Independent - Lead article

Back in 1950 in his essay on the British pub, George Orwell listed his reasons for visiting his favourite local. They included such things as a good fire burning; it must be quiet enough to talk; pub games only in the public bar; barmaid knows most customers by name; besides cigarettes and pipe tobacco, the pub sells stamps and aspirin; draught stout on tap; beer served in glass or pewter tankards.
The aspirin and stamps may be a little excessive. But apart from that, pub owners could do worse than study Orwell's list. With news that four pubs a day are closing nationally, and of an increasing number of villages without a pub, it is too simplistic to point to the smoking ban as the main reason why more and more people are losing the pub-going habit. The causes for this worrying decline are surely more "Orwellian".

Independent - Business - Wetherspoon turns to food to counter decline in beer sales

JD Wetherspoon's profits before tax fell by 11 per cent in the past year because of the smoking ban. But the chain's sales - which were down by 1.1 per cent for the year as a whole - crept back up to 1.1 per cent year-on-year growth in the five weeks to the end of August, thanks to a growing emphasis on food sales.

"Sales were down a little, but we expected that in the first year of non-smoking, and we have had good growth in food sales," John Hutson, chief executive, said yesterday.
[....]
Pub chains are increasingly looking beyond beer for their profits. Punch Taverns, which reported annual sales down nearly 3.5 per cent last week, is also betting on food

what they don't mention is that the beer sold in most chain pubs is bland and uninteresting. I have in the past described a lot of people as just wanting a bland social drinking liquid. which is fine and I'm not going to compalin about that. But the beers now avialbe across a broad swathe of the coutnry are falling beyond bland into tasteless and unpleasant. It's no surprise that people don't want ot go to pubs when they know that what they'll be served when they get there is a regrettable soup of diminshed ambitions.

Weatherspoons used to have good beers in their pubs, I'd seek them out. But increasingly they fell back on a restricted range of awful beers. I now avoid their pubs. Most chain pubs are the same, they get in the cheapest most tasteless nonsense and sell it as expensively as the market will bear.

And they wonder why people don't drink as much as they used to. Back when I used to venture around more than I do now I used to suggest that there weren't 50 pubs worth going to inside the M25 ring motorway around london. I no longer think that's true, but its way less than 100. And certainly not the 200+ CAMRA puts in london alone.

But management companies don't know anything about pubs, all they know is profit and loss, they only bought the pubs cos they were cheap in a rising property market. The idea of what a pub means is lost on them, the idea of identity sounds expensive. The idea of quality repels them.

good pubs always survive. I don't know a single pub in London that serves good beer that is struggling. but I know a lot that don't which are. Can you tell that to faceless business dorks ?? apparently not.


keep to the Fen Causeway