August 2015

Smell the Coffee

Coffee shops aren’t direct competitors to pubs, even if they sell alcohol

IT WAS a sign of the times that the long-running US sitcom “Friends” saw the main characters socialising in a coffee shop rather than a bar. It began showing in 1994 and, since then, while I’m not suggesting it’s a direct result, coffee shops have enjoyed exponential growth and become a standard feature of most British High Streets.

Personally, I have never really seen the point, but their success is undeniable. I would say they have created their own market rather than taking existing trade from pubs – they come across as welcoming, unthreatening and, dare I say it, female-friendly. A coffee shop is basically a window on the world, whereas a pub is a refuge from it. Even the best-run pub still has a slight whiff of edginess and misrule.

Recently, the market-leading operator Starbucks have announced that they are going to roll out the sale of alcohol in some of their UK outlets, following successful trials in the US. It’s part of an “evening concept” that also includes serving more substantial meals. I can’t imagine that Wetherspoons will be quaking in their boots, but it’s easy to see the appeal to tourists wanting a pre-theatre snack, or office workers enjoying a glass of Chardonnay after work before getting the train home.

It’s another example of how the on-licence scene is fragmenting and diversifying. If you’re having a drink outside the house, it’s becoming less and less likely that you’ll be doing it in somewhere that is recognisably a pub. However, I would say that trying to ape coffee shops is about the worst thing pubs could do. As with many other marketing gimmicks, the risk is that you alienate your existing customers without winning over many new ones. And it’s worth noting that Wetherspoons are the biggest on-trade coffee sellers in the country.

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At the Sign of the Crossed Legs

Micro-pubs should not mean micro-facilities

THERE’S ONE part of the pub that every customer will need to visit at some time, namely the toilets. It’s an inevitable result of drinking beer. In the past, many pub toilets were disgusting, but in recent years there has been a marked improvement. In general I would say the minimum acceptable standard for pub toilets is to have one urinal and one trap in the gents, and two traps in the ladies, although I recognise that some smaller pubs only have one in the ladies. But the recent rash of micropubs and mixed bottle shops and bars don’t seem to be able to achieve even this level.

If you’re primarily an off-licence, but allow customers to sit down and sample the occasional beer, then it may be OK to have a single unisex WC. But if your establishment at some times of the week becomes a busy bar, then people will be queueing up. If someone decides they need ten or fifteen minutes in there – as sometimes happens – those in the queue will be left in a very awkward situation. In the past, I’ve been in basic, remote country pubs where there was just a single WC out in the yard, and that seemed distinctly primitive. So why should new-wave bars be judged any differently?

Frankly, if your establishment has become a popular bar, rather than a bottle shop with the occasional sampling customer, it’s just not good enough. Personally, I would not be comfortable spending much time in a bar with only a single unisex WC. Plenty of established small pubs, such as the Queen’s Head in Stockport town centre and the Olde Vic in Edgeley, still manage to provide proper separate gents’ and ladies’ toilets. If you’re enjoying success with a new-style bar, you would do well to heed this lesson, even if your toilets have to be placed up or down stairs.

July 2015

The Best-Laid Plans

It seems wrong that established pubs can be converted into shops without planning permission

IMAGINE you live in a suburb of a major town, and have a local pub, a big free-standing building dating from the Thirties or Fifties, on a spacious site with a large car park. Over the years, it’s gone through various brands and formats, none of which really seem to have been successful. To be honest, you rarely go in it, as the beer’s not much good and it only seems to be busy when the football’s on, but you still think of it as a key feature in the local community.

One day, you see work starting on it and think that maybe at last they’ll be giving it a thorough makeover and allowing it to realise its potential. But when the fencing comes down you are shocked to see a gleaming new Tesco Express inhabiting the old pub building. “How on earth did that happen?” you wonder. “We weren’t consulted – nobody told us a thing.” It’s entirely lawful and above board, though, and something that has happened in hundreds of places over the past ten or fifteen years.

It is a feature – many would say a loophole – of the planning system that this can be done without needing planning permission. Pubs fall into Use Class A4 “Drinking establishments” and can be turned into A3 “Restaurants”, A2 “Financial and professional services” and A1 “Shops”. The thinking behind this is that permission shouldn’t be needed to convert premises to uses that are likely to have less adverse impact on the neighbourhood.

However, many pubs are seen as valuable community hubs, and people are understandably concerned if they are lost without any consultation or prior warning. Even if in the end the building turned out to have no future as a pub, if planning permission was needed, then at least there would have been the opportunity for other pub operators and community groups to step in.

It has to be recognised, though, that planning can only stop things happening – it cannot keep businesses in operation that nobody considers commercially viable. And the best way for a community to have a say in the future of its local pub is to actually use it in the first place. All too often, the first to complain are those who haven’t crossed the threshold for years.

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Let A Thousand Flowers Bloom

In the long term, the viability of the pub trade will be ensured by encouraging new entrants into the market

THERE’S ANOTHER reason why strict planning controls might not be a good idea for pubs. The 2003 Licensing Act made it easier to open new licensed premises by removing the require­ment to demonstrate “need”. This has led to a remarkable growth in small new bars, many of which, as we have seen in Chorlton and increasingly in West Didsbury and the Heatons, make a real effort on the beer front.

They may not be traditional pubs, but they show that the opportunities are there for new entrants to come in and meet a demand that the old pubs, which were often just too big and in the wrong place, didn’t satisfy. Their small size means that overheads are modest, and the planning system makes it easy to turn them back into shops if the venture fails to take off. If even the smallest bar had planning protection from day one, then we would have a lot fewer small bars.

There’s a strong case for extending planning protection to well-established, popular pubs to ensure they aren’t arbitrarily converted to shops without consultation. But, unless it is limited according to one or more of length of time in operation, size, and whether purpose-built rather than a conversion, the effect will be to deter people from opening new pubs and bars without necessarily doing much to keep the existing ones in business.

June 2015

A Little of What You Fancy

Moderate alcohol consumption really is better for your health than total abstention

IF YOU’RE reading this, the odds are that you’re enjoying a glass of beer. You probably think that overall it’s not going to actually benefit your health, but, as long as you don’t overdo it, it shouldn’t do too much harm. Although heard less now, it used to be commonplace to ask “what’s your poison?” when offering someone a drink.

But you would be mistaken in that view. Alcohol may be a poison but, as with many substances, the poison is in the dose. In fact, there is an overwhelming weight of scientific research evidence indicating that moderate drinkers have a lower mortality rate and higher life expectancy than total abstainers, in particular having a lower rate of cardiovascular disease. It is sometimes claimed that the figures are skewed by people who have had to give up drinking because of poor health, but the effect still applies even if they are excluded from the calculations.

For example, in 2006, the "Archives of Internal Medicine", an American Medical Association journal, published an analysis based on 34 well-designed prospective studies and incorporating a million individual subjects, which found that “1 to 2 drinks per day for women and 2 to 4 drinks per day for men are inversely associated with total mortality.” ¹

More recently, a study was published earlier this year in the British Medical Journal entitled “All cause mortality and the case for age specific alcohol consumption guidelines.” This was specifically looking at the over-50 age group, but the data showed that, for every band of alcohol consumption above zero, the mortality risk was significantly lower than that for non-drinkers, in some cases by up to 25%. The same was true, although to a slightly lesser degree, when former drinkers were excluded to make the comparison solely with those who had never drunk. It was still the case for those in the highest consumption group – those drinking over 20 units per week – although obviously there would eventually come a point where the risk became higher. ²

I could bore you and go on, but you get the point. What is more, these benefits persist to some extent even if people drink significantly more than the official guidelines. These figures are often described as “limits”, but in effect they represent the bottom point of the risk curve and you certainly don’t drop off a cliff of risk by nudging over them. In 1994, Sir Richard Doll, the distinguished epidemiologist who established the link between smoking and lung cancer, showed that the relationship between alcohol consumption and mortality has a J-curve, with risk higher for teetotallers, lower for moderate drinkers and then a rise for heavier drinkers.

There are all kinds of lifestyle factors that have an impact on our health, and in practice it is very difficult to make a clear link between cause and effect. If you really can’t stand the stuff, the additional risk isn’t all that great, and there’s little point in forcing it down for the sake of it. But, even if you only have a couple of halves a week, statistically it will make a difference. If you do enjoy drinking in moderation, then there is no need to feel guilty about it, and you should not imagine that cutting alcohol out entirely will be beneficial. All those sports and showbiz stars who make a point of boasting that they never touch a drop are actually admitting they’re not following the best diet to maximise their longevity.

The Holy Grail for the anti-drink lobby is to find conclusive evidence that any amount of alcohol consumption is detrimental to health. But, unfortunately for them, the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence points in the opposite direction, and those who support pubs and responsible drinking should not be afraid to point this out.

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References:

¹ The Truth We Won’t Admit: Drinking Is Healthy - Stanton Peele

² Don't worry, drinking is still good for you - Christopher Snowdon

May 2015

Lilacs out of the Dead Land

Beer duty cuts have driven a striking recovery in the pub trade, but it’s by no means universal

BY THE TIME you read this, there’s a distinct chance George Osborne will no longer be Chancellor of the Exchequer. But, in his budget in March, he cut beer duty for the third time in a row, something unparalleled in history. Some have pooh-poohed this, saying that a penny a pint duty cut is neither here nor there, and most pub operators haven’t applied it anyway. But in reality the comparison is not with a duty freeze, but with the continued application of the beer duty escalator, which would have resulted in a pint in the pub being 30 or 40p dearer by now.

There can be little doubt that three years of small beer duty cuts, combined with the economic recovery, have delivered a much-needed shot in the arm to the pub trade. In 2014, beer sales in pubs fell by just 0.8%, the lowest figure in fifteen years. Yes, it’s still a small decline, but it’s one that many other businesses such as print newspapers would die for. A report by the Centre for Economic and Business Research has claimed that the beer duty reductions have already saved over 1,000 pubs from closure.

A couple of years ago, all was doom and gloom, with pubs closing left, right and centre, and Robinsons’ pub cull shutting many much-loved but no longer viable locals. But the tide seems to have turned. Entirely new bars have sprung up such as the Spinning Top and Heaton Hops, the long-closed Bambooza on Stockport Market Place has returned to life as Live!, and our local family brewers have been spending large sums on revamping pubs such as the Baker’s Vaults, Platform 5 and the Griffin in Heald Green. There’s certainly a new sense of confidence in the air.

However, we shouldn’t forget that this upsurge is largely confined to town and city centres and prosperous suburbs. The wider social trends that have contributed to the decline have not gone away, and it’s still reckoned that, across the country, thirty pubs are closing every week.

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Bring Back Plates!

Pubs are serving food on anything but plates, no matter how ludicrous

GO IN ANY pub or restaurant nowadays that has the slightest aspiration to be fashionable, and the odds are that you will have your meal served, not on a plate, but on a roofing slate, a chopping board, a baking tray or even just a plank of wood. Your chips may be stacked on their end in a mug, salad under an upturned wine glass and vegetables in a flowerpot. Some of the worst examples highlighted on the Twitter account @WeWantPlates include bread in slippers, chips in a miniature shopping trolley, steak on a meat cleaver and mushy peas in a latté glass.

Not too long ago, people were complaining about square plates replacing round ones, but this is taking things to a whole new level. There are obvious practical objections, in that an entirely flat surface does nothing to stop food sliding or dripping off the edge, and you have to wonder how thoroughly chunks of wood are washed, especially those with cracks in them. Some types of containers may make it physically difficult to actually eat the food from them.

But ultimately this is just a rather pathetic attempt to come across as funky, artisanal and cutting-edge. Anything, no matter how absurd, is better than a boring old round plate. We all know that very often the food’s just popped out of a microwave and they’re not actually slaughtering pigs round the back. However, Wetherspoons are bucking the trend – not so long ago they replaced plain square plates with very retro-looking round ones with blue and white patterns. It might be a good idea for more pubs to follow suit and stop opening themselves up to ridicule.

April 2015

Not Fit to be Out

Breath-testing clubbers could easily set a precedent for ordinary pubgoers

IN RECENT months, there have been a growing number of stories involving the police “requesting” nightclubs to breath-test customers before allowing them entry, for example in Norwich, Loughborough and Croydon. The justification is that it makes it easier for door staff to refuse admission to customers who are already drunk, with the maximum alcohol level being generally set at twice the English drink-drive limit. That’s at least five pints, probably more, but, even so, it’s a level many people will reach on a weekend night out while not necessarily coming across as “drunk”.

To be fair, it is very much a police initiative, and the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers (ALMR) have come out strongly against it. The overall result will probably to deter customers from visiting nightclubs at all. However, being a touch cynical, it is not hard to imagine a kind of unholy allowance between the anti-drink puritans and the nightclub bosses, to discourage punters from pre-loading at Tesco or Wetherspoon’s, so they end up drinking more in the clubs at higher prices.

As it stands, it probably won’t affect you, and it certainly won’t affect me. However, it’s worth noting that some of these schemes include not just clubs but also the more nightlife-oriented pubs. Of course we are told that such things will never happen, but it’s all too easy to see the principle being extended in future years and being included in licence conditions. If the idea of breath-testing revellers out and about on foot becomes well-established, will we eventually see normal pubgoers taking a wander round their local hostelries on a Friday night being refused admission to their final destination due to having imbibed a bit too much Old Horizontal earlier in the evening?

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Don’t Drink and Walk

Some countries are even considering alcohol limits for pedestrians

IT DOESN’T even stop there. In Spain, serious proposals have been put forward to breath-test pedestrians involved in traffic accidents to establish whether they should bear any share of the liability. You can sort of see the argument behind this, as, not entirely surprisingly, between 10 pm and 4 am four-fifths of pedestrian fatalities are above the drink-drive limit. However, drunken pedestrians are really only a danger to themselves, and even the possibility of being judged in this way would represent a significant curtailment of individual freedom, and would put a dampener on any kind of celebration or festivities outside the house. It would also be a crude one-size-fits-all measure when individuals’ reaction to alcohol can vary so widely

As with breath-testing clubbers, it’s all too easy to see the principle being extended to apply to pedestrians in general. A few years ago, research by the University of Adelaide in Australia – a country fast becoming the Nanny State capital of the world – seriously advocated the introduction of a 0.15% (150 mg) drink-walk limit as the best way of reducing pedestrian road deaths, and suggested this would meet with public acceptance as it would not affect most people.

Ideas such as this may seem outlandish and laughable today but, simply by raising the subject, it has opened what social scientists call an “Overton Window” whereby it becomes included within the scope of serious debate. There are many measures that would have been deemed unthinkable a generation ago but have now been brought into legislation. So don’t tell me you weren’t warned.

March 2015

Goodbye to the 19th Hole

Nobody should delude themselves that cutting the drink-drive limit wouldn’t lead to wholesale pub closures

IN DECEMBER last year, the Scottish government cut the drink-driving limit in Scotland from 80mg to 50mg, which means that an average man can legally have no more than one pint of ordinary-strength beer. This seemed to be nodded through by all political parties with little opposition, but the effects have not been exactly surprising.

Paul Waterson, chief executive of the Scottish Licensed Trade Association, said the law change would lead to a “complete change to drinking habits” and would be “bigger than the smoking ban. “Rural pubs especially are at risk because people travel to them,” he said. “This definitely will be a difficult situation for many. It’s having a marked effect. “It stops people having a glass of wine with a meal or a pint with a meal. People are not taking the chance. It’s a game-changer. This is a very strict ban by anyone’s standards. We have lost three pubs a week since the smoking ban and this, for many, is worse.” It’s reported that many pubgoers, faced with being limited to just a single drink, have decided not to bother at all.

Greene King, who have a substantial pub estate in Scotland, recorded a noticeable drop in sales over the Christmas and New Year period compared with the previous year. Bars in golf clubs, which have a much wider social base in Scotland than south of the border, are especially feeling the pinch. These are perfect examples of where the primary purpose of people’s car journeys is something else, but they take the opportunity to combine it with a drink in the bar. Realistically, golfers aren’t going to take their set of clubs on the bus.

Fortunately, the UK government have said that they have no plans to follow suit in England. But no-one should delude themselves that it wouldn’t have a severe effect on the licensed trade, and it is hard to escape the conclusion that it is much more an anti-drink and specifically anti-pub measure than a road safety one.

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Variety Isn’t Everything

Drinkers may prefer continuity over constant change

THE LATEST version of Pete Brown’s Cask Report was published last autumn, and again it recorded a story of success in a declining market, with cask beer continuing to gain absolute volume, not just market share, and having reversed the proportion of the ale market it enjoys vis-a-vis keg since 2006. It’s the drinkers of traditional keg ales, not cask, who are literally a dying breed.

However, it has some interesting things to say about drinkers’ expectations of how rapidly beers are changed and rotated on the bar and how, maybe surprisingly, drinkers tend to be less adventurous in their tastes than publicans think they are. Drinkers were happiest with an average of 4.9 beers over a four-week period, versus an average of seven amongst publicans. Drinkers also wanted to see guest beers available for more than a week, whereas publicans wanted to change them over more often. Many said that if they enjoyed a beer they would appreciate the opportunity to try it more than once, which is why many pub-owning breweries tend to produce seasonal beers for a period of two or three months.

I’m all in favour of trying new and unfamiliar beers, but sometimes it’s good to see an old favourite on the bar, particularly if you just want a dependable pint to wash down your lunch. And, from the breweries’ point of view, surely it will help their long-term prospects if they can build up a reputation for specific beers and get repeat business rather than an endless series of one-off specials. Thornbridge Jaipur is a good example of a beer that many people will immediately order if they see it. It would seem from the Cask Report that Britain’s drinkers agree.

February 2015

The Cow Jumped Over the Moon

Pub design gimmicks never stand the test of time

GOING BACK forty years or so, Robinson’s brewery seemed to have been afflicted by a virus for drastic, then-trendy pub refurbishments. These had no regard to the pubs’ traditional character and typically involved severe knocking through, “Spanish arches”, white artexed walls, 24-panel glass doors and low, lounge-style chairs. Fortunately, they eventually came to their senses and began carrying out more sensible and traditional-minded updates – the fairly recent revamping of the Armoury in Edgeley being a good example.

However, in the past couple of years they seem to have adopted a more drastic and self-consciously designed approach, and with the scheme at the Farmer’s Arms in Poynton many would think they have taken a flight of fancy too far. It is described on their website as follows:

“Upon entry you are greeted by the gaze of Ermantrude, a full-size fiberglass cow. Hand painted, her floral design emulates the upholstery that adorns several new seating areas and is a taster of what awaits. Elsewhere, customers will be charmed with a flutter of butterflies across the ceiling and a pantheon of cascading flowers that seemingly grow from the walls creating a theatrical focal point that has never before been seen in a Robinsons pub. Major structural work has also taken place with the addition of an impressive orangery. New wallpaper, which resembles the shadows of trees, covers the walls of the new extension and seems to move with each cloud that passes overhead.”

On top of this, the urinals in the gents’ are formed from stainless steel buckets!

In the 60s and 70s, there was a vogue of doing pubs out in themes that made them look like a Wild West saloon, a jungle or a smugglers’ cave. No doubt it was all thought very trendy and innovative, but it rapidly became old hat and over time all of these interiors have vanished. Pub gimmicks never last, but sadly designers have to constantly rediscover that what seems modern and cutting-edge today will look sadly dated in a few years’ time. What works in pub design is what stands the test of time.

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A Cold House

Warm colours in pubs convey a warm welcome; the opposite is also true

THE TRADITIONAL phrase to describe a welcome is “warm”, and a glowing real fire is widely seen as a welcoming sign, as in the phrase “hearth and home”. From this it follows that any interior colour scheme designed to convey a welcoming feeling should predominantly use “warm” colours such as reds and browns. The darker shades of blue and green may be included in small doses, and glossy black and mirrors can play a part in reflecting light. It has been said that the colours used for pub interiors should largely reflect the colours of drinks.

On the other hand, lighter colours such as grey and pale blues and greens convey a much colder impression and therefore come across as much less welcoming. Yet in recent years they have been much more widely adopted in pub design schemes in an attempt to appear contemporary. I’ve recently been in two fairly ordinary local pubs where the front of the bar counter has been respectively painted pale grey and pale green, which just doesn’t look right, while another of Robinson’s refurbishments was described as using “a palette of light, neutral colours”. This might work for a modern art gallery or nouvelle cuisine restaurant, but for a pub it appears frosty and offputting.

This is another example of designers rejecting the lessons of the past in favour of something deliberately modern and different. “We don’t want our pubs to look like the old-fashioned pubs”, they say. But the old-fashioned pubs were painted and decorated like that for a good reason, which the owners of these pastel-shaded emporiums will eventually realise.

January 2015

Give Me Strength

A “cask-strength” bottled beer is not at all the same as a “cask-strength” whisky

ONCE it has emerged from the still, Scotch whisky is put into oak casks to mature for a minimum of three years, often much more. When it is ready for bottling, it has an alcoholic strength of around 60% ABV, but is typically watered down to 40% (sometimes a little higher) for public sale. Occasionally, limited edition bottlings are made of undiluted whiskies at cask strength, which are obviously much more expensive than the standard product, and are prized by connoisseurs.

I recently spotted that Jennings had sneakily reduced the strength of bottled Cumberland Ale from 4.7% to 4.0%, to bring it into line with the cask version, and now describe it on the bottle as “cask strength”. Likewise, bottled Marston’s Pedigree, from the same brewing group, which was increased from 4.5% to 5.0% and then reduced again, has “Brewed to cask strength” on the label. While this isn’t untrue as such, it comes across as distinctly disingenuous, given that a cask strength whisky is much stronger than the norm, but a cask strength bottled beer seems to be one that is weaker than it used to be.

Needless to say, there’s no price reduction, even though there’s a saving of duty plus VAT of about 8p per bottle. There’s nothing wrong as such with beers of 4% or less, but surely it would make sense to charge less than the 5% ones rather than having everything at the same price. And I wonder if we’ll see the same happening with other beers like Bombardier, London Pride and Spitfire where the bottled version is currently significantly stronger than the cask.

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No Pub for Old Men

If pubs want to live up to the claim of being community hubs they need to be more welcoming to older male customers

A RECENT report by the International Longevity Centre highlighted the growing problem of social isolation amongst older men living alone. Men seem to find it more difficult to make and maintain social contacts than women, and many will have largely depended on their wives or partners for their social life and found themselves cut adrift when they died or divorced. The report predicts that the number of older men living alone in England will increase by 65% by 2030.

You might have thought pubs had a role to play in tackling this issue, but in fact things have gone the other way. A generation ago, it wasn’t uncommon to see groups of old codgers in pubs, maybe playing a game of crib or doms, or just chewing the fat while nursing a pint of mild. But that wasn’t seen as a very lucrative trade, nor something that conveyed the right image. So, many pubs were remodelled to appeal to a younger audience, with loud music, TV screens and uncomfortable posing tables, while others went all-out for the dining trade and made it clear that social drinkers, especially slow-spending ones, weren’t really welcome. In recent years, many community locals have closed entirely, while others have taken the commercial decision to stop opening on weekday lunchtimes, which for many pensioners was their favoured drinking session.

Wetherspoon’s are often mocked for the number of customers using mobility scooters, but surely this should be seen as a positive sign that they are actually providing a social haven for older people. In general, though, they are located in town centres, so don’t act as local pubs near to where people live, and they also pose the problem for older customers of often having the toilets up or down a long flight of stairs.

The industry often claims that pubs play a vital role in communities, and in the best cases that’s undoubtedly true. But maybe they need to live up to the hype and take a long, hard look at making their venues more pensioner-friendly.

December 2014

A Taxing Issue

Cutting VAT on out-of-home dining would be a poorly-targeted piece of special pleading

WHILE YOU may not always agree with him, Wetherspoon’s chairman Tim Martin has to be applauded for being prepared, unlike many of his counterparts, to speak out on the issues facing the brewing and pub industry. However, one campaign on which to my mind he is very wide of the mark is that for a lower rate of VAT to apply to food sales in the hospitality trade. It is claimed that is would give a major boost to employment, but, taking a wider view, is it really such a good idea?

The issue is portrayed by its supporters as some kind of unjustified subsidy to supermarkets, whereas in fact a zero rate of VAT has always applied to most food sold in shops, whether supermarkets or local traders, and few people would argue that it should be taxed. Fifty years ago, the vast majority of alcohol sales were in the on-trade, but since then the off-trade has steadily gained ground despite not enjoying any advantage in tax and duty. In contrast, out-of-home dining has mushroomed. It’s possible to argue that, for most alcohol purchases, there’s a realistic choice between the two, but the same is never going to apply to food.

It’s also not comparing like with like. Even if food bought in a shop is zero-rated, to actually eat it you need to take it home, store it (maybe in the fridge), cook it using gas or electricity, provide tables, chairs, plates and cutlery to eat it, and heating and lighting for your room, all of which may be subject to VAT, whereas these things are included in the price of a meal served up in a pub.

It’s hard to argue that out-of-home food is too dear anyway – indeed you hear some people claiming that it is too cheap. There’s a wide variety of food available at all kinds of price points, and would reducing the price of a £9.99 Beef Stroganoff to £8.75 really prove a decision-breaker for many people?

It wouldn’t only be pubs that benefited, either. The hospitality trade encompasses all kinds of cafés, takeaways and restaurants too, so it would be giving a financial boost to your local kebab shop and burger joint as well as, if not more, than pubs. “Unfair tax treatment for McDonald’s” doesn’t somehow sound quite as appealing. It would also be helping the bottom line of three-star restaurants. The well-off tend to eat out more than the poor, and spend a lot more each time, so they would gain the greatest benefit. By definition, the more costly a meal, the higher the VAT element. And, when many food campaigners are complaining that people are less and less often preparing meals from scratch, surely cutting the cost of prepared meals would make them even less likely to cook at home.

It’s always a subject of political debate as to whether it is better overall to reduce taxes or increase government expenditure. The proposed VAT cut from 20% to 5% on out-of-home eating would undoubtedly be expensive, and, even assuming it is affordable, it’s not difficult to come up with areas where a tax cut might be more widely beneficial. Two obvious examples are a smaller reduction in the general rate of VAT, and increasing the income tax threshold. And, if encouraging employment is the main objective, then that would be better addressed by either increasing the threshold or reducing the rate of employers’ National Insurance contributions.

The conclusion must be that this is a superficially appealing but poorly thought out idea that is a classic example of special pleading, wanting tax favours for businesses you happen to think are deserving. Even if money was available for tax cuts, it would be better spent elsewhere.

November 2014

It’s Kicking off Again

Pubs are starting to realise that TV football may not be the money-spinner they thought

ONCE THE football season starts in the middle of August, anyone just looking for a quiet pint needs to check the fixtures before venturing out to the pub at weekend lunchtimes or midweek evenings. Clearly, for some pubs, televised football brings in a lot of extra custom, but the problem is that it is so often allowed to dominate to the exclusion of all else. Given the eye-watering cost, you can perhaps understand pubs wanting to put screens everywhere, but that suggests that those who aren’t interested in football aren’t really welcome. It might be a good idea to offer a reduced subscription to pubs who were only going to show it in part of their licensed area, but that would be very hard to enforce.

There are growing signs, though, that pubs are realising that every customer they attract with football puts another off, and it doesn’t convey the image that many pubs want to put across. Much of this is to do with attracting dining trade, but there are straws in the wind that the micropub movement is encouraging a return to the old-fashioned drink and chat pub. Marston’s boss Ralph Findlay says that sport is becoming less important to his pubs, while a survey by the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers reported that the proportion of pubs with a sports subscription had declined from 51% in 2003 to 37% today.

Apart from matches featuring City and United, I see little sign around here that it actually draws in additional custom. Many pubs have it simply because they fear that, if they didn’t, all their customers would decamp elsewhere. But, in a sense, it’s a case of waiting for the other man to blink first. The total cost of Sky Sports to pubs probably greatly exceeds the additional revenue it generates for the trade as a whole. And the point is often made that many of the customers who flock in to watch the two big local clubs are never seen in the pub at other times, and may not put that much money across the bar even when they’re there.

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The Unquiet Pint

Nobody asks for piped music in pubs, yet still they play it

FOR AS LONG as I can remember, piped music in pubs has been a perennial source of complaint. Even if you happen to like it, the odds are that other people won’t, and what is music to one person’s ears will be an unholy racket to someone else. While it is claimed to create instant “atmosphere”, almost invariably it detracts from a pub.

In the 1990s, a guide to pubs without piped music was produced entitled “The Quiet Pint”. To be honest, it featured a rather random selection of pubs and the overall coverage was too sparse to make it of much practical use, although it might have led you to the occasional gem that you weren’t aware of. The book seems to have died the death around 2005, but if anything the problem seems to be spreading.

I can think of at least three pubs on my regular rounds which have a generally traditional character, but within the past few years have introduced piped music where there was none before. Indeed, sometimes they have been playing what sounded like Radio 1, which was totally inappropriate for a clientele whose average age was well above fifty. Very often nowadays it’s only Sam Smith’s and Wetherspoon’s pubs that are free of it, and you can’t really call your average Spoons “quiet” It helps to understand piped music in pubs if you appreciate that most of the time it is played for the benefit of the bar staff, not the customers. But more pubs should realise that getting rid of it could well add to their appeal.

October 2014

A Bitter Triumph

Let’s hope the award given to Taylor’s Boltmaker leads to a revival of “ordinary bitter”

IT WAS GOOD NEWS on two counts that CAMRA’s 2014 Champion Beer of Britain award went to Timothy Taylor’s Boltmaker – both that it was won by a long-established family brewer, and that the winning beer was one in the “ordinary bitter” category that often seems to be sadly underappreciated nowadays. Some years ago, Boddington’s used the advertising slogan “If you don’t get Boddies’, you’ll just get bitter”. Well, you won’t get Boddies’ any more, at least in cask form, but in a growing number of pubs you won’t get bitter either.

Yes, if you go into a tied pub of one of the independent family brewers, or Greene King or Marston’s, you will probably still find a beer on the bar in the 3.6% - 4.0% strength range describing itself as “Bitter”, and most new micros have at least one in their range. But in the vast majority of pub company outlets, or any “free house” that isn’t a specialist beer pub, you’re likely to be confronted by three or four of the widely-distributed premium ale brands such as Doom Bar, Cumberland Ale, Bombardier, Wainwright and London Pride, which are in a slightly higher strength – and price – band. “Ordinary bitter” is conspicuous by its absence.

Indeed, very often the standard ale in these pubs is a smoothflow offering such as Worthington, John Smith’s or the dreaded nitro Boddington’s, while cask beer is reserved for the discerning “premium” customer with his deep pockets. Yet, to pack so much flavour and variety into beers of such modest strength is arguably one of the greatest achievements of British brewing. And, at a time when high pub prices are a constant source of complaint and we are being urged to curb our alcohol consumption, making a wider variety of ordinary bitters available would help both our wallets and our livers. Let’s hope that the victory of Boltmaker leads to a revival of interest in what for decades was the staple beer of British pubs.

Scattered in the Plough

Scatter cushions are a pointless, fussy attempt to make pubs seem more “female-friendly”

THE LATEST bizarre interior design feature to appear in pubs is a proliferation of scatter cushions, which once you’d be more likely to find in your gran’s front lounge. They’ve appeared in a number of Robinson’s recent refurbishments, and they’ve even cropped up in Wetherspoon’s. And, not content with colonising the lounge side, they’ve started spreading to the vault!

The idea, I suppose, is to make pub interiors seem more female-friendly by introducing a cosy, homely, design element. But in practice nobody ever derives any comfort from them, and they just end up being chucked on the floor to free up more seating space. Surely it is appropriate for the “public” side at least to have an understated, functional, even austere design ethos of a somewhat masculine character, rather than being bedecked with fancy fripperies. And isn’t it somewhat patronising to women to imagine that they will be tempted into pubs by the introduction of fussy, chintzy soft furnishings that serve no practical purpose?

Pile 'em High

Where do all these peculiar pub trends come from?

IT’S FUNNY how these odd little innovations seem to sweep across the pub trade without any obvious prompting. Another one, which is trivial in itself, is putting beermats in a little pile in the middle of tables rather than spreading them out. Maybe this saves the bar staff a tiny amount of work, but it can’t have evolved independently in a thousand different pubs – the idea must have come from somewhere. You start to wonder whether there is some kind of periodical called “Daft Pub Trends” that licensees read and then slavishly follow.

September 2014

Faith in the Future

New-build dining pubs reflect confidence in the future of the British pub trade

WE ARE OFTEN told that the British pub is in headlong decline, with a tidal wave of closures and pubgoing increasingly becoming irrelevant to the majority of people. However, our two biggest British-owned brewers, Greene King and Marston’s, are bucking this trend by opening large numbers of new-build pubs, which are generally pretty big establishments, not dinky little niche bars. They don’t get the recognition they deserve, though, as they’re family-oriented dining pubs located on retail and leisure parks, and thus far from the stereotype of community local or multi-beer alehouse. There’s a good local example of this in Greene King’s Flying Horse near Manchester Airport, opened last autumn, which must be the first new-build pub in Stockport and its immediate environs for over twenty years.

While these pubs cater for a different market than your average Wetherspoon’s, they come off pretty well in a direct comparison. They often demonstrate a much higher standard of seating comfort and materials, and also beat Spoons hands down in areas such as providing natural light and toilets on the same level as the bar area.

And they’re proving extremely successful, demonstrating that there are thousands of families across the country who, rather than cook and eat at home, prefer to go out for a meal once or twice a week. And it's the pub industry that's increasingly providing the kind of relaxed, informal atmosphere and value for money they’re looking for. It’s noticeable how busy these pubs can get around tea-time when much of the trade that traditional pubs once enjoyed has evaporated.

These family dining venues are a long way from my vision of the ideal pub, and aren’t where I’d choose to go and read the paper on a Sunday lunchtime. But they certainly meet a demand and their success is undeniable. Surely it’s a good thing for the future of the pub trade to get people visiting somewhere that is at least a vague approximation to a pub, and serves cask beer, rather than an establishment that bears no relation to one. Beer enthusiasts sneer at them at their peril.

Out of Place?

But applying the formula to existing pubs may seem insensitive and ill-considered

HOWEVER, it’s one thing to apply this format to a new-build site, but something else entirely to convert an existing pub, as Holt’s are in the process of doing with the Cheadle Hulme. They have set up a new joint venture company called Touchwood Inns in conjunction with the people behind the Cloverleaf Pub Company, who built up an estate of new-build dining pubs in the North of England that they eventually sold to Greene King. The intention is to apply this formula to a mixture of new developments and current Holt’s pubs.

I can’t help thinking, though, that the Cheadle Hulme isn’t the right location for this. In recent years, Cheadle Hulme has seen a number of new pub openings and has developed into something of a drinking circuit. Situated right next to the station, the Cheadle Hulme pub has a mixture of food and drink trade and surely it would have made more sense to try to tweak the balance between the two rather than imposing an overwhelmingly food-led formula that would be more at home on a leisure park. It’s also in a prosperous area where this style of operation may seem rather cheap and cheerful.

While you can’t blame Holt’s for trying to develop the food trade in their pubs and get away from their traditional image as operators of no-frills boozers, their actions on this front sometimes seem to demonstrate an uncertain touch.