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.