If you don’t open it, they can’t come

The licensee of the Wonston Arms in Hampshire, a former CAMRA National Pub of the Year, recently had an article published in the Daily Telegraph entitled The village pub I run is being taxed to death. This certainly struck a chord with many, as did his post on X about his pub having precisely zero customers at 5 pm on a sunny Saturday.

However, once you delve into it a little deeper, you find that this pub is open for the grand total of 27½ hours a week and, on the six days when it is open, has five different patterns of hours. This suggests that he perhaps isn’t trying as hard as he could to attract customers. And drinkers might well have shunned the place at 5 pm on Saturday knowing that he was going to be shutting up shop a couple of hours later.

I know times are hard, and the circumstances of every pub are different. But, as I wrote back in 2022, opening short and erratic hours is a sure-fire way of deterring potential customers. If they call in to your pub and find it closed when they might have expected it to be open, they might well go elsewhere next time. You don’t know who your potential customers are, or when they are likely to want to visit you. This kind of thing is only going to work if you are basically appealing to a clique of cronies whose habits you are familiar with. And the fact that you’re never sure when they’re going to be open must be a negative factor for the pub trade in general.

As Rory Sutherland wrote in the linked article, “It cannot escape the notice of café operators that one reason why both chains and immigrant-run businesses do well is that they are open consistently and open late.” This is discussing cafés, but it applies just as much to pubs and bars. If you’re not opening even for the approximation of a normal working week, and adopting a reasonably consistent pattern, you’re not really making much of an effort.

One of the key reasons for the success of Wetherspoon’s and other chains is that customers have the confidence to go there knowing they will be open. And the type of businesses we’re talking about here are not ones with large brigades of expensive staff, but mom-and-pop operations. If corner shops are struggling, they open longer hours, but micropubs are more likely to curtail their hours and grumble that life isn’t fair.

Nobody should imagine that the cavalry are going to appear over the hill, either. Various industry bodies have launched a campaign to persuade the government to reverse last year’s increases in buisess costs, particular Employer’s National Insurance, and introduce a lower rate of the VAT for hospitality. All well and good, but in the context of a £50 billion “black hole” in the public finances having been recently revealed, the chances of this being acted upon must be very small, to put it mildly.

It’s certainly a harsh climate out there, and many good businesses are struggling. But it’s not going to completely wipe out the hospitality industry, or anything like it, and the businesses who come through on the other side will be those who roll up their sleeves and demonstrate enterprise and innovation, not those who just put up the shutters and moan.

On a brighter note, the well-known Crown Inn, situated under the viaduct in Stockport, is reopening this Friday, having been taken over by the licensees of the Petersgate Tap. It’s good to see someone showing a declaration of faith in the future of the industry. And their planned opening hours are a model of being both long and consistent.