Part of the Union

At the beginning of last year, Carlsberg-Marston’s announced that they were discontinuing the use of the Union sets at their Burton brewery, which were used to brew Marston’s Pedigree. This decision was met with a certain amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth but, as I said at the time, “it must be remembered that Carlsberg-Marston’s are a commercial company, not the custodians of a brewing museum.” They will have made a hard-headed decision that the additional costs involved in operating the unions outweighed any additional kudos that they conferred amongst consumers. The fact that many beer enthusiasts tended to sneer at Pedigree can’t have helped the case for their retention.

However, later in the year, Thornbridge Brewery in Derbyshire managed to obtain one of the Union sets and proceeded to put it into service for brewing. They must have concluded, reasonably enough, that there was sufficient regard for the process amongst enthusiasts to make it a commercial proposition. They started off with a Union-brewed version of their iconic Jaipur IPA, and then went on to brew a specific beer called The Union, in more of a classic English style, at a hefty 7.0% ABV.

In my end of year review, I suggested that “maybe they could also consider brewing a 4.5% Burton-style pale ale that would be a direct replacement for Union Pedigree”, and indeed this came to pass earlier this year in the form of the 4.5% 1838.They were offering a mixed case of four of each beer, so I thought I would get my hands on one and give them a try. Both are bottle-conditioned beers, a technique that Thornbridge seem to have mastered to produce consistent results.

First up was The Union (7.0% ABV). Thornbridge describe this as follows:

The Union is a classic British style IPA, created using the very best ingredients we can get our hands on and then fermenting it in our Union set. For our base malt, we have used Maris Otter from Norfolk, where the sandy soil and maritime climate is perfect for growing the variety. We've also added a touch of Simpsons' best crystal malt to add a touch of colour and rounded sweetness and some of the special (and expensive) "Brewers Invert No. 2", sugar from Ragus, which will add notes of caramel and toffee while helping to keep the beer's body in check. The all important hops are British grown Goldings and Northdown, which gives us some gentle berry flavours and rounded cedar-like hop aromas to balance the maltiness. We've pitched two of our yeast strains, namely our fruity British cask ale strain and the California ale yeast, which is fairly neutral in flavour and ensured the attenuation we were looking for.

My tasting notes were: Pale colour, no problem with pouring it clear. Not gassy, but gentle spires of carbonation rising in the beer. Hoppy, but not so much so as Jaipur. Initially light, but the alcohol heft comes through later. A fairly, subtle, restrained beer for its strength. Their openness about the use of invert sugar, something that is integral to the character of this style of beer, is worth noting.

I then moved on to the 1838 (4.5% ABV). Thornbridge say of this:

Named after the year the Burton Union system was patented by Peter Walker, 1838 is brewed exclusively on the set at Thornbridge. 1838 combines the best British malt, Maris Otter, with the finest Goldings hops for a full-bodied, premium pale ale with a light amber hue. This beer delivers sweet, biscuity malt flavours balanced with floral hop notes and a crisp finish.

My tasting notes were: Pours clear, good carbonation, dense, rocky head. Slightly darker than The Union, probably mid-way between Jaipur and Pedigree. Definitely hoppy, but with a firm malt base and a hint of sweetness. Another subtle yet complex beer. and very drinkable.

These are both very good beers, and demonstrate that there can be a successful niche market for a product that enthusiasts valued, but was no longer considered viable in the mainstream. However, in a world of heavily-hopped New World IPAs, the question must be asked whether these relatively understated beers in a classic English style will make a mark. Ordering online, these beers came to almost £4 a bottle, so they are probably something better regarded as an occasional treat rather than a regular drink, especially when Jaipur can be obtained from Morrisons at 4 for £7.

Reinventing the pub

Last month, Wetherspoon’s announced that they were removing steaks, gammon and mixed grills from their menu. This resulted in a predictable outbreak of grumbling, but it’s the only the latest example of a long record of discontinuing supposedly popular menu items. One of the most notorious was dropping Sunday roasts in 2016. Later they discontinued traditional Christmas turkey dinners. It is another example of the company taking a somewhat ruthless attitude to revamping their offer to increase their profitability. They must have decided that steaks were a declining market and required too much time and effort in the kitchen.

This month, the pub trade will experience a massive increase in costs, with swingeing hikes in national insurance and business rates, and a rise in the minimum wage well above inflation. The stagnant general economic climate means that customers don’t have the money for large price increases. The inevitable result is that pubs will struggle, and a fair number will end up closing. But it’s a good bet that Wetherspoon’s, while they will experience the same pressures, will manage to weather the storm.

The first pint I ever bought in a pub cost me 21p in 1976. The Bank of England’s official inflation calculator* reckons that the current equivalent price would be £1.39. But, in reality, a similar pint in a pub around here today would cost at least £4, almost three times as much.

It’s often not recognised that buying a pint of beer in a pub is primarily buying a service, not simply a physical product. The wages of the staff and the overheads of the premises also have to be taken into account. Over time, as real wages increase, while manufacturing efficiencies reduce the price of physical products, the price of services rises vis-à-vis that of goods.

It is generally acknowledged that the price elasticity of a pint a beer in a pub is well below 1. If you increase the price by 10%, you will lose some sales, but almost certainly well below 10%. So, over time, it has always been tempting for the pub industry in general, in response to higher costs, to increase prices by just a little bit above the prevailing rate of inflation. They lose a bit of sales volume, but protect their margins.

This makes sense in the short term, and I do not blame any pub operator or individual publican for doing it. But it has a cumulative effect, and suddenly you realise that a pint is twice as much in real terms as it used to be, and increasingly unaffordable for many people. To try to break this vicious circle, Wetherspoon’s have ended up reinventing the pub model from the ground up. The fundamental point is that the underlying cost assumptions of the pub trade should not be taken as fixed.

This wasn’t something that was in place from the beginning. Tim Martin started out by converting former shops to offer something that most London pubs at the time didn’t – cask beer, food service, consistent opening hours and a comfortable, welcoming, unthreatening environment. In the early days, they weren’t markedly cheap compared with the competition. It wasn’t until the mid-90s that they started expanding outside their initial South-East base – the Moon Under Water in Manchester city centre opened in August 1995.

But it is an approach that has evolved over time. Every aspect of the pub cost base has been challenged in the quest to make a lower margin viable. A key aspect of this is the “pile it high, sell it cheap” approach. Wetherspoon pubs are markedly larger than the average, so the overheads are spread over a larger sales base. Over time, they have disposed of many of the smaller premises acquired earlier in their history. They may make less profit for pint, but they make more in total.

As the largest single on-trade purchaser of alcoholic drinks, beer in particular, they are in a position to drive a hard bargain with suppliers. Over the years, they have had several high-profile disputes with suppliers over costs, most notably ditching virtually all Heineken brands three years ago. While some micro-breweries have a long-term relationship with them, they are trading margin for security, and others won’t deal with them because they don’t find the prices they are willing to pay acceptable.

As I mentioned with the menu changes, all aspects of the operation are constantly reviewed to maximise efficiency and drive out costs. The idea that the popular Wetherspoon App does this may seem counter-intuitive, as it introduces table service for drinks, but in fact it automates the ordering process and makes managing workflow much easier, this smoothing out the peaks and troughs. They also constantly review their property portfolio to weed out poorer-performing branches and eliminate expensive leases. If an apparently busy Wetherspoon pub is unexpectedly disposed of, it’s probably because the lease cost was deemed excessive.

The pricing is finely tuned between different locations, often in a seemingly perverse way. In particularl, they charge a substantial premium in the centres of larger cities, where they have a more captive and less cost-conscious market. They are also often not quite as cheap as people imagine. Pretty much everything on the drinks menu is priced below the nearby competition, but the differential on cask beer is greater than that on kegs and lagers because that is the figure most often used to make price comparisons.

They have also tried to eliminate many of the aspects that make pubs unattractive to customers. Most of their premises are conversions from other type of business rather than former pubs, and where they have acquired existing pubs they have typically totally remodelled the interior. They are largely open-plan without nooks and crannies, and have a large windows on the street so you can see in from outside. There is never a fear of going in the wrong side.

They, in general, avoid features such as live and piped music and TV sport, which do appeal to some but on the other hand can be seen as divisive. People are never going to say “I don’t want to meet up at Spoons because of X” – in a sense they are a kind of lowest common denominator pub. Food and drink menus are put out on all tables so you know exactly what is available and how much it will cost. They also open, and serve food during, long and predictable hours, so that potential customers have the confidence they can go there without worrying about unexpectedly finding it closed. The whole process of a pub visit is made as painless and risk-free as possible.

The overall result of this is that their premises can often come across as large, impersonal and soulless. They lack the intimacy and character often associated with traditional pubs. While they often occupy architecturally impressive buildings, they fill them with cheap, generic loose furniture. You rarely feel cosy in Wetherspoon’s, and I suspect there is an unspoken objective to prevent customers feeling too settled and minimise dwell time.

Cask beer is a key aspect of their appeal, and their association with CAMRA in the form of discount vouchers gives them valuable low-cost publicity. But the standards of cellarmanship vary widely – some branches are consistently good, others much less so – and all too often the beer, even if in decent nick, gives the impression of having been drawn through a very long pipe. They also have a knack of having eight or ten handpumps on the bar but still offering an oddly unbalanced range.

Wetherspoon’s are often accused of having an exploitative attitude towards their staff, but this largely comes across as an exercise in sour grapes. They offer conditions equal to or better than other major players in the market, and have all the benefits and well-developed human resources policies you would expect from a large company. They also offer the opportunity of career progression from an entry-level job, which is not the case for someone doing bar work in an independent pub. The staff are kept busy, but they often give the impression of being more cheerful than those in other chains, and at a recent local CAMRA meeting we were given an impromptu presentation by the manager of one of our branches whose genuine enthusiasm for the opportunities the company had given her was very evident.

In a similar vein, some people object to Tim Martin’s well-documented and public support for Brexit. That is their right, of course, but to boycott a company on political grounds often comes across as cutting off your nose to spite your face, and unless you read the company magazine it is not something you would even notice in their pubs. In any case, the people who are most vocal on this are probably those who would rarely set foot in the place anyway.

But, despite these negative features, it’s impossible to ignore the low prices, and there will be plenty of customers in the typical Wetherspoon’s who otherwise wouldn’t be in a pub at all. Personally, I would rarely use one just for a drink, although I might occasionally call in the one in central Stockport on a midday lunchtime when many other places nearby are closed. I do use them sometimes for food, as even setting aside the value for money it can be difficult to find anywhere else in the vicinity with a comparable choice. I’m certainly not an uncritical cheerleader, but I recognise them as a well-run and innovative company who offer something that a lot of customers want.

Many other pub operators will look at Wetherspoon’s and ask how they can be expected to compete with that. The answer is that, in many cases, they simply can’t. The once-common mainstream pubs offering an unexceptional range of beers and food are much thinner on the ground now in town and city centres. But established pubs have no right to continued existence, and Wetherspoon’s have acted as a classic disruptor in a complacent market.

If you want to compete, you have to offer something that Wetherspoon’s don’t. For example, in the centre of Stockport, there is a keg-only sports boozer right opposite Wetherspoon’s and an award-winning craft beer bar a few doors down, together with a historic pub with a high-end food offer a couple of hundred yards away, all of which seem to do well. Plus the Wetherspoon’s model is essentially to depend on existing footfall in their locality rather than being destination pubs that people will make a special journey to visit. Relatively few of the customers in Stockport suburbs like Heaton Moor or Marple will see the town-centre Spoons as a direct competitor to their local pubs.

The existing major pub operators made a few half-hearted attempts to compete with Wetherspoon’s by offering something similar – the Goose chain created by what was Bass particularly springs to mind. The British pub market has never been a closed shop, and throughout their existence Wetherspoon’s have been able to obtain most of the new licences they wanted. But, while the opportunities were there, the established operators did not take them because they would have undermined their existing businesses, and in the long run they paid the price.

There is a cloud on the horizon, though. Much of what Wetherspoon’s have achieved is the vision of one man, and founder Tim Martin reaches the age of 70 later this month. He’s not going to be around for ever, and the risk must be that the chain ends up going the way of many other once-successful British brands, and loses its distinctive appeal for what no doubt seemed entirely sensible commercial reasons at the time.

* In my view, this understates the genuine rate of inflation, as it has been rebased from RPI to CPI. But even using RPI it would come out as £2.17, so the basic point stands.

Mid-strength midwittery

The Guardian newspaper always has a tendency to regurgitate nonsense on lifestyle issues, and its latest effort is a piece entitled Everyone’s drinking mid-strength – but what actually is it?

A report, published by KAM Insights, has found that, when out at the pub with friends, 50% of UK consumers would rather have two so-called “mid-strength” drinks than one full-strength one. The report, entitled The Mid Strength Opportunity, also finds that 13% of consumers are “coasting”, meaning they’re drinking more mid-strength drinks throughout the evening, so they can stay out for longer and keep tabs on how much alcohol they’re consuming.

However, as the report admits, this research has been funded by an organisation called the Mid Strength Collective, a group of 12 businesses that produce and sell mid-strength drinks, so it’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that they would say that, wouldn’t they?

An obvious problem is that these products simply aren’t visible in the market place. They conjure up one example of a 2.1% lager, but frankly these are products that I never come across either in pubs or the off-trade. Wine-style drinks in the 5-8% strength range are perhaps more common, but again they only occupy a tiny section of the wine aisle and virtually never appear in pubs. And how many people are going to pay £9.99 for a bottle of 5.5% diluted wine? It’s significant that both are conspicuous by their absence in Wetherspoon’s, who can be regarded as pretty representative of the mainstream pub trade in what they stock.

Some years ago, Guinness launched a 2.8% variant that was explicitly called “Mid-Strength”, but this seems to have fallen between two stools and never achieved much traction. Apparently it retains a following in Irish golf clubs to help customers avoid falling foul of Ireland’s now draconian drink-driving law. Nowadays there is a much wider and better-quality range of zero-alcohol offerings, Guinness being a particular case in point, and if people want to reduce their intake while still have something resembling an alcoholic drink, they are much more likely to go the whole hog.

It is certainly true that, in recent years, there has been a reduction in the strength of alcoholic drinks across large swathes of the market. But this has overwhelmingly been driven by duty savings, not by consumer demand. We have seen all four leading smooth bitters, and one of the three biggest-selling ordinary lagers, cut to 3.4%. 4.6% now seems to be the benchmark for premium lagers, and the budget end of the wine market has settled at around 10.5-11.0%. I’ve written extensively about 3.4% beers, and 11% wines are somewhat similar – they can be palatable enough, but always give the impression of being a bit lacking.

I don’t remember drinkers complaining that 5.0% Stella was too powerful and wanting its strength cut. Drinks producers have been able to get away with this because consumers can only choose from what is put before them, and few people are really going to be bothered to seek out alternatives for a 0.2% difference in alcohol content, even if they were available. There are one or two exceptions to this. There were widespread complaints about some full-bodied red wines creeping over 14% and thus becoming a bit overwhelming, and there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that cask ales above around 4.5% do not find many takers in the majority of pubs. But I don’t think there were any reports of drinkers shunning 5% lagers.

These kind of stories always seem to make the assumption that people are engaging in lengthy drinking sessions and have to find some way of getting through them while retaining a relatively clear head. But that rests on the further assumption that others are happily downing standard-strength drinks throughout. If you have to find a way of surviving it, maybe you need to reconsider your social life. I suspect this might be related to the student experience. The same applies to the reported phenomenon of “zebra-striping”, that is alternating alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. And how common is that form of drinking anyway, whether in pubs or at home? At a guess, I’d say that the modal average for the number of alcoholic drinks consumed in a pub visit is one. Yes, prolonged sessions do exist, but they are not the norm.

The conclusion has to be that the idea there is a significant potential demand for mid-strength alcoholic drinks is wishful thinking. If people really don’t want a standard-strength drink, they will choose an alcohol-fee one (or a soft drink) instead.

What goes around, comes around

The Manchester Evening News reports that the Sparking Clog pub in Radcliffe, Greater Manchester, has recently reopened after being given a unique “Two Door Pub” concept. The StreetView image above dates from last year and may not reflect its current appearance. I am informed by Tandleman that the pub was built in the late 1980s by Banks’s, who still own it in their current guise of Marston’s.

A Greater Manchester pub which closed its doors last month for a major refurbishment has reopened. The Sparking Clog pub in Bury has undergone a huge makeover with over £400,000 spent on the upgrade. The much-loved community pub in Radcliffe was temporarily closed for just under a month for the six-figure makeover. It has now introduced a unique “Two Door Pub” concept, as well as a refreshed bar area and a dedicated family lounge.

Located in the heart of Radcliffe, The Sparking Clog's new design divides the pub into two distinct areas: a 'vibrant' locals' bar and a 'warm, welcoming' family lounge. A central partition creates these separate spaces. The new bar area is complete with 4K big-screen TVs, TNT, and Sky Sports for guests to enjoy all the latest fixtures.

General Manager of The Sparking Clog, Gary Hanmer, said: “We can’t wait to show our wonderful guests the result of our refurbishment. “With the inclusion of new TV’s and sports channels, we hope our customers join us to enjoy this year's big summer of sports. We can’t wait to have our loyal customers back!” The Sparking Clog remains a dog-friendly locals pub, and also boats a beer garden, giving guests the option to drink and dine inside or alfresco.

All well and good but, hang on a minute, isn’t this “unique concept” simply reverting back to how pubs used to be a couple of generations ago? Back in the 1960s, most pubs had, at the very least , two separate bars, a public bar with plainer furnishings and a more down-to-earth atmosphere, where drinkers in working clothes would be served, and a more comfortable, sedate and genteel lounge. Back in those days, the beer was usually a bit cheaper in the public bar as well.

However, over the years, brewers steadily knocked their pubs through into a single room. This was in tune with the spirit of the age, being seen as more modern, inclusive and egalitarian. It also made supervision of the pub easier and, at a time when public bar prices were regulated by law, allowed the pub to charge the higher lounge prices throughout. It’s now relatively uncommon to find a pub with completely separate “sides” and, even where they do, the old price differential has disappeared.

The problem with this, though, was that it effectively turned the pub into a monoculture. It may have erased old-school class divisions, but it failed to recognise that customers might have different expectations of a pub, and want to pursue different activities. Very often, the old public/lounge split moved from one single pub to defining different pubs in an area.

I recall seeing a similar story a while back, about how pubs were moving back towards a more compartmentalised approach to cater for different customer needs. In particular it needs to be recognised that TV sport, while it undoubtedly attracts customers, results in a distinctively boisterous, male-dominated atmosphere that may deter many people. My local pub, while it retains a traditional layout, suffers from having giant screens in every room. It remains to be seen, though, how widely this concept will spread.

Looking back to the debate before the introduction of the dreaded smoking ban in 2007, one option that was mooted was banning smoking in any areas of pubs where children were admitted. This could well have led to a set-up very much like this, with a robust, boisterous, adults-only public bar and a sanitised, smoke-free, family-friendly lounge.

However, I can’t help thinking that this concept still fails to cater for a significant sub-section of pubgoers, those who are just looking for a quiet pint, a comfortable seat and a chat well away from both TV sport and screaming children.

Five Years On

Today marks the fifth anniversary of that fateful day when Boris Johnson announced to the country that the pubs would be completely closed until further notice due to the Covid-19 pandemic. I contemplated going down to my local for a last hurrah, but eventually decided against it. This ushered in sixteen months of either total closure or varying levels of ever-changing and often ludicrous restrictions, which were not fully lifted until Monday 19 July 2021. Even after this, for whatever reason, a handful of pubs persisted with the old regime, including, shamefully, the current holder of CAMRA’s National Pub of the Year Award.

Do you remember when you were only allowed to visit a pub if you consumed a “substantial meal”, although a Scotch egg or a hot Panini would suffice? Or when you were required to put on a mask if you had to stand up to go to the toilet? Or pubs were forced to operate table service, with all bar sales banned? Or when you had to provide your details for contract tracing, resulting in a surprising surge in visits by Isaac Hunt and Mr R. Sole? Or when all the pubs were forced to close at 10pm on the dot, resulting in a massive crush on public transport, making a mockery of social distancing? Or when different areas were allocated in “tiers” of restrictions, meaning that pubs could be closed on one side of a street and open (after a fashion) on the other? And how a minority of licensees seemed to demonstrate overzealous enthusiasm in enforcing this nonsense? In Scotland, there was even a period where you could have soft drinks inside the pub, but had to go outside if you wanted an alcoholic drink.

Pubs have now been allowed to trade normally for over three and a half years, and have recovered much of the lost ground, but still seem somehow subdued and diminished compared with how they were in 2019. The British Beer and Pub Association have stopped publishing their regular beer consumption statistics, but it would not surprise me if on-trade beer sales in 2024 were at least 20% lower than five years previously.

The phenomenon of queuing for service at the bar has become increasingly common, although this must have come from behaviour in shops as, apart from a brief period in the summer of 2020, pubs were never allowed to operate bar service. The trade in pubs often visibly thins out after 9 pm, while previously they would be buzzing until 11 or later. And the switch to working from home has only been partly reversed, damaging the business of many pubs in town and city centres. Many small breweries seemed to bide their time during the period of lockdown, only to discover that their businesses were no longer viable in the colder climate they emerged into, resulting in a wave of closures.

Of course this spread to the whole of society, not just the hospitality industry. So-called “non-essential” shops were closed, and benches and children’s play equipment in parks taped over. In Scotland, it was even proposed to saw the bottoms off school doors to promote ventilation, although I’m not sure whether this was ever actually done. We got our first taste of the reality of two-tier policing, when the contrast between the treatment of Black Lives matter demonstrations and anti-lockdown protests was only too evident, not to mention the heavy-handed response to a gathering to mark the murder of Sarah Everard, who had been killed by a serving police officer.

The panoply of regulations, at the same time absurd and oppressive, was seized upon by every obnoxious, jumped-up jobsworth in society who took delight in exercising power over others. The role of Covid Marshal seemed ideally auited to anyone who had missed a vocation as a PoW camp guard: the kind of people who during the Second World War were denounced as “little Hitlers”. It became a living demonstration of the truth of P. J. O’Rourke’s saying that “Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history, mankind has been bullied by scum.” Pub licensees have always had a penchant for imposing petty rules, and sadly a small but significant minority saw lockdown restrictions as a golden opportunity to boss customers around.

A variety of sinister psychological techniques were used to promote public adherence to lockdowns, and howl down any criticism. This showed all too clearly how it is possible for a supposedly open and democratic society to acquiesce in totalitarianism. We became a society where people gleefully shopped their neighbours to the authorities and decried anyone daring to step out of line as “Covidiots”. This was chronicled in Laura Dodsworth’s coruscating book A State of Fear, which was published as early as May 2021.

The crisis wasn’t something that appeared and then blew over. Its impact is still with us in many ways today, as US beer writer Jeff Alworth explores in this blogpost, in which he draws a connection between the effect on the brewing and hospitality industry and wider society. It’s an interesting an thoughtful piece which is well worth reading, although I certainly don’t agree with all his conclusions.

It is important to point out that Covid and lockdown are different things. Covid is a disease, but the response to it, and how severe and long-lasting it would be, was a political choice. Lockdown was not an ineluctable consequence of Covid. Jeff in effect recognises this when he says “Blue states, where shutdowns were more common and durable, seem to be in worse shape.” Lockdown was not a single, indivisible concept; it was a deliberate choice from a range of policy options.

School closures, imperfectly and patchily substituted by online learning, have left many pupils really struggling and well behind with their education. Pausing a wide range of medical services has hugely increased NHS waiting lists and left many people with serious conditions still untreated. The social isolation of lockdown has carried on into the following years, reducing social contact and leaving people more lonely, often resulting in mental health problems. The costs associated with business support and furlough payments, and the reduction in tax revenues from reduced economic activity, have created a mountain of debt that continues to hang over the entire economy. All of these factors have combined to produce a far greater feeling of political alienation.

Jeff says “I personally offer blanket immunity to any public officials who made decisions in good faith with limited info—they were given impossible choices,” but I would strongly disagree. This may have been excusable in the very early weeks, when there was a general sense of confusion and lack of clarity over what was happening, but it wasn’t too long before the disastrous long-term consequences of lockdown had become all too clear. Many respected commentators were saying this at the time, so the argument that “we were doing the best we could with the knowledge we had at the time” does not wash. The cartoon below was published in early May 2020, less than two months in.

And this one entitled “The Second Wave”, although later, makes the point even more strongly.

It was often suggested at the time that there was a trade-off between saving lives and saving the economy, but except in a very short-term sense this is a false dichotomy. Without a healthy economy, in the longer term public health will suffer. And there was no clear correlation between the length and severity of lockdowns and public health outcomes. Sweden was the only major European nation not to have any kind of formal lockdown, but its results were somewhere in the middle of the scale, some better, some worse. And Peru, which had one of the strictest lockdowns in the world, also had one of the highest death rates. (I am not suggesting that there is a reverse correlation either, just that there is no clear link either way).

The fact remains that, five years after the start of lockdown, the Covid crisis has had profound, long-lasting and damaging implications across the whole of society. Yet people seem all too willing to memory-hole it, as it is just too uncomfortable to address. This goes far beyond the hospitality industry. As a society we are poorer, sicker, less well educated, and more isolated and more divided than we otherwise would have been. And most of that was a political choice.

Pub pointers

A few days ago, I linked to an article by food writer Jay Rayner setting out a listing of sometimes uncomfortable home truths about the food and restaurant industries. I invited suggestions for similar points about the world of pubs and beer, and what follows is a collection of the best of these, some my own, some submitted by others. Most of these are thoughts on the running of pubs. Please note that I don’t necessarily wholly endorse all these points.

• Always provide beermats. Nobody wants tables sopping with spilt beer.

• People do not queue to be served at the bar of a pub.

• Music should be played to suit the customers, not the bar staff.

• Keep to regular hours and make sure they are well publicised, including displaying them on the door.

• If you have a website or social media page, keep them up to date.

• The hospitality business is about hospitality. Nobody wants to be served by miserable staff who think the job or the punters are beneath them.

• If you must have seating at the bar, leave a dedicated space for people to be served.

• If there’s a crush at the bar, customers feel much better if you’ve at least acknowledged their presence.

• Don't leave doors open when it's cold.

• Opening doors and windows on a sunny day does not warm the interior of a pub.

• Italic script lettering painted on the outside wall of a pub is always a bad sign.

• “Please wait here to be seated” has no place in a pub.

• Seat reservations for drinkers should be a total no-no.

• Nobody ever walked out of a pub because there were no posing tables.

• Do not use your customers as unpaid quality control.

• Compromising on cask beer quality is a false economy.

• Price is about status not quality. If you like cask beer, the cheaper pubs get the turnover and have a better pint. If you find a pub full of working class blokes drinking pints of bitter and not Carling it will be a great pint.

• Jam jars showing the colour of cask beers are a pointless affectation for regular beers.

• Unless a customer is being obviously arsey, never quibble about changing unsatisfactory beer.

• Serving beer in the wrong branded glass is worse than in an unbranded glass. Invest in some glasses branded with your pub name.

• Throw away old scratched and pitted glasses.

• Make the prices of draught beers clearly visible at the point of sale.

• Any attempt to launch a lower-strength variant of an existing beer brand is doomed to failure, and may well end up undermining the parent brand.

• Beers with seasonal themes such as Hallowe'en and Christmas are almost invariably disappointing, and too often guilty of appalling puns.

• The culture of ever-changing guest beers militates against efforts to establish a price premium for cask ale.

• Make sure you regularly clean and restock the toilets.

• Avoid any establishment calling itself something “…and kitchen”

• If you serve food, put menus out on the tables. Even if customers aren’t eating, they may read them and be encouraged to return for a meal.

• You have to decide whether you are primarily a sports pub or a dining pub. You can’t be both at the same time.

• Don’t serve sandwiches and similar snacks with chips as a default option – give customers the choice.

• Treat tea and coffee as menu items, not bar items.

Reflected glory

Anti-drink pressure group Alcohol Action Ireland have complained that advertising of alcohol-free beers is being used to circumvent more general restrictions on alcohol promotion. At first sight, this may come across as yet another example of being joyless wowsers, but actually in the context of their own terms of reference they do have a point.

It seems fairly self-evident that advertising of alcohol-free variants will to some extent reflect on the parent brand too. The two products cannot be seen as entirely distinct. This works two ways – if someone wants to drink an alcohol-free beer, they are likely to be motivated to choose one carrying the same branding as a familiar standard beer, while the promotion of alcohol-free variants contributes towards awareness of the overall brand.

Possibly one of the reasons why the previous bout of enthusiasm for low- and zero-alcohol beers fizzled out thirty years ago is that they tended to be stand-alone products like Barbican, Kaliber and Clausthaler, rather the ones sharing an identity with existing brands. It is also noticeable that the share of advertising devoted to alcohol-free beers is considerably great than their actual market share, as the manufacturers attempt to cultivate an image of being socially responsible. Much the same is true of the share of car advertising devoted to electric cars.

If the exact same products were marketed as something like “malt soda”, with no attempt to link them to alcohol brands or imply that they were in any way connected to beer, then these objections wouldn’t apply. Nobody claims that the existence of fizzy apple juice is an attempt to promote cider. But the fact is that they aren’t totally discrete products, and it is distinctly disingenuous to argue that the promotion of, say, Guinness 0.0 does not in any way contribute towards increasing awareness of the Guinness brand as a whole.

This is why alcohol-free beers are treated as age-restricted products, as they carry alcohol branding and are explicitly intended to ape alcoholic drinks, so could be seen as representing the promotion of alcohol to under-18s, something explicitly prohibited in marketing codes. And it is why candy cigarettes, which I remember enjoying as a child, have not been sold for many years.

The real battle is whether to restrict alcohol advertising as such in the first place. Once that has been conceded, quibbling about alcohol-free variants is just an ultimately doomed attempt to find a loophole. If you ban alcohol advertising, this logically follows, and it was never going to be a get out of jail free card for drinks manufacturers.

Food for thought

Food critic Jay Rayner (son of agony aunt Claire) has written a column in the monthly Observer Food Magazine for the past fifteen years. This has now come to an end, but to sign off he has given us a list of trenchant opinions about the food and restaurant industry, many of which will strike a chord with blog readers. Do read the whole thing – it isn’t paywalled – but here are some of the highlights:

• Individual foods are not pharmaceuticals; just eat a balanced diet. There is nothing you can eat or drink that will detoxify you; that’s what your liver and kidneys are for.

• People have morals but food doesn’t, so don’t describe dishes as “dirty”.

• Fat is where the flavour is and salt is the difference between eating in black and white and eating in Technicolor, even if your cardiologist would disagree.

• Brown foods and messy foods are the best foods, and picnics are a nightmare.

• Most dishes can be improved with the addition of bacon.

• All new restaurants should employ someone over 50 to check whether the print on the menu is big enough to be read, the lighting bright enough for it to be read by and the seats comfortable enough for a lengthy meal.

• If a waiter has to explain the “concept” behind a menu there is something wrong with the menu.

• The kind of wines that natural-wine fans adore smell of uncleaned pig’s bottom and are horrible.

• And food should always, always, be served on plates. Not on slates. Not on garden trowels. Not on planks. On plates.

It might be interesting if someone could come up with something similar about the world of beer and pubs…

Ten of the best

Well-known beer writer Pete Brown has been given a weekly column on beer and pubs in the Sunday Times magazine. He says this will be the only regular column on the topic in any national newspaper. His first contribution is a list his ten favourite “proper” pubs. A non paywalled version of the article can be found here. He says:

Beer never tastes as good as it does in a pub — provided you’re going to the right ones. It takes longer to get drunk on beer than on wine or spirits, so the pub is built around that long, slow curve of inebriation.

The pub is our pressure release valve. I’ve seen people’s body shape change as they walk into a pub, as if they were being given an invisible hug. It’s the Rovers Return, the Woolpack or the Queen Vic, where men and women from all walks of life meet as equals. It’s where you might meet the person you’ll spend the rest of your life with. It’s the place where your mate saw that great band when they were starting out. It’s the shelter of stone walls and a roaring fire after a rainy country walk. It’s where you go for a big game, even if you can watch it at home.

Here are ten pubs I’ve drunk in professionally that are among my favourite pubby pubs. Yes, the beer is good, because it’s well chosen and well looked after. So is the food, if they serve any. What they have in common is a good atmosphere — because the people who run them care, they love the pub and they’re good at it.

The ten pubs on his list are:

1. Blue Stoops, London W8
2. Bow Bar, Edinburgh
3. Coopers Tavern, Burton-on-Trent
4. Crown Liquor Saloon, Belfast
5. Free Trade Inn, Newcastle
6. Grapes, Liverpool
7. Pigs Nose Inn, Kingsbridge
8. Rosebery, Norwich
9. Rutland Arms, Sheffield
10. Ty Coch Inn, Morfa Nefyn

I’ve only been in three of those - the Bow Bar, the Coopers Tavern and the Crown Liquor Saloon. The Grapes in Liverpool is the one on Roscoe Street, not the more familiar one near the Cavern Club.

Obviously any such list will be highly personal and subjective, and will also inevitably have a recency bias. You will remember a pub you visited last month much more clearly than one you haven’t been to for twenty years. On that point, he says of the Free Trade Inn, “the graffiti in the loos is an essential (if unrepeatable) read”, but apparently the pub was spruced up a few years back and that has now disappeared.

With the exception of the Coopers Tavern and the Crown Liquor Saloon, he’s avoided the “usual suspects” all too often seen on lists of classic pubs. It’s also good to see some writing about pubs that doesn’t primarily focus on their food offer, which is all too often the case with articles in the quality press.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I haven’t always been Pete Brown’s biggest fan, and the feeling is mutual. However, he does write well when he puts his political prejudices to one side, and articles like this are entirely positive for pubs.

In response, someone suggested that I should come up with my own list. I duly did this, but deliberately confined it to pubs that I have visited in the post-Covid era and so have experienced relatively recently. This means I have excluded what would otherwise have been nailed-on certainties sich as the Blue Bell in York and the Star in Bath. My ten are as follows, split evenly between urban and rural:

1. Anchor, High Offley, Staffordshire
2. Bell, Aldworth, Berkshire
3. Black Horse, Clapton-in-Gordano, Somerset
4. Boat & Horses, Newcastle-under-Lyme
5. Cross Foxes, Shrewsbury
6. Crown, Churchill, Somerset
7. Great Western, Wolverhampton
8. Hare & Hounds, Manchester
9. North Star, Steventon, Berkshire
10. Templar, Leeds

I did something similar back in 2013, and there are only two pubs that have carried over. Some pubs have changed, not for the better, some were only there because I had had particularly good recent experiences, while others fell out simply because I haven’t visited them recently. For example, on my two visits to the Digby Tap in Sherborne, I’ve thought it was a splendid pub, but I haven’t been there since 2004.

Of course, unless you feel welcome and at home in a pub, however good the beer, and however impressive or characterful the interior, will all count for nothing. But that doesn’t mean a “hail fellow well met” bonhomie, it’s often simply more a case that there’s nothing in the reaction of staff or other customers to make you feel uncomfortable or out of place.

Bottling out

From 1 April 2025, a new tax on the packaging of a wide range of consumer goods will be introduced, known as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).

Under the new rules, businesses will be charged a fee based on the amount of packaging they use, such as glass, plastic and aluminium. The money is meant to help local authorities fund waste collection and aims to encourage recycling by shifting the cost of onto the manufacturer. Ministers hope to raise £1bn through the scheme.

The Government has said the reforms are about “minimising the environmental impacts of packaging and maximising the contribution that packaging reform can make to net zero and the protection of our environment.”

However, the scheme has been criticised by the food and drink industries on the grounds that it adds a further layer of cost and bureaucratic complexity, and will contribute to inflation at at a time when consumers are already hard-pressed.

A key aspect of the scheme is that it based on the weight of packaging, so higher charges will be imposed on glass relative to lighter materials such as aluminium, plastic and cardboard. This has obvious implications for the drinks industry, where a wide range of items, including most premium products, are packaged in glass.

This article from The Grocer, which is free to read, sets out the costs for various types of glass packaging. A typical spirits bottle will incur a cost of 12.2p, a wine bottle 10.4p and a beer bottle 5.7p. Comparing it with wine, I suspect the figure for beer relates to the 330ml size, and the charge on a 500ml bottle will be more like 8.5p. Once VAT and retail margins are added on, the increase at the point of sale could be up to double these figures. This has very significant implications for the bottled beer market.

Net zero threatens to kill off the beer bottle, brewers have warned. A looming “glass tax” meant to encourage recycling will shatter profit margins and prompt brewers to opt for cans instead, according to the industry. The choice of drinks on supermarket shelves will become more limited and bottles that are still available will cost more, ministers have been warned.

The British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) said the new packaging tax, which will hit glass particular hard, could force brewers to abandon bottles altogether. Mark Kelly, a beer seller at London brewery Sambrook’s, said: “We think beer bottles will die off in the long term.”

This could potentially lead to a major shift in the market from bottles to cans. I ran a quick poll on Twitter/X, which showed that a slight majority of respondents would be unhappy with this, although just under half would either be indifferent or would actively welcome it.

POLL: What would be your reaction if your favourite bottled beer was put into cans instead?

— Pub Curmudgeon 🌸🍻 (@oldmudgie) February 10, 2025

So, while the potential cost savings will be compelling, there is a substantial barrier of customer sentiment to be overcome before drinkers can be persuaded to switch to cans. Bottles are generally perceived as classier and upmarket, while cans still carry something of a stigma, and are seen as an inferior container only suitable for low-quality beers. Quite a few drinkers will happily drink bottles, but draw a line at cans. There is also a persistent view that cans impart a metallic tang to beer, although this, while maybe true in the 1970s, hasn’t been the case for decades. Personally, while I recognise the aesthetic appeal of bottles, I’m really not particularly bothered, and recognise that the same beer will taste no different from either type of container.

The main categories of beer primarily sold in single bottles are “world lagers”, typically in a 660ml size, and “premium bottled ales”, mainly in 500ml. Some lagers are also sold in multipacks of 330ml bottles and appeal to those who like the ritual of drinking from the bottle, although these are generally also available in cans of the same size.

Most of these beers, in terms of overall volume, are sold by supermarkets, and they are generally sold in multibuy offers, such as 4 for £7 or 3 for £6. This tends to suppress the normal operation of the price mechanism, as they cover a wide range of products of different strength and perceived quality. There is no incentive to choose a particular bottle purely because it is cheaper. However, with recent duty rises, the economics of these offers must be under pressure now. Retailers and producers will have to think carefully whether it is best to take the hit of the EPR and increase the headline price of the offers, or take a gamble on customers accepting canned beers at a lower price.

A side-issue is the question of bottle-conditioned beers, which only account for a tiny proportion of the market, but assume a greater importance in the minds of many commentators. With a bottle, it is possible to see that the beer has cleared and then pour it carefully to ensure the sediment doesn’t enter the glass, but this is much more hit-and-miss with opaque cans. Some craft brewers have produced “can-conditioned” beers, but that is a market that is much more accepting of cloudiness. There have also been several examples of batches of cans exploding due to over-vigorous secondary fermentation. I can’t see strong imported Belgian bottled beers such as Duvel switching to cans, as their distinctive bottles are part of their appeal and they already command a substantial price premium.

There is, of course, an established precedent in that, over the past decade or so, the craft beer segment has pretty much entirely switched from bottles to cans, mainly in 330ml and 440ml sizes. They offer a bigger canvas for innovative graphic design, and they also establish a point of differentiation from the stuffy Premium Bottled Ales. Plus craft beer drinkers are by definition more open to innovation. But they have overcome any lingering stigma surrounding cans and proved that they can be sold by supermarkets as individual items and command a premium price. It also can’t have gone unnoticed that cans have better “green” credentials, as they are cheaper to transport due to their lighter weight, and can be more completely recycled.

Looking at the longer term, the government have said they will introduce a Deposit Return Scheme for England in the second half of 2027, but their proposals as they stand at present will exclude glass bottles. So might we see beers that had switched to cans to minimise EPR move back into bottles so they don’t need to add a deposit?

It’s hard to forecast how this will go – will the market reflect the higher desirability of bottles and bite the bullet on price, or will the cost pressures be so overwhelming that they will overcome customer resistance and compel a switch to cans? But it will be interesting to see how it pans out.

The death of craft?

The Daily Star has recently posed the question of whether craft beer is dead in the UK. This is actually a considerably more informative and in-depth article than you might expect from that particular source.

It is certainly true that, compared with ten years ago, the excitement surrounding craft beer has very much worn off. And that is perhaps a key point, that it was a concept that was all about novelty and innovation, but there is only so far you can take that before you enter the territory of embracing unusual flavours and ingredients purely for their own sake. People inevitably became a bit fed up with it all and preferred to return to tried and trusted favourites. Plus the drinkers who fuelled the initial boom have grown older, bought houses, had children, got more responsible jobs and don’t have so much time for it any more.

From the start, a key problem was always that “craft” is, as the article states, “an unclear marketing term”, and there have been endless debates over how it should be defined. As I wrote last year, “Is it the type of beer, the kind of ingredients used, the size of the brewery, the independent status of the brewery, the ethos of the brewery, or some kind of nebulous combination of all these factors?” For many drinkers, the term has come to be synonymous with a particular type of heavily-hopped, astringent and possibly hazy keg IPA.

The issue was further clouded by some of what were perceived as the leading craft brands, such as Camden and Beavertown, being acquired by the international brewers. To counter this, SIBA launched a campaign to stress breweries’ independent status, but the problem with this is, that while it’s useful to know, of itself it says nothing about the character or quality of the actual beer.

Craft has also suffered from an often justified perception that it is expensive. As Matthew McAloone of 40ft Brewery says:

“It's the more expensive part of the bar and the charges that have been levied on hospitality in terms of duty the government has put in, it has made it impossible for bars and restaurants to do what they want to do, so they’re consolidating range, which is normally into mainstream products and they’re sacrificing craft… it makes commercial sense and you sell a lot of beer, big guys will give you money just to stock their beer, and their stuff’s cheaper… its the safe bet”.

It’s certainly the case that “craft keg” in pubs tends to sell at a considerable price premium over equivalent cask beers or mainstream lagers, and the craft section is by far the most expensive part of the supermarket beer aisle. So, at a time when many people’s budgets are stretched, it’s hardly surprising that they’re less willing to splash out on it.

Craft is also characterised, almost by definition, by stronger and more distinctive flavours than mainstream beers. This may have encouraged people to try it out of a spirit of experimentation, but are they going to decide that it’s something they want to drink on a regular basis? And it isn’t helped by many craft offerings being hazy or cloudy. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but it remains something that is perceived by most beer drinkers as offputting.

Craft beer became associated with the stereotypical image of the “hipster”, and was seen as being surrounded by pretentiousness and pseudery. Some craft brewers also saw themselves as engaged in a socio-political crusade rather than just brewing interesting beer, which to some extent limited their appeal and has come to be increasingly at odds with the current Zeitgeist.

In the middle of the 2010s, there was a wave of enthusiasm around craft beer, which could almost be described as a feeding frenzy. Staid family brewers were jumping on the bandwagon in the fear that they might end up being left behind, and all kinds of wacky brewing projects were being launched. I wrote about what appeared to be the peak of the bubble in 2017. As Matthew McAloone says:

“We were expecting it to grow and grow and grow and take over everything, but it just wasn’t what the market wanted and now we know were it’s at, we know how much is up for grabs, there just won’t be as many people able to compete for it."

The craft boom also caught CAMRA like a rabbit in the headlights, and resulted in the ill-advised Revitalisation Project, which didn’t at the end of the day resolve anything. CAMRA beer festivals can now sell keg beers that do not qualify as “real ale”, but there is no clarity as to what is acceptable and what isn’t. “Real Ale” at least is something that can be objectively defined.

The froth had very much gone off the top by 2019, and it was clear by then that expectations for the growth of craft had been grossly over-optimistic. James Watt’s assertion that IPA would eventually replace lager, as lager had replaced bitter, sounded questionable then, and with hindsight seems risible although, as is usually the case with BrewDog, it was probably mostly just a case of courting publicity. The Covid lockdowns and pub closures of 2020-21 dealt a further blow to the market.

There remains a definite niche for interesting, innovative keg and canned beers sold at a premium price, but it’s only a small segment of the overall beer market, and the excitement of ten years ago has pretty much entirely dissipated. I’ve made the point in the past that the enduring legacy of the British craft beer movement is likely to be the presence of a hoppy keg IPA on many bars, of which Neck Oil is possibly the prime example. There recently been an new entrant in the form of Alpacalypse, a collaboration between the independent Salt Brewery and Molson Coors. But the question has to be asked how many of these beers will still be on bars on twenty years’ time. I’m pretty certain Guinness will be, though.

It has to be remembered that beer is a product that is generally consumed in a social context, and drinkers will inevitably be influenced by the choices made by their companions, and feel some kind of desire to fit in. This applies to home drinking too. Most off-trade beer is still drunk in company, not in isolation. And craft, for many people, now comes across as either highly idiosyncratic or just old hat.

Losing the appetite for life

The weight loss drug Semaglutide, variously marketed as Ozempic, Mounjaro, Wegovy and Rybelsus, has been much in the headlines recently. Many showbiz celebrities, and indeed some leading politicians, are rumoured to have been using it to control their weight.

While it isn’t generally available via the NHS, it has been prescribed for certain specific conditions, and more and more people away from the public eye seem to be getting hold of it through private prescriptions. The effect is reported to be a general suppression of appetite that reduces cravings for both food and drink. There are many reports of unpleasant side-effects, including diarrhoea and nausea, but for some weight loss is such a desirable objective that it overrides all of these.

As the Daily Telegraph reports, this has the potential to spill over into having a broader impact on any businesses that depend on the enjoyment of food and drink.

A star fund manager is betting against the boom in Guinness amid fears that the rise of weight loss drugs could curtail demand for alcoholic drinks. Terry Smith, the founder of Fundsmith, told investors that his £22.8bn fund no longer owned shares in the stout brand’s owner Diageo, in part owing to concerns over the impact of weight loss drugs on drinks companies.

His decision to sell follows a surge in demand for the drink, which has soared in popularity among young drinkers to the extent that supply to pubs was rationed over Christmas. He wrote in his annual letter to shareholders: “We suspect the entire drinks sector is in the early stages of being impacted negatively by weight-loss drugs. Indeed, it seems likely that the drugs will eventually be used to treat alcoholism such is their effect on consumption.”

Presumably this will also in the long term have an effect on the restaurant sector, as people no longer feel such a desire to go out for a meal, and if they do will end up picking over tiny portions in a desultory fashion. The general effect seems to be to erode people’s desire to engage in any enjoyable, self-indulgent behaviour and to strip them of their joie de vivre. It sounds like a grim, joyless future.

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that, as with many such “wonder drugs” there may be an element of the devil’s bargain about it. Will it prove to have a sting in the tail, with serious long-term side-effects revealing themselves in the fullness of time?

Let me entertain you

On Christmas Eve, I walked to my local pub at lunchtime for a couple of pints. It wasn’t packed, but there was a decent scattering of people in. It was, as they say “nicely ticking over”. But something that struck me was that, in the rear lounge, there were a couple of giant TV screens showing the darts, with the sound turned up. Nobody was watching, and everyone was just trying to ignore it and get on with their conversation.

Unwatched, intrusive screens are a common problem in pubs, and this is one of the reasons why I don’t go to this pub anywhere near as often as I used to. However, it underlined a wider issue, that those who operate pubs seem to believe that their customers need to be entertained or participating in some kind of experience at all times. It could be eating a meal, watching TV sport, listening to live or recorded music, playing pub sports or board games, or engaging in quizzes. But if they’re not actually doing something, why are they there?

I recently spotted a particularly egregious example of this when the Morning Advertiser reported on how chef and TV personality Clodagh McKenna saw tablescaping as a way of enhancing the customer experience in pubs:

It’s a brilliant, fun way to creatively change the atmosphere of a room. Using glassware, flowers, candles, centrepieces or other objects, you can be as elaborate or simple as you desire. People want a memorable experience more than ever before, and pubs can add lots and lots of simple accessories to enhance the space to drive customers back to their outlet again and again.

Pardon me while I reach for the sick bag. This prompted me to respond on X/Twitter with “No! I just want a decent pint and a comfortable seat”, which so far has attracted over 60 likes, so it obviously struck a chord with a lot of people.

No! I just want a decent pint and a comfortable seat 😊🍺 https://t.co/XsDSROC9yo

— Ebenezer Mudge 🌸🍻🎅 (@oldmudgie) December 25, 2024

It reminded me of a particularly pretentious refurbishment that Robinson’s carried of at the Bull’s Head in Hale Barns a few years, which involved, amongst other things, replacing tables with reused steamer trunks. “This is a pub full of theatre and intrigue,” the description went. That is really the last thing I want in a pub. This has, in fact, since been somewhat toned down.

A similar note was struck by this tweet about one pubgoer’s experiences in Birmingham city centre. (While that is from a locked account, I obtained his permission to reproduce it).

All these other activities have a place in pubs, but I have always thought what they’re fundamentally about is providing a welcoming, non-judgmental “third space” where you can escape, if only for a while, from the demands and constraints of the home or the workplace. A pub should be a kind of refuge from the outside world, where you need to do no more than chew the fat with your companions or just contemplate the world going by.

Sadly, this is a fundamental truth that so many people who design and operate pubs seem to have forgotten. And it has to be said that the oft-maligned Sam Smith’s pubs, where they can manage to stay open and build up a loyal clientele, do manage to achieve that more reliably than any others.

In the bleak midwinter

A couple of recent press articles make pretty grim reading for the pub trade. The Guardian reports that the number of pubs in Britain has fallen to a hundred-year low:

The number of pubs has fallen below 39,000 for the first time, as 412 were demolished or converted for other uses in the year to December, according to an analysis of government figures by the property data company Altus Group. Most of the closures happened in the first half of the year. The overall number of pubs in England and Wales, including those vacant and being offered to let, fell to 38,989 as closures accelerated. Some of them were converted to homes, offices and day nurseries.

More than 34 pubs shut every month on average, the sharpest fall in numbers since 2021, when the hospitality sector was hit hard by Covid-19 lockdowns and soaring energy prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. London lost the greatest number of pubs this year, down by 55 to 3,470. In the West Midlands, pub numbers dropped by 53 to 3,904, and in the East Midlands, 47 closed, taking the number there to 3,496. Since the start of 2020, more than 2,000 pubs have closed, under pressure from rising costs while consumers, struggling with higher rents and mortgage payments, have been spending less.

While, in the Daily Telegraph, Matthew Lynn writes that government tax policies are likely to finish off many of those that have made it to the end of 2024. (The Telegraph article is paywalled, but I can let you have the full text if you send me an e-mail).

Enjoy a few drinks if your local is open late this evening. It may well be the last time you can spend New Year’s Eve at your favourite pub. They have been closing down for years, but over the course of the last 12 months that trend has started to accelerate. It is going to get a lot worse over the next few months.

The Government is hitting pubs with higher taxes, and higher costs, at a time when many of them are already struggling to survive. In reality, this Labour government is going to kill the pub off for good, ripping the heart out of local communities and economies – and they won’t come back once they have been destroyed…

…The trouble is, pubs now face a government that is determined to do everything it can to destroy what little money a few of them still make. The steep rise in employer’s National Insurance imposed in the Budget in October will hit them very hard. After all, a pub can’t operate without bar staff, but many of them work part-time and are modestly paid.

I toyed with writing a lengthy post reflecting on these stories, but to be honest I’ve said it all before on numerous occasions. The long-term decline of pubs, as Matthew Lynn points out, is largely due to social changes over the years that have made us much more censorious about alcohol consumption, particularly in public settings. It is no longer a part of everyday life for responsible people in the way that it once was.

I have never suggested that the smoking ban was a monocausal explanation for the loss of pubs, although it certainly accelerated the process by a few years and disproportionately affected working-class, wet-led boozers. Without it, we would have a lot more pubs today, and many of those currently open would be in a stronger financial position.

Labour’s planned tax changes will result in a significantly harsher financial climate for pubs and hospitality in general, and we are likely to see a continued drip-drip of closures during the coming year. But fiscal burdens are not the root cause of the long-term decline of pubs, and relaxing them, while it will provide relief for those still in operation, won’t of itself reverse the trend.

The header picture is the Shield & Dagger in Southampton, the latest entry on my Closed Pubs blog, which was demolished in September of last year.

Nobody can have nice things

The Daily Telegraph reports on yet another threat to pubs from the present government:

Pubs could be under threat after the Government scrapped a scheme allowing communities the opportunity to save them. The community ownership fund, which was launched in 2021, was set to run until the end of March and keep £150 million available to help people rescue local treasures on the brink of closure. The initiative was closed earlier than planned with millions of pounds unallocated in an attempt to budget for Sir Keir Starmer’s priorities.

Sir Keir was branded a “Scrooge” for scrapping the scheme just days before Christmas as the Government blamed the decision on the state of public finances. Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary, said it was an act “worthy of Scrooge”, especially after Labour hammered businesses with tax rises at the October Budget.

A recurring theme of recent years is of communities being aggrieved by pub operators closing pubs which were seen as a valued facility, but were considered uneconomic by their owners. The obvious response to this is to say “well, if you feel so strongly about it, why not put up your own money to buy it and run it yourselves?” And, in a growing number of instances, communities have been doing just that. One of the most recent examples is the King’s Head at Chitterne in Wiltshire (pictured).

It’s not something that’s going to suit every pub, but if there is a local community who are sufficiently engaged, and have deep enough pockets, then it’s certainly a viable option. I wrote about this back in 2017. The lack of a need to earn a return on capital means that a community pub can survive with a lower level of trade than that required for a commercial enterprise, but it has to be remembered that the socio-economic factors that led to its previous closure have not disappeared overnight. It is also often said that actually buying the pub is only the first stage of the battle – a way has to be found to ensure it can function on a long-term basis. Communities may not be too keen to subsidise ongoing operating losses.

To encourage this process, in 2021 the previous government provided £150 million for a Community Ownership Fund that aimed to help local people acquire threatened facilities. As well as pubs, this also covered music venues, theatres, cinemas, community centres, museums, parks and lidos. So far, £135 million of the initial sum has been allocated to 409 different projects. Pubs that have been saved include the Radnor Arms at New Radnor in Mid-Wales, and the Bell at Odiham in Hampshire.

Some may question on a strict utilitarian basis why the government should be paying for pubs at all. However, they do provide funding for a wide variety of other purposes that are felt to improve “quality of life” but cannot demonstrate a direct financial return, such as sport, the arts and preserving historic buildings. These are projects where a community will enjoy a specific, tangible benefit that they may appreciate rather more than an interpretive dance workshop. The Community Ownership Fund is making grants to provide capital funding for purchase – they are not funding ongoing operations. And, in a wider content, it is not difficult to identify areas of public spending where lavish sums are provided for projects of very questionable value.

Of course government does not enjoy a bottomless pit of money, but cutting this programme short comes across as a joyless, mean-spirited piece of penny-pinching that will save very little, but make people’s lives just that little bit worse and leave a sour taste in their mouths.