A morsel for the masses

Well, Budget Day has come and gone, and there has been the usual phenomenon of various unpalatable measures being trailed in advance, and a sigh of relief being breathed when some of them at least are not implemented. There is also usually at least one surprise pulled from the Chancellor’s hat, and this year it was the decision to reduce the rate of duty on draught beer and cider by 1.7%, equating to about 1p on the sale price. The duty on packaged beer and all other alcoholic drinks will increase in line with RPI.

This comes across as a pointless empty gesture that will achieve nothing. Even if pubs see a small reduction in price from their suppliers, in pretty much all cases they will take the entirely understandable decision to slightly widen their margins rather than passing it on to the customer. Virtually no drinkers will see any reduction in the price of a pint over the bar. This was unsurprisingly met with widespread derision, and realistically the optics would have been much better if the rate had simply been frozen. Yet they have the brass neck to shout it from the rooftops as though it is a significant benefit.

Any effect of this will be vastly outweighted by a whole raft of other factors that will increase the costs incurred by pubs. The first is that the 75% discount on business rates that they have enjoyed since the period of lockdowns will be reduced to 40% from April 2025, pending a comprehensive revamp of the system in 2026. This will more than double a pub’s business rates bill. The Morning Advertiser reports that the rates bill for the average pub will increase from £3,938 to £9,451.

The rate of Employer’s National Insurance contributions will be increased from 13.8% to 15%, and the minimum threshold on which they are charged will be reduced from £9,100 to £5,000. This will greatly increase the cost of employing staff, and will hit hospitality, where there are many low-paid and part-time workers, particularly hard. For the very smallest businesses, there will be some relief from raising the exempt band, but the vast majority will still suffer.

Meanwhile, the main adult rate of the National Living Wage is being increased by 6.7%, over three times the rate of inflation, bringing it to £12.21 an hour, while the 18-21 rate will be increased by no less than 11.6% to £10 an hour. Again this will have a particularly severe impact on hospitality due to the profile of their workforce. Some idiot on Twitter opined “why shouldn’t workers be paid a fair wage?”, but you can’t pluck a figure out of the air without any regard to employers’ ability to actually pay it.

On top of this, the government are planning to implement changes in employment law to give workers full rights from Day 1, which will make it much more difficult to dismiss unsatisfactory employees, and make businesses much more reluctant to take anyone on without a proven track record.

One publican reckoned that, to recoup the cost of all these changes, she would need to increase the typical price of a pint by 30p. But then you run into the problem of your customers, who are experiencing similar financial pressures, being unable or unwilling to pay that, resulting in a vicious circle of diminishing returns.

The inevitable result will be that, after the Christmas and New Year period, we will see a rising tide of pub closures, and many of those still standing will be reducing staffing levels, opening hours and food service times. But the joyless wowsers, never missing an opportunity to kick a man when he is down, will still no doubt go ahead with their Dry January campaign.

And, while I have done my best to avoid making wider political points that go beyond the drinks and hospitality industry, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that we are being consigned to four and a half years of Britain being a high tax, low growth and low enterprise economy.

State of independence

“Craft beer” started to become a widely-used concept in the UK around fifteen years ago. But ever since then it has been dogged by the issue of how it is actually defined. 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?

And then a fly in the ointment appeared, as the major international brewers started to buy up what were perceived as “craft” brands such as Camden and Beavertown. Punters might think that pint of Neck Oil comes from a hip, edgy brewery, but in fact it’s an offshoot of Heineken.

This process was described by a newspaper article as How Big Lager Crushed Britain’s Craft Beer Revolution, but that is something of a misrepresentation of describing an entirely normal business process. In any industry, when a new product category appears on the scene, existing companies will attempt to get a share of the action, either by developing their own competing products or taking over the innovators, and that is exactly what has happened in beer. Sometimes a start-up emerges from the pack to became a major competitor in its own right, as has happened with BrewDog, although I would expect them to also sell out to a major corporate in the fullness of time.

To counter the confusion created by these craft takeovers, SIBA (the Society of Independent Brewers) have launched an initiative to highlight breweries’ independent status, using an Indie Beer badge. It is open to all breweries to use this, not just members of SIBA, provided that they are genuinely independent from the control of larger corporations, and account for no more than 1% of the British beer market, indicating a production level of around 220,000 barrels a year.

There’s a lot to be said for transparency, but the question has to asked to what extent this is something that drinkers class as important. They may say in opinion surveys that they prefer beer from small independent breweries to that made by giant corporations, but their revealed preference often indicates otherwise. All they want at the end of the day is a decent pint. And this is a beer market where the majority of sales are accounted for by UK-brewed versions of international lager brands. This is not to say that people are stupid, just that independence and authenticity are not in practice given a high priority. I’d guess that most of the people to whom it really matters that Neck Oil is brewed by an offshoot of Heineken are already well aware of that fact.

It also needs to be remembered that independent status is not of itself necessarily a mark of quality, and, to be fair, it isn’t really being suggested it is. Over the years, I’ve encountered no shortage of poor products from micro-breweries, and indeed “this tastes like home brew” is a common criticism. On the other hand, while not all of their products may be to your taste, Asahi/Fullers at Chiswick, Greene King at Bury St Edmunds, and Carlsberg-Marstons at Burton and Wolverhampton are all pretty competent brewers who know what they’re doing. Beer isn’t purely a functional product, and people often take into account the wider connotations of a brand when choosing which one to buy, but it takes a certain amount of perversity to deliberately opt for an inferior product purely because it comes from a small company. There will be plenty of items in your house that were supplied by major corporations and which you have bought for practical reasons.

It was noticeable on the day that this campaign was launched that one of the first brewers to use the badge was Timothy Taylor’s, who brew the second best-selling cask ale in the country. They were followed by Arkell’s, Felinfoel and Palmer’s, three of the most conservative family brewers in the country, and known for the (in some people’s eyes) brownness and boringness of their beers. All the remaining family brewers fall comfortably within SIBA’s definition of independence, but no doubt some people will feel a little uncomfortable with this. I ran a Twitter poll showing that 85% of respondents thought they should be included, but 15% didn’t.

POLL: Would you classify long-established family brewers such as Holt’s and Robinson’s as “independent” brewers?

— Pub Curmudgeon 🌸🍻 (@oldmudgie) October 22, 2024

In the early days of the British craft beer movement, many of those who were most committed to it as a kind of ideological crusade saw the family brewers as embodying everything they were opposed to. This attitude has mellowed somewhat in more recent years, and only last week Timothy Taylor’s been promoting a stout made in a collaboration with Northern Monk. But it still persists, and is perhaps particularly prevalent in Greater Manchester, where the four surviving family brewers perhaps have a greater share of tied pubs than anywhere else in the country.

Only the other day, I saw some twerp on Twitter saying “I hate Robinson’s”, and the attitude is exemplified by the response to this column that I wrote for Opening Times five years ago. Some people are going to continue lumping Batham’s and Hook Norton in with “big beer”, and when they see Shepherd Neame using the Indie Beer badge will mutter darkly “this isn’t what it’s supposed to mean!”

And it would be a splendid piece of trolling if Samuel Smith’s, who describe themselves in their publicity as being “a small, independent brewery” also decided to adopt the Indie Beer badge.

A bit of sprucing up

Earlier this month, the Nursery Inn in Heaton Norris, Stockport, reopened after a £250,000 refurbishment by Hydes Brewery. This, which is my local pub, has a splendid unspoilt interior dating from 1939, and was CAMRA’s National Pub of the Year in 2002, one of the very few brewery tied houses ever to win this award. It is also one of the handful of pubs to retain its own bowling green still in active use.

I wrote in 2013 about my experiences of visiting this pub on Sunday lunchtimes over the years. It was once extremely popular but, despite receiving an earlier refurbishment in 2014, for various reasons its fortunes seem to have declined more recently. A couple of years ago, I remember one of the Hydes directors telling a CAMRA meeting that they would have to make major changes to the pub to revive it, but were being held back by planning constraints. Several of those present expressed concern about what this would mean for its historic interior.

However, as a Grade II listed building – and also meriting a three-star entry on CAMRA’s National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors – the scope for structural change was very limited. It seems that what Hydes have done has respected the pub’s fabric, and could best be described as a general refresh and reupholstering, although there may have been more far-reaching changes behind the scenes, such as in the kitchen.

The two photos above show the main lounge and the vault. The lounge retains its wood panelling, bench seating and original stained glass windows, but has acquired some overlarge rectangular tables, although I suppose that is seen as necessary for the food trade.

However, it’s hard to see what difference the changes are going to make to the pub’s fortunes. The pub is in a tucked-away location and thus has no passing trade*, so it depends on a combination of either being a local or attracting customers as a destination for attractions such as food or live music.

The cask ale range has been cut back to Hydes’ three regular paler ales, Original, Hopster and Lowry, and the number of handpumps reduced. Neither of their two milds, Dark Ruby and 1863, are now sold and there appears to be no room to add seasonal beers, which it also sold in the past.

The initial food selection seems to major on variations on a theme of pie, mash and gravy, which is fairly limiting, whereas previously it had an extensive and varied menu. Whether a wider choice will be introduced in future remains to be seen, but I would say an attractive food offer is important to the pub’s appeal.

As the photo of the lounge shows, the pub also to my mind suffers from the presence of a large screen for TV sport in every room. I recognise that sport does bring customers in, but surely in a pub with three large rooms there should be scope for one of them not to have a screen, or for it not to be generally used. As I said in the blogpost, I don’t want to have to check the football fixtures before venturing out to my local pub. It also seems incongruous in the context of the historic interior.

So it remains to be seen whether the changes at the Nursery are going to do enough to bring customers flooding back in.

Meanwhile, a few miles away in Cheadle Hulme, Star Pubs and Bars have recently spent no less than £350,000 on refurbishing the Hesketh, which had been closed for over a year. This is anpther large suburban pub, in this case Edwardian, that once had a bowling green until it was replaced by a car park in the 1970s. I have to say that I hadn’t been in for many years prior to its closure, but I got the impression that it was a mainly food-oriented operation.

It now comes across as a fairly standard contemporary pubco refurbishment, with hard wooden floors, wide open spaces, pastel colours and an abundance of posing tables. This extract from the news story gives a flavour of what it is like.

Meanwhile, the layout will include a new games area with illuminated darts, pool table, HD TV, open fire and high tables and stools; a dining area with wood burner; and a bar with a mix of free standing and new leather button back banquette style seating.

The pub's food menu will feature pub classics such as burgers, fish and chips and grilled steak, gammon and chicken. A home comforts section will include dishes like Steak & Ale Pie, Hunter Chicken and Mac n Cheese. There will also be a choice of 'world favourites' such as Singapore Noodles, Tacos and Chicken Tikka Masala, lighter bites, and a small plates offering with a mix-and-match tapas style way of eating.

The drinks offer will include a range of beers, from Fosters, Amstel and Birra Moretti to Beavertown. There will also be cider, wine, an extensive range of spirits, zero alcohol and soft drinks and fresh coffee.

Nothing particularly objectionable, but on the other hand nothing to make it stand out from many other pubs either. Cheadle Hulme is a prosperous, leafy area with many long-established residents, and I can’t help feeling that the potential clientele might expect something a little more sophisticated, such as might be found in three nearby J. W. Lees pubs, Duttons, the Pointing Dog or the Aviator.

The cask ale offer is Theakston’s Best and Taylor’s Landlord. Some in CAMRA grumbled about the limited choice, but arguably it makes sense to tailor the range to suit the level of trade, and the pint of Theakston’s I had was pretty good. As in many pubs of this kind, there is something of a tension between TV sport and dining.

So, while a tidy sum of money has been invested, it still comes across as a “pub by numbers” without any distinctive USP, and it remains to be seen whether it will prove to be a success in the longer term. Being the only pub for half a mile in any direction is no longer a guarantee of success, if indeed it ever was.

* the concept of “passing trade” refers not only to chance customers happening to pass a pub and thinking they will call in, but passing it on their regular journeys and thus being aware of its existence.

It's no joke

The Sunday Telegraph reports that pub licensees will be turned into “banter cops” under proposed reforms to workers’ rights.

Provisions in the Employment Rights Bill mean equality laws will be updated to make employers liable for staff being offended by “third parties”, such as customers or members of the public. The laws would introduce a legal requirement for companies and public bodies to take “all reasonable steps” to prevent harassment by third parties relating to a “protected characteristic” such as sex, gender reassignment or age.

Some commentators have dismissed this as merely protecting staff from direct harassment, but to a large extent that is already covered by existing legislation. This goes much further to encompass offence called by anything that employees might overhear. Pubs cover a wide spectrum, and many have a distinctly robust and rumbustious atmosphere where there may be plenty of humour and banter that would never be encountered on broadcast media. Some sensitive soul working behind the bar could all too easily take offence at a particular joke and run to the solicitors.

If a particular line of conversation, such as maybe something of a sexually frank nature, or laced with four-letter words, makes people feel uncomfortable, then the correct response should be a word from the licensee to tone it down rather than recourse to the law. But it all depends on the character of that particular establishment. Not every pub is suitable for maiden aunts.

Industry spokesperson Kate Nicholls, who aims to influence policy-makers and thus always has to speak guardedly, sounded a note of caution:

Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UKHospitality, said that staff in restaurants, bars, pubs and hotels are working in a “social environment” where “there are jokes and people are boisterous”. She said while everyone wants to make sure their staff are protected “we don’t want to be policing our customers’ behaviour”, adding that she is keen to work with ministers to ensure “undue restrictions” are not imposed on customers.

This may in the end not amount to much, but the risk is that one or two high-profile lawsuits will force venues to take a risk-averse approach and try to eliminate that anything that may be offensive to the ear of the listener. Maybe pubs need to take a leaf out of the BBC’s book from 1948 and publish a list of topics that are considered unsuitable for humour. They could consult Humphrey Smith for advice.

“the BBC thought jokes about lavatories, fig leaves and ladies' underwear would be too strong for public consumption… Any references to drink were permissible only ‘in strict moderation’… the BBC also put a ban on suggestive references to dangerous subjects such as honeymoon couples, chambermaids, rabbits, lodgers and commercial travellers. Writers had to avoid vulgar use of words such as ‘basket’.”

It goes well beyond humour and conversational banter to extend to the policing of opinions. Free speech seems to be increasingly becoming a dirty word, and we often see examples of “no-platforming” and violent demonstrations against speakers expressing controversial but entirely legal views. This will mainly affect venues such as theatres and conferences centres, but pubs are not entirely immune, especially if they have meeting rooms that are used to host various events.

What are the chances that some delicate member of staff will raise an objection if they hear such horrendous opinions being expressed as “no woman has a penis”, “Israel has the right to self-defence” or “there is no climate crisis”?

Nobody should have the right to be protected from offence, provided that speech falls within the law. Some environments by their nature are host to a robust discourse, and anyone of a censorious nature should perhaps consider whether they are appropriate places for them to work. If you don’t like blood, don’t work in a butcher’s shop. But there is a genuine risk that, in an effort to live a quiet life and avoid vexatious litigation, this legislation will throw a stifling blanket over free expression.

Undone by progress

In July of this year, Marston’s sold their remaining 40% stake in the Carlsberg-Marston’s brewing joint venture to Carlsberg, ending a long and proud history of the company’s involvement in brewing. Reducing their debt burden was given as a key reason behind this move. Not entirely surprisingly, three months later, Carlsberg announced that they were closing the Wolverhampton brewery that they had acquired from the joint venture, with operations being concentrated at the original Marston’s site at Burton-on-Trent. This was particularly poignant as Wolverhampton was the birthplace of the Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries company that eventually metamorphosed into Marston’s.

The history behind this is somewhat complicated. In 1999, Wolverhampton & Dudley, best known for Banks’s ales, took part in a bitter two-way takeover battle with Marston’s, with each company trying to take over the other. Wolves & Dudley were eventually successful, but only at the cost of taking on a huge burden of debt that was later to prove a millstone around their neck. In 2007, the combined company renamed itself as Marston’s, as that was a much more widely recognised name.

The debt burden was further increased by takeovers of the Jennings, Wychwood and Ringwood breweries, and then in 2017 of the large Eagle Brewery at Bedford, previously owned by Wells & Youngs. By this time, commentators were noting that its level of debt put it in a risky position, and the 2020 Covid lockdown brought the house of cards crashing down. With all pubs closed, the level of brewing activity greatly diminished, and the company’s share price plummeted. The disposal of 60% of the brewing activities to Carlsberg was somewhat in the nature of a fire sale, to prevent the company being overwhelmed by its debt obligations. The sale of the remaining 40% stake four years later only completed the process.

Even before this, it had been widely speculated that one of the two large breweries would have to close sooner or later. I’d assume that the decision was motivated by considerations that Burton, on an edge-of-town site, had more room for expansion, while Wolverhampton, close to the city centre, would fetch more for redevelopment. While the Wolverhampton site is superficially impressive, I went round it on a tour in 2018 and found the actual brewing and fermenting operations surprisingly cramped and haphazard. It wasn’t really a state-of-the-art modern brewery.

Inevitably, the decision was met with a great amount of sadness, but also a certain degree of anger. Labour’s recently-elected West Midlands condemned the decision and urged the company to reconsider.

This is a cultural asset lost because of decisions made on paper - without consideration for the impact on our community. We should be protecting our brewing heritage in Wolverhampton. I'm urging the owners to reconsider.https://t.co/TatIwxo7dn

— Richard Parker (@RichParkerLab) October 10, 2024

However, many of the responses to his tweet suggested he might be better employed concentrating has attention on stopping library closures in Birmingham rather than a brewery closure in Wolverhampton. It’s also noticeable that many of the people decrying the closure are the same who have over the years dismissed the beers produced by the plant as bland, mainstream pap.

Carlsberg are running a commercial business, not a preservation society, and there is limited scope for sentiment. In the fact of declining demand, operating two large ale breweries only 30 miles apart in Staffordshire simply did not make financial sense, and rationalising capacity was inevitable. They may give cause for lament, but I doubt whether over the past sixty years there has ever been a single brewery closure decision that those making it have later regretted in commercial terms. When a pub closes, there is the opportunity for customers to put their money where their mouth is and club together to buy it, but that simply isn’t an option for a large brewery supplying thousands of pubs.

The decline in ale demand is an unfortunate fact of life that companies have to come to terms with. Cask ale is now below 10% of the on-trade beer market, and a year or so ago my local giant Tesco about halved the amount of shelf space devoted to Premium Bottled Ales, slashing the number of lines stocked at the same time. Kent brewer Shepherd Neame recently announced a shift of emphasis from cask to craft in the face of falling sales.

Some may point out that certain smaller breweries and cask-focused pubs are going great guns and increasing sales, but an overall declining market does not affect everyone equally, and the wider picture is pretty clear. The founding members of CAMRA feared that real ale might only survive in a limited, cottage industry form and, fifty years later, that may eventually be coming to pass, as the big operators scale down their involvement and leave it to micros and small family brewers.

The topic of the Wolverhampton closure has also been discussed by Tandleman here.

The 3.4% dilution

I recently spent a few days in Taunton in Somerset. While it’s an interesting place, and a good base for exploring the surrounding area, it has to be said that it’s far from Britain’s best pub town. One that I visited was the Ring of Bells which, for some reason, more than three years after the end of lockdowns, is still operating a policy of table service and card payments only. I asked the waiter what guest ales were available, and he ran through the list. One from Otter sounded promising, so I asked what strength it was. “Oh, 3.4%,” he replied. So I decided to give it a swerve and choose something else. And that illustrates one of the key problems with 3.4% beers, that nobody really wants them.

Just over a year ago, at the beginning of August 2023, the duty on beers of 3.4% ABV or below was more than halved. Since then, predictably, huge swathes of the British beer market that were previously above this figure have seen their strength reduced. This includes Greene King IPA, Ruddles Bitter, Carlsberg lager (outside of Wetherspoon’s) and all four of the leading brands of smooth bitter. However, again predictably, most of the savings seem to have gone to brewers rather than pub operators or drinkers. Drinkers have’t asked for this; it has been entirely driven by tax savings.

Before the First World War, the typical strength of British beer was between 5 and 6%. However, during that conflict, a shortage of barley combined with steep duty increases imposed by Lloyd George brought about a drastic reduction in its strength. For the next four decades at least, Britain had some of the weakest beer in the world. However, in a more sober era, this was generally accepted, and beer was seen more as a gentle lubricant to sociability, or a means of replacing fluid for manual workers, rather than something that would get you drink. As Anthony Avis wrote in his memoir about the history of the British brewing industry, “All the Norwich brewed beers, before and after the last war, were much the same – thin, flat and lifeless; however, they suited, or appeared to suit, the customers.”

There was a significant change in 1959 when, for the first time in many years, beer duty was reduced, and this was the catalyst for a major change in the beer market. In the early 1960s, Mild was still the biggest seller, but from the on Bitter, which was typically stronger and had more character, pulled ahead, and eventually reduced Mild to insignificance.

More, recently, while we may not have been drinking “less but better”, we are certainly drinking “less but a bit stronger”. Most of the best-selling cask ales are now in the 4.0-4.5% ABV range, and the most popular lagers seem to cluster around the 4.5-4.6% mark. The 4.6% Moretti recently overtook the 4.0% Carling as the biggest-selling lager in the UK. There is no spontaneous market trend to favour 3.4% beers.

CAMRA has always had a tendency to sentimentalise low-gravity beers. But the truth is that most of these milds and light bitters were thin, bland and forgettable, and were simply drunk without much thought as part of a routine of social interaction. Nobody much mourns Whitbread West Country Pale Ale, the 1030 OG beer that for many years was the only cask ale in many pubs around the Severn Valley. The limited number that have survived to the present day tend to be the more characterful examples, and many of them are actually over 3.4% anyway.

In the 1950s and 60s, when people just tended to drink the house mild or bitter in a limited range of pubs, a reduction in strength would in general have been grudgingly accepted, as they had nowhere else to go. Even today, the drinkers of products like John Smith’s Smooth are likely to be creatures of habit, and a reduction from 3.6% to 3.4% won’t be enough to make them look elsewhere. Reducing a beer’s strength by only one or two points will make little appreciable difference.

But today’s beer market is much more open and fluid than it was a generation or two ago, and if presented with a range of options drinkers are unlikely to opt for the weakest one. This isn’t because they’re chasing strength for its own sake, but that 3.4% beers are in general a bit lacking. As I wrote about the John Smith’s reduction, “A 3.4% beer can be sort of OK, palatable enough, although it’s unlikely to uproot any trees.”

I recognise that I am not a remotely representative beer drinker. At home, I’m not the kind of person to work his way through a pile of cans while watching TV, and generally I just want the one. While I do buy beers down to around 4.0%, I really wouldn’t want a 3.4 unless it either came as part of a multipack or someone had given it to me.

In the pub, things are slightly different as I’m more likely to have a multi-pint session, and there is also more of a reason to maintain a relatively clear head. I might well choose a 3.4% beer where that strength is appropriate to its traditional character, such as Taylor’s Golden Best or one of the two Sam Smith’s milds. Although it has been (perhaps puzzlingly) kept at 3.5%, the 1863 light mild is often my choice in Hyde’s pubs. However, if presented with a choice of guest or seasonal ales, something that was only 3.4% would be unlikely to pique my interest. Plus there is rarely much, if any, saving on the price.

The conclusion must be that, while a substantial part of the beer market has now been brought down to 3.4%, it is a trend that has been entirely driven by tax considerations, not consumer preference. And is it really a healthy situation where so much of what is on offer is not what drinkers really want?

Chippy about chips

Plans for a new chippy on a North Wales holiday park have met with opposition from the local health board:

Plans for a new chippy have come up against a health board's demands for fruit and veg on the menu. Betsi Cadwaladr health board wants the proposed takeaway in Morfa Bychan, Gwynedd, to sell a "good selection" of fruit and veg. It wants the menu to have less fat, salt and sugar and is worried an increase in fast food outlets is "detrimental" to people's health.

The more junk food was available, the board added, the more likely it was that people would get fat. "Increased access to unhealthy food retail outlets can be associated with increased weight status in the general population and increased obesity and unhealthy eating behaviours among children residing in low-income areas," it said. "While we appreciate this is only one extra takeaway unit, this would still be one additional takeaway than what is currently available."

But the question has to be asked what business is it of theirs anyway? Are they going to go through the complete menus and stock range of every single retail outlet to decide whether they meet with their approval?

It also isn’t made clear whether they want the chippy to also function as a greengrocer’s shop, something completely unheard of in takeaways, or whether they want more fruit and veg to be included on the menu, whether or not customers actually want them. But don’t expect them underwrite any losses incurred from stocking items people don’t want to buy.

It also seems distinctly hypocritical when many NHS facilities have vending machines full of crisps, chocolate bars and fizzy drinks, which presumably are items they disapprove of. Plus, in my experience, many NHS staff do not set a good example of keeping to an ideal weight.

This is yet another example of joyless, po-faced, Puritanical bureaucrats who have no conception of how businesses function trying to dictate how they should operate, and how ordinary people should live their lives, something that seems all too common nowadays.

And don’t mushy peas qualify as vegetables anyway?

Passing on the torch

It had been widely rumoured, but it has now been officially confirmed that Humphrey Smith, long-standing Chairman of Samuel Smith’s Brewery, is to stand down in December of this year when he reaches the age of 80. He will be succeeded by his 36-year-old son Samuel, who has already been running the company’s London estate.

It must be said that this news will not provoke many tears, as Humphrey has been, to say the least, a controversial character, and some of his actions have seemed downright perverse. He has imposed draconian and offputting house rules in his pubs, he has gained a reputation for treating his staff in an arbitrary and high-handed manner, and he has kept many properties, both licensed and unlicensed, closed for many years, sometimes stretching into decades, partly due to the difficulties he has experienced in recruiting suitable managers for his pubs.

How much of a change the new regime will bring remains to be seen, but surely there must be some relaxation in the house rules, in particular allowing the use of mobile phones and other devices. It would not be unreasonable to expect them to be kept on silent and for any animated conversations to be taken outside, but it is ludicrous to prevent a customer even checking the times of their trains home. Apparently in London this rule is largely ignored, and maybe Sam will extend this approach to the rest of the estate. Personally I would also allow well-behaved dogs into their rural pubs, as this must be a major factor putting potential customers off. The company showed that they could change in response to commercial pressures when they finally began to accept card payments in the Autumn of 2022.

The most important issue, though, must be sorting out the recruitment of managers, which is the key bottleneck that is keeping so many of their pubs closed. I have heard it said that they will only recruit child-free married couples, which must greatly reduce the pool from which they can draw, although I have seen some examples where single-handed licensees appear to be in charge. The level of remuneration is probably on the stingy side too. They could also consider using relief managers to keep pubs open, as every time a pub is closed for a prolonged period you inevitably lose some customers permanently.

The question is often raised as to whether they could widen their appeal by introducing a second cask beer alongside Old Brewery Bitter. In the past they have tried this with the lighter Tadcaster Bitter, and the strong, heavy Museum Ale, but I think have only offered OBB for a good thirty years now. It isn’t clear exactly what type of beer would sell in sufficient volumes alongside OBB. Possibly in the current climate a paler, hoppier beer in the 4.1-4.5% ABV range, rather like a diluted version of the keg India Ale, would be the best candidate, but it has to be remembered that Sam’s pubs tend to appeal to a conservative clientele, not beer geeks.

Despite all these problems, it has to be said that Sam’s pubs, when they are open, have a very distinctive appeal that is not matched by any of their competitors. They offer comfortable seating, traditional décor with plenty of dark wood, an absence of TV sport and piped music, and only admit children if dining, making their wet-led pubs adults-only. They are oases of calm. They may not offer the widest choice of beer, or the absolute best beer, but in many locations they are the most congenial pubs around. As Anthony Avis said in his reflections on the British brewing industry: “The custom is aimed at the older person, who relishes a good pint, with home-produced food if he wants it, and the surroundings to sit down and talk with his companions in unfashionable comfort – just like the brewery industry advertising of forty years ago represented pubs to be.”

Hopefully Humphrey’s successor will recognise this uniqueness and proceed cautiously in making any changes. As I said when I wrote about introducing card payments a couple of years ago:

Humphrey Smith is now in his late seventies, and one can only hope that when the time comes that his successors will respect the company’s distinctive heritage and appeal while removing the obstacles that deter people from both visiting their pubs and working for them. But there must be a nagging fear that they will end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater.