingham, and Boddington’s, Holt’s, Hyde’s, Lees and Robinson’s around Manchester. Added to this, there were still massive tied estates belonging to members of the Big Six which were mostly real, such as Bass Mitchells & Butlers across the Midlands and Tetley’s in Yorkshire and on Merseyside.

A myth has grown up that, when CAMRA was founded, real ale was on the point of disappearing in Britain. In and around London, that may not have been far from the truth, but across the country as a whole the situation was in fact much healthier, something that helped encourage the always rather mistaken view that real ale was a working man’s drink.

Fast-forward forty years, and things have been turned on their head. London is enjoying an unprecedented boom in specialist beer pubs and craft beer bars. Across all the rural counties of the South and East, from Cornwall to Norfolk, you would be hard-pressed to find any prominent pub that didn’t serve real ale. The only keg-only outlets are youth-oriented bars and a few back-street and estate pubs in places well off the tourist trail. Counties like Surrey and Buckinghamshire report over 95% of all pubs selling real ale.

On the other hand, many of the independent brewers in operation in the 1970s have been taken over and their estates scattered to the four winds, Nottingham having suffered especially badly. The Big Six brewers have been broken up and their pubs largely transferred to pub companies which in the 1990s started the systematic removal of real ale except where they saw a clear commercial justification. Most of the surviving back-street and estate pubs owned by pubcos now only have keg beer – indeed it’s now almost seen as a defining feature of the classic estate pub. Twenty years ago, a pub crawl of Levenshulme in South Manchester included twelve or so pubs with real ale; now there are only two or three, and none on the main road. Yet a few miles down the road in Didsbury and Chorlton, new bars have opened up and it’s pretty much ubiquitous.

So it’s an interesting reversal of fortune how, in many cases, the areas where real ale was once sparse now have it in abundance, and where it was once plentiful it is now rare. And, of course, it has to be recognised that the preferred drink of the typical “working man” has long been standard lager, not mild or bitter.

October 2013

Open and Shut Case

The liberalisation of licensing hours has often led to pubs opening shorter hours

IT’S NOW twenty-five years since 1988 when the licensing laws were liberalised and all-day pub opening permitted once again. However, over time, in many cases the effect seems to have been pubs opening for shorter hours, not longer. Before 1988, most pubs would adhere fairly closely to the standard permitted hours for their area, although opening a bit later at lunchtimes and Saturday evenings was fairly common. If a pub was normally closed even for one session it was something worthy of note.

In the early years of the new licensing regime, most pubs seemed to stick to their previous pattern of opening, and indeed a couple of years afterwards it was still hard to find anywhere open after 3 pm in the centres of Stockport and Manchester. However, the growth of Wetherspoons and other chain pubs, which didn’t close in the afternoon, made them start to reconsider that approach, and nowadays you’ll find that most pubs in town and city centres do open all day.

On the other hand, many pubs with a more local appeal started to take the view that there wasn’t much point in opening at lunchtimes at all, especially during the week, and switched to an evenings-only model, possibly including Friday, Saturday and Sunday lunchtimes, although some don’t even bother with that. This has even happened to some pubs that once did a healthy lunchtime trade with customers from local workplaces.

I’d certainly not want to argue that pubs should be expected to open at times when they can’t trade profitably, and curbing your hours can make it possible for a couple to run a pub with little or no additional staff. However, if they’re doing this, it’s surely vital to display the opening hours outside so people know when they’re going to be able to get in. Even if you’re not going to the pub on that occasion, you can still make a mental note of the hours for a later visit. And, if you turn up and find a pub shut, if you know it will open in half an hour you may stick around and wait; if there’s no indication at all you’re more likely just to go elsewhere.

If you are in a location where there is potential passing and casual trade, limiting your hours can also indicate a smallness of ambition and reluctance to cultivate a wider appeal. The amount of trade on offer at lunchtimes is often underestimated – for example, many retired people much prefer going to the pub at lunchtime rather than in the evening, and I’ve come across some pubs that are like a pensioners’ social centre in the afternoon. Plus people nowadays are less likely to work regular, 9-5 hours, so more working people will be around in the daytime. Open a Wetherspoon’s pretty much anywhere and there will be people in for a drink from mid-morning onwards, and throughout the afternoon, even when nearby pubs are firmly shut.

Another point is that lengthy and predictable opening hours are in themselves a selling point even to potential customers who aren’t really going to take advantage of them. You know Wetherspoon’s are open all day, and so you can plan a visit with confidence without having to check what the actual hours are. And one word-of-mouth report that someone visited a pub at a time when they might reasonably have expected it to be open, and found the door firmly shut, could do a lot of damage. If a pub gets a reputation for scarcely ever being open it will make it much less appealing to casual customers.

At the end of the day, pubs are there to provide a service to their customers, and if they can’t be bothered opening when people want to visit, it will result in a black mark for that particular establishment and potentially also the entire sector.

September 2013

A Pint of Two Halves

Charging extra for halves is poor business practice that needlessly antagonises customers

RECENTLY there seems to have been a rise in the practice of pubs charging more for a half than exactly 50% of the price of pint, something that for many years has been commonplace in Ireland. Many drinkers find this irritating, especially given that the growth in the number of rare and one-off beers means that drinking halves is a lot more common than it used to be.

The usual reason given is that the overheads in terms of staff time and glass-washing are the same for a half as for a pint, and thus some kind of premium is justified. However, in general, pubs serve far more pints than halves, and the fact that they do sell a few halves is unlikely in practice to result in any measurable extra cost.

Cost should never be the sole factor in pricing – you also have to bear in mind consistency and what people feel happy to pay. The aim should be to establish a fair and reasonable pricing structure that covers your overheads without any anomalies. Pubs don’t, for example, charge more for beer in the winter to cover the additional costs of heating and lighting.

While I’m never going to man any barricades about it, charging more for halves seems to me to be something that needlessly antagonises customers for little or no benefit to the pub. It’s quite simply a bad business practice that has no place in an operation that depends so heavily on customer goodwill. Plus it’s not hard to imagine the anti-drink lobby getting up in arms over effectively giving people a discount for drinking more.

The Customer is Always Rude

Should staff be entitled to refuse service to ill-mannered customers?

A COUPLE of months ago there was a lot of discussion about a case where a Sainsbury’s cashier refused to serve a customer who was busy talking on her mobile phone. This attracted a lot of public sympathy, and few would disagree that the customer’s behaviour was rude and ill-mannered, something that the widespread use of mobile phones seems to have encouraged.

However, is it really the role of staff to make value judgments about the behaviour of customers, provided that they are not actually being abusive? Attitudes as to what is and isn’t acceptable have greatly changed over the years, and they should not be pulling people up for things simply because they don’t approve. It could all too easily turn into a slippery slope where customers were being told off for eating, chewing gum, showing their underpants or wearing T-shirts with offensive slogans. A checkout operator – or a bar person – is acting as the representative of their employer and it is not their job to make up policy on the hoof. It may be a cause for regret, but in the real world businesses may suffer for turning away customers for a lack of manners.

On the other hand, if you’re the licensee of a pub who is effectively running your own business, you are quite entitled to take the view of “my gaff, my rules” and ban anything you disapprove of so long as it’s not discriminatory. In the past there were some pubs that imposed a forfeit on any customers who allowed a mobile phone to ring, but they have now become so ubiquitous in society that such an attitude would probably be counter-productive.

Reverse the roles, though, and there is no doubt that for a member of bar staff to be chatting on the phone while serving a customer is completely unprofessional and frankly indicates total contempt for those who ultimately pay their wages.

August 2013

Pubbiness

You know it when you find it, but you can’t create it just by ticking boxes

IN MY RECENT column about Wetherspoon’s, I made the point that, while they may tick a lot of boxes as to what people look for a pub, with very few exceptions their establishments are notably lacking in that elusive quality of “pubbiness”. This is something rather akin to an elephant, that you recognise instantly when you come across it, but is very hard to describe exactly.

It’s often said that a church is essentially a congregation, not a building, and the same is true of pubs. While having an unspoilt traditional interior can make a major contribution, it doesn’t create atmosphere all by itself. I’ve been in the occasional immaculately preserved pub that came across like a sterile museum piece, whereas others with no architectural merit whatsoever were places that just seemed to work and where you would immediately feel at home.

On the other hand, some feeling of intimacy helps, even just an effort to break up large open-plan spaces into smaller areas. Bench-type seating promotes sociability by encouraging customers to look into the centre of the room and interact with each other rather than sticking to their own little groups at separate café-style tables. Small round three-legged tables are often preferable to big rectangular ones thast would be more at home in a restaurant. A real fire in winter is always a welcoming sight.

The key function of pubs has always been as a place for people to meet and socialise over a few drinks, and so it’s good to see groups of drinkers clustered around the bar, and a mix of customers of different age groups. A variety of ages amongst the bar staff is also good, as is giving the impression they might actually use the pub as customers rather than just doing it for the money.

A good pub will have some regular customers who just call in for a drink, even if only once a month; it won’t be wholly dependent on diners or casual trade. The playing of pub games, even just the normal staples of darts and pool, suggest that people are using the pub as a social meeting place, and a jukebox rather than pre-selected piped music means that some consideration is being given to what people actually want to listen to.

Then there is evidence that the pub serves a community function, such as hosting sports teams and social functions, and having a noticeboard promoting local events, businesses and attractions. And it’s always a positive sign if you can see the pub being run in an individual way rather than just according to a corporate masterplan, for example pub pets such as cats and dogs and tropical fish, pictures and memorabilia with some local significance, even just an assortment of cards pinned up behind the bar with nuts and other snacks.

Some of the obvious things that detract from pubbiness are those associated with an excessive concentration on food, such as tables laid with place-settings and “Reserved” signs. A notice saying “please wait here to be seated” has no place in any self-respecting pub. And, while there’s nothing wrong with pub-branded polo shirts, putting your bar staff in waistcoats and bow-ties is completely out of place. Pastel colours, either inside and outside, are never a good idea, and neither are low sofas, not to mention being a very inefficient use of space.

But, at the end of the day, pubbiness is something that develops gradually over time and cannot be instantly creating simply by ticking items off a list.

July 2013

A Question of Balance

Too many pubs fail to put a decent spread of beer types on the bar

IF I RAN a pub, I’d make sure that the range of cask beers included sufficient variety that as few customers as possible would be disappointed. If I had four pumps, I’d have a classic ordinary bitter, a golden ale, a stronger premium bitter and a dark beer, either a mild or a porter. As the number of pumps grew, I might add one or two stronger and/or more exotic beers, but I’d still retain roughly the same proportions. And I’d always remember that, although there’s much to be said for offering more unusual brews, the majority of customers, even in specialist pubs, will be looking for beers in the gold-amber-copper colour range with a strength roughly between 3.5% and 4.5% ABV.

So it’s disappointing when pubs which you think really should know better fail to adhere to the basic principle of offering a balanced beer range. Although by no means the only offenders, Wetherspoon’s often seem particularly bad at this. For example, on one occasion, apart from the usual Ruddles and Abbot, there was nothing on the bar below 5%, which isn’t ideal if you want to keep a clear head at lunchtime. Another time, all the guests were dark beers of some description with the exception of one cloudy Belgian-style witbier which I imagine many casual punters would have sent straight back. It really isn’t good if you’re confronted with eight handpumps but can’t find anything you want to drink, or if in Spoons you find Ruddles the least worst option.

I also recently called in a well-regarded free house (not in this area) which I’ve always found to have a particularly congenial atmosphere. It had eight beers on, one of which was a chocolate porter, and the remaining seven all golden ales. Now, I’ve nothing against golden ales, and many of them are excellent beers, but it would have been nice to see a bit more variety and one or two milds and classic bitters. Wye Valley HPA is a fine brew, but on this occasion their Bitter or Butty Bach might have provided a broader choice.

It’s not difficult, licensees – as far as you can, within the number of beers you can turn over, make sure you offer as wide a variety of strengths and styles as practicable, and don’t neglect beers of sessionable strength in the amber and copper colour range.

Party Pooper

It’s a licensee’s right to bar admission to large parties to maintain his pub’s character

IT HAS BEEN reported that the Blue Bell pub in York has been excluded from the 2014 “Good Beer Guide” by the local branch of CAMRA because at times it supposedly operates a restrictive admissions policy. Now, this is a pub I am very familiar with and would place it in my Top Ten of British pubs. It’s a tiny, unspoilt place with front public bar, central servery and rear snug, connected by a corridor along one side. Fifty people would fill it. So it’s perhaps understandable that the licensee chooses to put up “Private Party” signs to keep out rowdy stag and hen parties visiting the city on weekend evenings. He says: “We do get nice strangers coming in the pub but on Saturday nights and race days York city centre is a nightmare.”

Realistically, apart from a few hours on Friday and Saturday nights, casual visitors are not going to have any problem gaining admission, and even then I would imagine all that it takes is to ask politely. The main impact of excluding the pub from the “Guide” will not be to cost it any trade, but simply to deprive some visitors to the city of the opportunity to experience one of Britain’s true classic pubs. Maybe a more diplomatic and tongue-in-cheek approach would have been to follow the example of one Bristol licensee and put up a sign saying “No Idiot Pub Crawls”.