Veering off the road?

The government have announced that the £2 cap on bus fares in England is going to be extended until the end of June. Some eyebrows may have been raised at the effusive welcome CAMRA gave to this policy, which they had strongly urged their members to support.

Chairman Nik Antona said:

“Cheaper bus fares are great news for the beer and pub trade, making it affordable for people to go out to visit their locals.

“Extending the £2 bus fare scheme for England is something that we had called on Transport ministers to do so that pubs, social clubs, breweries and cider producers grappling with the cost-of-business crisis can benefit from people being able to get to the pub in an affordable and environmentally friendly way.”

Whether or not it is a desirable policy is debatable. But is it really CAMRA’s role to be campaigning for generalised subsidies to public transport? It comes across as stepping outside its campaigning objectives. Yes, it may bring some benefit to pubs, although probably less than might be imagined, but that’s only a tangential effect. It would be just as logical to campaign for a cap on taxi fares, or funding research into self-driving cars.

It probably has a lot to do with the long-standing overlap between CAMRA members and public transport enthusiasts. At one point CAMRA did set up a national public transport campaign group, although mention of it seems to have disappeared from their public website. Many taxpayers on modest incomes may well question whether it is a good use of public funds to subsidise people to go to the pub.

No doubt someone will pipe up that it will act as a deterrent to drink-driving, but in reality the idea that a higher bus fare will tempt someone to offend isn’t really credible. This is akin to the suggestion that is sometimes heard of linking drink-driving with high soft drink prices.

Public transport subsidies are not a no-brainer – it is a matter of legitimate political debate as to whether they provide a worthwhile return to the taxpayer. Given this, even if they do tempt a few more customers to visit pubs, to actively support them is exceeding CAMRA’s remit. It should go no further than observing that they may be helpful to some pubgoers.

Not all doom and gloom

Earlier this month, the local branch of CAMRA held its annual Good Beer Guide selection meeting in the upstairs room of the Magnet pub in Stockport. It was a very well-attended meeting, but on top of this the pub downstairs was rammed too. The pub themselves said that they had seen their busiest January for years, and this was continuing into February. Hopefully at least part of the motivation for this was a desire to put two fingers up to “Dry January”.

The Magnet is a pub that does what it sets out to do very well and is justifiably popular. On that particular Thursday evening it might well have been the busiest pub in Stockport town centre. But this clearly demonstrates that, despite all the hand-wringing about the cost-of-living crisis, there are still plenty of people around with money to spend in pubs. This is borne out by the Morning Advertiser, which reports that “The majority of operators I’ve spoken to have reported stronger than expected sales in January, with customers continuing to visit and spend well.”

I’m well aware that my pattern of pubgoing is hardly representative, but in the year so far I’ve visited a wide cross-section of pubs and seen levels of trade ranging from being the sole customer through nicely ticking over to standing room only. It seems no different from how it was pre-Covid. The one pub where I was the only customer was one that I’m confident would have been busy at other times*. Unsurprisingly, two of the busiest ones were branches of Wetherspoon’s.

I’m not denying for a minute that there are many people who are finding things a struggle at present, but equally there are lots who aren’t. Apparently foreign holiday bookings have exceeded the 2019 level. There is plenty of money out there to be spent, and pubs do themselves no favours by overdoing the doom and gloom.

* ironically, this one served me probably my best pint of the year so far

Hold it in!

Simon Everitt recently spotted this sign on his GBG ticking travels in the Split Chimp micropub in Whitley Bay, Northumberland. It comes across as remarkably prissy, it can’t practically be enforced, and it’s frankly unrealistic to expect customers to adhere to it. I have heard of people deliberately arranging their routines so that they can perform their bowel movements in Wetherspoon’s, but surely if someone needs one while visiting a micropub it’s not something they had planned and they don’t have that much control over the timing.

It also illustrates a wider problem with the single-WC pub or bar, which has become much more common with the rise of micropubs and other shop conversions in recent years. When I was at school I vaguely remember studying Queuing Theory in Maths. I’ve forgotten most of it, but one bit that did stick was that reducing the number of outlets would have a much greater impact on the maximum queuing time than the average.

A single WC may be acceptable in a café, but in a bar, where customers are likely to linger more, and where they’re consuming a product known for its diuretic and laxative properties, it’s likely to become problematical. If someone needs to occupy the single trap for ten minutes or more (which, without going into details, can happen) then other customers may be put in a very awkward and embarrassing position.

While I wouldn’t go so far as to want it banned under planning regulations, as a point of principle I won’t give my custom to any bar with a single WC. The tiny Circus Tavern in Manchester city centre manages to provide separate ladies’ and gents’ toilets, with a trap and a couple of urinals in the gents’, so why should they be any different? This is not a question of toilets being unisex (that’s a separate issue), but of the overall level of provision being seriously inadequate.

I have been told that planning rules state that, if you want to provide more than a single WC, one of them has be accessible to the disabled, which is reasonable enough in theory, but in practice may deter, or physically prevent, bar owners from expanding provision even if they feel it’s insufficient. The best becomes the enemy of the good.

On the other hand, of course, the much-derided Wetherspoon’s are noted for their ample toilet provision, although it can be something of a hike to get there. Plus they win numerous awards for toilet hygiene.

Speaking with forked tongue

Back in December 2021, I reported on how New Zealand was planning to introduce a kind of creeping prohibition of tobacco, with the legal purchase age being increase by one year every year. Given that tobacco is a legal product that is enjoyed by a large number of people, this is an utterly abhorrent and illiberal measure. Yes, it carries health risks, but every adult must be aware of that, and the same applies to plenty of other things people do. Also, given that smoking in public places has already been effectively denormalised already, it’s unlikely to be much of a deterrent. The main effect is likely to be handing over government revenue to the black market. It might have been thought that the departure of Jacinda Ardern might prompt a rethink, but given that her successor is someone who said that the unvaccinated should be “hunted down” that’s probably unlikely.

Now, Labour’s health spokesperson Wes Streeting has proposed that the same should be done in UK. Exactly the same issues apply – it is objectionable in principle and is likely to be impractical and problematic in operation. It will also give small shopkeepers the problem of having to establish people’s age at an ever-increasing level, unless of course they follow New Zealand’s example and restrict to tobacco sales to a small number of approved outlets, thus destroying many independent businesses.

Maybe this will never happen, but it underlines that, when it comes to lifestyle issues, whether tobacco, alcohol, food or gambling, Labour hardly has a single libertarian bone in its body. Their thoughts naturally turn to regulation, restriction, taxation and ultimately prohibition. And, while it’s obviously a legitimate position to vote in a way that goes against your personal interests, anyone imagining that a future Labour government will be good news for the pub and brewing industries in the UK, or for the consumer of alcoholic drinks, is likely to be sorely disappointed.

Yet, at the same time, former leader Ed Miliband has stated that a Labour government would be open to the legalisation of cannabis. There’s certainly a good case for this, but my support is hardly encouraged by the tendency of cannabis lobbyists to harp on about how it’s supposedly less harmful than alcohol, and states in the US that have legalised it have experienced very mixed results and completely failed to eliminate the black market. And it comes across as grossly hypocritical to seek to legalise one drug while at the same time prohibiting another, especially when in practice the two are often mixed together.

Presumably the motivation behind this is that one is fashionable, while the other isn’t, but it hardly comes across as intellectually consistent policy. It brings to mind the report I saw* that the US state of Colorado, one of the most right-on in the country, had made it illegal for employers to discriminate against cannabis users, but not tobacco users.

And of course nothing similar is ever going to be applied to alcohol, is it?

* I have definitely read this, although I don’t have a source for it.

Black power

It was reported recently that Guinness had overtaken Carling* to become, for the first time, the best-selling beer brand in the UK. The makers of Carling were quick to point out that they were still selling more in volume terms, but of course this is an admission that Guinness, which is only 0.1% ABV stronger, was achieving a price premium over them.

One of the reasons behind this is that Diageo, the owners of Guinness, have over the years been very assiduous in protecting and developing the image of their product. They have linked it to sport, particularly Rugby Union, they have stressed its Irish heritage and they have protected its position as a premium product by doing their best to avoid deep discounting. They have successfully avoided any connotations of it being an old man’s drink, despite flying in the face of modern trends by being a dark beer, and they have come up with some of the most memorable and iconic advertising of any alcohol brand.

Possibly this is helped by the fact that Guinness is the only major beer brand in Diageo’s portfolio, so they can concentrate single-mindedly on it, whereas if it belonged to a brewing conglomerate attention might be diluted. This can be compared with Stella Artois, which in the 1980s enjoyed a similar position as a respected premium product, but where the brand equity has steadily been undermined by its owners through cheapening the recipe and reducing the strength, to the extent that it is just another commodity product today.

The result is that Guinness, more than any other mass-market beer, is seen as being a cool product in pubs and bars, and very much something they have to stock. In a group of people, the choice of where to go may well be determined by the Guinness drinker objecting to the place that doesn’t stock it, just as the cask drinker would. Any pub not offering Guinness will have to contend with the problem of people asking for it by name, and then having to explain “we have XXX stout, which we think is better”, just as other cola brands had to cope with customers asking for Coke. Anyone remember “It’s McDonald’s cola, is that OK?”

This means that trying to compete with Guinness is an uphill struggle. If you are a brewer with your own pub estate, you have a captive market, and Sam Smith’s have produced their own Extra Stout for years, which many people view as superior to Guinness. Holt’s have recently emulated them with Trailblazer Stout. They have also replaced all mass-market lagers with their own products. And BrewDog have recently launched their own Black Heart stout which no doubt will find favour in craft-oriented bars. But if you’re a pubco or free trader with no brewery links, ditching Guinness may seem a foolhardy move.

Guinness is often defeated by competitor products in blindfolded taste tests, such as this one carried out by Holt’s for Trailblazer. The same was true of Coke vs Pepsi. But in fact in a blind test people tend to pick out the option with the strongest flavour, which isn’t necessarily reflected in decisions across the bar. In fact, one of Guinness’s key attractions is that it is relatively bland and inoffensive, so it doesn’t put too many people off. The same is true of top-selling brands of any products. Competitor stouts tend to emphasise the roastiness more, which may appeal to beer aficionados, but is likely to deter many mainstream drinkers. I have to say I’m not really a fan of roasty beers and, while I like dark mellow ales, I tend to steer clear of cask stouts for that reason.

Possibly this news also says something about the health of the lager market. Some people have speculated that, just as bitter superseded mild as the leading beer, and lager in its turn superseded bitter, something else will eventually take over from lager. In reality, I don’t really see this happening. These changes occurred in an insular British beer market, whereas pale lager has become the default beer worldwide. In a sense, Britain was just belatedly catching up with the rest of world.

But there’s no denying that the lager sector is looking distinctly tired. The concocted Spanish lager Madri looks less like a brilliant innovation and more like a last desperate throw of the dice. Part of the problem is that the vast majority of the established lager brands are lacklustre products that for whatever reason don’t live up to the original beers they’re based on. They’re increasingly seen as just interchangeable commodity brands. The one exception is Peroni, which is intrinsically a pretty good beer and where the brand owners seem to have taken a leaf out of Guinness’s strategy book. And maybe what the sector needs is for the existing brands to be cherished on a long-term bases rather than constantly looking for a new gimmick.

* It would be interesting to know what Carling itself superseded in the 70s or 80s

If you open, they will come

In the face of rocketing energy bills, many pubs are currently reducing their opening hours. They really can’t be blamed if turning the heating on is costing them more than the takings they bring in at quieter times. But it’s important to remember that, if you’re not open, the number of customers you attract is certain to be zero.

In recent years there have been major changes in the pattern of footfall in pubs in the wake of liberalised opening hours. It’s been widely noted that many pubs see an upsurge of trade in the week at around 4 pm, when many tradespeople finish work, while in town and city centres trade often builds up in the late afternoon after a quiet lunchtime, especially on Saturdays. Yet, before 1988, these were times when all pubs were firmly shut, and indeed on Saturdays many delayed their evening opening until 7 pm.

In the first few years after 1988, although all-day opening was permitted, very few pubs took it up. I remember it being virtually impossible to find anywhere open in the centres of Manchester or Stockport. But, driven by the rise of Wetherspoon’s and other High Street chains, things started to change, and by the end of the century all-day opening was pretty common. And, slowly but surely, the pattern of trade followed, with late afternoon often becoming a busy time. Pubs found that they were losing trade to their competitors if they shut at 3 and, just as importantly, finding that the early bird had caught the worm if they didn’t open until 7 pm.

The pre-1988 pattern of standardised opening hours allowed for morning opening as early as 10 am in some areas. Nowadays, that rather comes across as “tell the kids that, and they won’t believe you”, but at one time it was recognised that there was a demand for it. However, early opening was steadily eroded over the succeeding years, and by the current century it became relatively rare for pubs to open before noon, if indeed they opened at all at lunchtimes.

However, the introduction of so-called “flexible” hours from 2005 onwards allowed pubs the freedom to open earlier if they wanted to. This was enthusiastically taken up by Wetherspoon’s, pretty much all of whose pubs in England and Wales now start serving alcohol at 9 am. And, while they aren’t crowded then, they have attracted a distinct clientele who prefer drinking at that time, as I wrote back in 2019. It’s very easy to sneer at these people, but surely the whole point of flexible hours is that people can drink at a time that suits them, rather than a narrow window distated by the law and social conformity.

As I said, I fully understand the cost pressures that are currently leading pubs to trim their hours. But those are two examples of how being able to open at times when they previously weren’t able to has unlocked a seam of trade that conventional wisdom said didn’t exist.

They all add up

In my Review of 2022, I mentioned that I had visited 128 different pubs during the year. This was considerably more than in the two years of lockdowns, but still quite a bit less than in the four preceding years, which is as long as I have been keeping a record. For information, for 2016-19 the numbers were 154, 188, 203 and 207. In fact, during 2022 I had to cancel a planned holiday due to unforeseen circumstances, which would probably have bumped up the total to over 140.

However, I was struck by this review of the year by Matthew Thompson, who I know from the local CAMRA branch, who said he had only been to about half a dozen pubs. Now, I have no knowledge of his circumstances, but that obviously indicates a very different mindset. So I thought I would run a Twitter poll on how many different pubs people had visited over the year, producing the following results from an impressive turnout of 511 votes:

POLL: How many different pubs have you visited in the past year? (Assuming you are someone who visits pubs regularly in the first place)

— Pub Curmudgeon 🌸🍻 (@oldmudgie) December 29, 2022

Obviously my followers are likely to be much keener on pubgoing than the population at large, but this produced a wide and fairly even spread of results, with the largest share going to the top category of “Over 50”. That must indicate people who are consciously seeking out pubs rather than just visiting them in the normal run of their daily life. GBG ticker Martin Taylor responded that he had been to 877 in 2022, and over 1000 in 2019, which rather puts my efforts in the shade, although I’m not really looking to visit pubs in pursuit of any specific objective.

Ever since I reached legal drinking age I’ve been fascinated by pubs. I would go out and visit various pubs with my dad, and with former school friends in the university holidays. At university in Birmingham, armed with a student railcard, I travelled as far afield as Bath and York. Remember in those days that lunchtime closing was 2.30 pm in most places in the South and Midlands, so trips had to be planned much more carefully than now. Apart from the two years of lockdown, and possibly 2001, which was something of an annus horribilis in which I spent six weeks in hospital with a shattered ankle, and was later made redundant, I would say I’ve visited at least 100 different pubs in every year of my adult life.

In the early years, a major factor was sampling different beers that I had never encountered before. At this time, the tied house system still held sway, and there were only a handful of national-distributed beers, meaning you had to travel to find particular beers. I often sought out obscure pubs just because they had a rare brew for the area. I wrote about this in detail here.

Nowadays, the situation is very much changed, with far fewer pub-owning breweries with a distinctive offer on the bar, and far more beers distributed across the country. Very often, you will walk into a free house or pubco outlet with no idea what you are likely to find, which to my mind somewhat detracts from the experience. However, I will seek out family brewer tied houses when away from my local area, and indeed in the 2010s had two mini-holidays with the partial motivation of visiting Donnington and Hook Norton pubs.

However, I increasingly found that it was the pubs themselves were the attraction, not the beers themselves. As I wrote back in 2010 in a post entitled Wooden Wombs:

At heart I have to conclude I’m more fascinated by pubs than beer – by the variation in layout and architecture, the fittings from many different eras, the ebb and flow of trade, the little rituals and quirks of pub life, the mix of customers, their interaction with the bar staff and each other, the way their clientele and atmosphere reflect the varied strands of society. Every pub is different and has its own character and its own story to tell.

And there are still plenty of pubs to explore that haven’t had the soul sucked out of them by corporate makeovers. I will also make an effort to seek out pubs on CAMRA’s National Inventory when I’m outside my local area.

I’m not setting any targets or making any predictions for 2023, but I would hope that, if all goes well, I can manage at least 150 during the year. I’ve already visited 12 in the first three weeks of the year, which would indicate an annual total over 200, but of course some of those are ones on my regular rounds which I will visit again over the course of the year.

Better late than never

In my post about Falling out of love with alcohol, I mentioned the British Beer & Pub Association’s detailed table of beer sales statistics, which for a long time had not been updated beyond the end of 2018. In fact, they had not been updated for so long that I had given up checking. However, on taking a look at their website, I found they had produced some newer figures, albeit only going up to the end of 2020, so still two years out of date. These can be downloaded from their website as an Excel spreadsheet.

In 2019, the last full year BC (Before Covid) they show the on-trade holding up pretty well. Total sales were 12.658 million barrels, accounting for 45% of the total beer market. This was only 0.6% down on the previous year, and indeed over the five years since 2014 they had only declined by 6.5%, an average of 1.3% a year. This is a much slower rate of decline than, say, print newspapers. In contrast, in the five years from 2006 to 2011, they fell by 25.2%, an average of 5.0% a year. Is that the sound of trumpeting I hear in the distance?

However, 2020 shows a very different story. Total sales saw a catastrophic fall of 55.1% to a mere 5.689 million barrels, representing a mere 23.6% of the total market. Indeed total beer sales fell by 14.2%. While there undoubtedly will have been some switching to wine and spirits, this rather gives the lie to the widespread claim that lockdowns led to an increase in alcohol consumption.

In the first quarter, on-trade sales were down by 18.3%, reflecting the fact that pubs were completely closed down in mid-March, and for a couple of weeks before that trade was increasingly depressed by the lengthening shadow of Covid. Then in the second quarter, which was entirely during lockdown, they fell to a mere 150,000 barrels, all of which would have been take-home sales from pubs.

In the third quarter, when pubs were finally allowed to trade with a reasonable degree of normality, sales showed a good recovery, although they were still 25% below 2019. Then in the fourth quarter they slumped to 795,000 barrels, affected by a month of full lockdown, the hopeless confusion of the tier system and the ludicrous substantial meal and mask rules. In the first quarter of 2021, when there was a full lockdown throughout, and pubs weren’t even allowed to do takeaway sales, they must have fallen to virtually zero.

It would be very interesting if and when these statistics are updated to the end of 2022 to see just how well the on-trade has been able to recover and how close it has been able to regain the pre-Covid position.

Falling out of love

Over the weekend, there was an interesting article in the Observer entitled Last orders: how we fell out of love with alcohol. This isn’t maybe the most rigorously researched piece, and it relies heavily on anecdotal evidence, but it does reflect a fundamental truth that, over the past twenty or so years, drinking alcohol has become markedly less fashionable, something I have observed on this blog on several occasions.

After reaching a post-WW1 peak around 2000, in the wake of lad culture and Cool Britannia, per capita alcohol consumption has steadily declined, and is now about 15% lower. Plus, in many situations, drinking alcohol has become less acceptable, and abstaining seen as virtuous rather than cranky. I discussed this back in 2013 in a post entitled Socially unacceptable supping.

Nor is this evenly spread across the board. While the older generation are drinking much the same, their younger counterparts have substantially cut down. “Between 2002 and 2019, the proportion of 16- to 24-year-olds in England who reported monthly drinking fell from 67% to 41%.” This clearly gives a pointer to the future direction of travel, and the fall in consumption inevitably lags behind the change in attitudes.

As something becomes less fashionable, people are more likely to prefer to do it in private than in public, which is bad news for the pub trade. According to the statistics produced by the British Beer & Pub Association, in the twenty years from 1998 to 2018 (which is as far as they go), total beer consumption fell by 22.8%, but on-trade consumption almost exactly halved. The trail of pubs now demolished or converted to alternative use is all too obvious. Some will argue that the Anteater Tap is still doing great business, while ignoring the fact that the Sir Garnet Wolseley across the road, which was ten times the size, has been replaced by flats. Even within a declining market, it is still possible to be successful, but that doesn’t make the wider narrative any less true.

In the past, a lot of drinking in pubs was centred around ritual and routine, often linked to the workplace. But all those Friday lunchtime drinks with the office team, after-work unwinders, Sunday lunchtime sessions and “I always go out with Bill and Frank for a few on Friday night” are now much diminished if not virtually extinct. If you’re no longer going to the pub out of habit, but have to make a positive choice to do so, you may well decide not to bother.

Of course you can go to the pub and drink soft drinks or non-alcoholic beers, but the people doing that are in general doing so to go along with their alcohol-drinking peers. In any social group, once a tipping point of non-drinkers is reached, they will begin to question what is the point of going to the pub in the first place.

On the other hand, the article points out that, while it undoubtedly carries health risks, throughout history alcohol has made a major contribution both to human creativity and human sociability.

That, [Professor Edward] Slingerland adds, is where alcohol comes in: put simply, it can turn the PFC (pre-frontal cortex) down a few notches and expand our minds. “Alcohol is a cultural technology,” Slingerland believes, “that we have developed to briefly get us back to our five-year-old brains when it comes to flexibility and creativity. After a few hours it wears off and we can glean the results.” Across the world, throughout history, alcohol has been associated with creatives: artists, poets, great thinkers. “And this is not a myth,” he says. “There’s good evidence it increases creativity, which as a society we need.”

Alcohol can also play a key role in fostering relationships. By temporarily turning down the PFC, we’re more inclined to trust and be open with other people. “In the same way that shaking hands started out as a way to show we aren’t carrying weapons,” says Slingerland, “drinking beers – taking our PFCs out – is like putting our mental weapons on the side. By relaxing the PFC, it’s harder to lie or fake.” And, he adds, alcohol boosts feelgood chemicals such as dopamine, serotonin and endorphins. “These don’t just make us less inclined to cheat. Because we feel positive about each other, it creates a sense of bonding that’s crucial for humankind.”

And I’ll certainly drink to that!

Limited offer

Wetherspoon’s are currently running a January Sale including price cuts across a whole range of food and drink items, including reducing the price of a pint of Ruddles Bitter to a mere 99p, in England at least. There have been the predictable complaints that this was unfair and represented predatory pricing. But, in reality, how much of an effect is it likely to have?

By definition, the opportunities to take advantage of an offer on something that is consumed at the time of purchase are much more limited than on something that can be taken home and stored for later use. It may tempt the odd person to visit Wetherspoon’s who otherwise wouldn’t have done, or encourage them to have an extra pint, but it’s hardly going to turn the market upside down. And remember that Ruddles Bitter was already priced at £1.49, so you’re only saving 50p per pint. The main benefit to Wetherspoon’s will be gaining publicity.

Low prices alone seldom provide sufficient attraction to visit pubs. You sometimes see urban pubs with signs advertising how cheap their beer is, but by and large they tend to be the less appealing ones. Yes, Wetherspoon’s do offer good value, but they also attract customers due to their long and consistent opening hours, their wide food and drink offer, and their general ambiance that doesn’t make anyone feel unwelcome. In any case, they are competing as much with fast food and casual dining outlets as with other pubs. And, over their full drinks range, they’re not as cheap as cask drinkers might imagine. The discount on cask is greater than on other beers because it’s the product where people make price comparisons.

Another factor is that people generally buy drinks in rounds rather than individually. There’s a general understanding that people don’t take the piss by ordering particularly expensive drinks when it’s someone else’s turn, but the benefit of choosing a cheap beer purely on price is diluted. If you choose Ruddles on your round and Leffe when someone else is paying your companions won’t be impressed. Wetherspoon’s probably attract a higher proportion of solo drinkers than most other pubs, but even so the majority are likely to be buying in rounds. It may be that the rise of app ordering is eroding round-buying, but I doubt whether than is a big factor amongst the Ruddles-buying classes. I am currently running a Twitter poll which so far is showing a strong preference for round-buying:

POLL: If you are drinking (not dining) with others, how do you normally pay for drinks?

— Pub Curmudgeon 🌸🍻 (@oldmudgie) January 13, 2023

The custom of round buying is also why various attempts to introduce lower-priced, weaker “value bitters” in pubs have always been a failure. Over the years, I remember various North-West brewers trying this – Boddingtons had Old Shilling and Hydes Billy Westwood’s – and some of them were actually quite pleasant. I remember once drinking six pints of Billy Westwood’s on Sunday lunchtime in the now-demolished Moss Rose/Four Heatons near my home. But none stayed the course, as the round-buying culture, especially in traditional boozers, worked against them. Why choose a cheap product rather than the mainstream one when someone else is paying?

Out of the frying pan... – Part 2

July saw the fifteenth anniversary of this blog, which of course was originally sparked by the smoking ban. Sad to report that I have achieved a record low number of posts, even below the half-year of 2007. As I’ve said before, a lot of the brief comments on news items have moved to Twitter, so I’m never going to return to the heady days of 2011. The cancellation of my magazine column has meant that I no longer feel an obligation to write something about specific subjects, and there are only so many times you can say much the same thing about minimum pricing or advertising bans.

Nevertheless, I’ve come up with some substantial pieces on a variety of topics. The one I feel most proud of is this one looking at the demise of the inner-urban boozer, once a mainstay of the pub trade and the source of much of the beer volume of the past. The highest number of pageviews was actually on my post about the short life of the Fickle Mermaid, which exemplified a wider topic of how things seemed to have gone sour for the family dining pub, once hailed as a major growth area in the pub industry. It also continues to attract a healthy level of comments, sometimes much more than other supposedly higher-profile blogs.

I managed considerably more posts on my Closed Pubs blog, where I achieved the highest total after the first three years of “shooting fish in a barrel”. This serves as a sad record of the absolute devastation that has overwhelmed the pub trade in the past twenty-five years. A scattering of poky micropubs open for a few hours a week is scant compensation. For this I am indebted for the prolific input of Leeds resident Kyle Reed, and Yorkshire is rapidly catching up on Lancashire and Staffordshire as the county with the highest representation. I’ve never actually met Kyle, but a pint or two is certainly his if we can arrange to get together. I’ve also sourced many entries from the Fullpint news aggregation Twitter account, which often posts news reports of long-closed pubs about to be demolished and replaced by flats.

I’ve added a few more entries to my Campaign for Real Pubs blog, which celebrates some of the dwindling number of characterful “proper pubs” still remaining, although unfortunately at least one has fallen victim to the jackhammer during the year.

I celebrated the tenth anniversary of my Twitter account, and also exceeded the 100,000 tweets mark, which is about 27 per day. My follower count has increased from 5,900 to just short of 6,300, although it’s probably reached something of a plateau now. Mind you, I said much the same when I passed 5,000. I deliberately aim to steer clear of general political issues beyond the politics of lifestyle, and indeed some of the people who regularly interact are clearly not political soulmates, although “Opposed to the Nanny State in all forms” should give a clear idea that I’m not some kind of Commie. It’s always good to receive a bit of acclamation:

Beer writing should be slightly cantankerous and this makes @oldmudgie your best companion. He'll also introduce you to a host of pub tickers, beer snobs and cats.

— Simon Cooke (@SimonMagus) December 24, 2022

In the Autumn, Twitter was bought by tech billionaire Elon Musk. As I wrote at the time, he is perhaps more loose cannon than knight in shining armour, but the platform has not fallen over as many predicted, and indeed is recording record traffic. He has restored many accounts that were unreasonably suspended, and has released some damning evidence of political interference. And those who have noisily decamped to rival platforms have discovered their limitations. The big plus point of Twitter is the number and range of other people who are there.

Moving on to some more general points, Pub Vandals of the Year must be Robinson’s, for their destruction of the unspoilt heritage interior of the Armoury in Stockport. Previously I would have named this as one of my favourite Stockport pubs, but it’s now little different from hundreds of others. They have also (although I haven’t seen it for myself) made some pretty destructive changes to the Church House in Congleton, which had retained many original 1930s features.

Public Health Own Goal of the Year was the legislation to prevent the prominent display of so-called HFSS items in supermarkets, which has had the entirely predictable outcome of them being replaced by displays of alcoholic drinks, surely not what the purse-lipped wowsers intended. Never mind, no doubt they’ll be coming for alcohol next, as they already have in Ireland.

Pub Food Innovation of the Year was Wetherspoon’s ice cream. Very reasonably priced at only £1.55, going up to £2.30 in That London, and actually quite decent stuff and in no way obviously cheap. You could easily pay £4 for something similar in a restaurant.

Blogging Event of the Year was the return of Cooking Lager. While his activities were curtailed by family issues, he has posted some splendid stuff, particularly this account of his exploration of the keg pubs of Edgeley. He makes many wider observations about society in general and explores territory, both physically and conceptually, where few other beer bloggers dare to tread.

A major achievement of the year was Martin Taylor taking advantage of the removal of Covid restrictions to reach the epic milestone of completing the Good Beer Guide, which he did in September at the Taversoe on Rousay in Orkney. Although, once the new edition was released, he was back down the snake again with a few hundred more pubs to visit.

Around the time of the annual Cask Beer Week, there was a great deal of handwringing around the subject of cask beer quality. But commentators continue to pussyfoot around the central issue, that of excessive ranges leading to slow turnover and stale beer. Of course that isn’t the sole reason for poor quality, but at least if you shift it quickly you give it a fighting chance. Everybody recognises that there’s a problem, but it seems that nobody is prepared to actually do anything about it.

There was a significant crack in the Sam Smith’s edifice when card payments were finally allowed in the Autumn, although the absurd ban on any use of mobile devices remains in force. Glynn Davis wrote an excellent article setting out the contrast between the often praiseworthy way in which Sam’s run their pub estate, and the damage done by their pigheaded policies.

The beginning of the year brought the sad news of the death of Peter Allen, who was less than a year older than me. He was a keen canal traveller, and the author of the Pubs Then and Now blog which was mainly focused around his waterborne journeys. He accompanied us on numerous pub days out where he was always good company. The photo above shows him in happier times, on the left, in the Slubbers Arms in Huddersfield in March 2019. I am just to the right of the fire. Sadly, that splendid pub, which was my best new pub visit of 2019, is no longer with us either.

One noteworthy book I read during the year was Northerners by Brian Groom, which is basically a history of England seen through the lens of the North. For long a poverty-stricken backwater, it did nevertheless play a crucial role in many key historical events. Then the Industrial Revolution elevated it to becoming the most prosperous region of the country, only for it to be laid low in the last century by the decline of traditional industries. It is perhaps let down towards the end by an attempt to shoehorn in as many artistic, literary and showbiz figures as possible, whereas a more limited number of extended profiles illustrating particular themes might have been better. And the North now faces the question of how it can create a distinctive identity for itself without becoming merely a subsidised colony of the South, the contradiction that is inherent in the “Levelling Up” agenda.

I also read Municipal Gothic by Ray Newman, one half of Boak & Bailey, which is a collection of ghost stories with modern and everyday settings. Some of the stories are very good and are based on inventive concepts, particularly the increasingly creepy faux gazetteer of Modern Buildings in Wessex, but it did come across as rather too obviously written by someone who has pondered on the mechanics of how ghost stories work.

A year without Covid restrictions gave me the chance to get out and about and visit many more tourist attractions of various kinds. Undoubtedly the best new one was the Lady Lever Art Gallery at Port Sunlight on the Wirral, which celebrated its centenary this year. Although only twenty miles from where I grew up, unaccountably I had never been here before. It’s a very impressive purpose-built gallery, with a huge and varied art collection to which a single visit cannot really do justice. The paintings on display major on Pre-Raphaelite and early 20th century figurative art which are perhaps somewhat unfashionable genres nowadays.

The striking portrait above is Jeunesse Dorée, painted in 1934 by Gerald Leslie Brockhurst and depicting his muse, and later wife, Kathleen Woodward.

I was also able to renew my acquantaince with a number of places which in many cases I had not visited for decades. Two that stand out are Rufford Old Hall in West Lancashire, a fascinating Tudor and Restoration house in a tranquil, wooded setting by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, and Avebury stone circle in Wiltshire, which is far less immediately spectacular than Stonehenge, but where the National Trust have done a very good job of explaining its origins and significance.

As for 2023, who knows what it will bring? It could turn out better, but it could be a lot worse. And dare I suggest that one thing that would bring about an improvement in the situation around the world would be a swift return to peace in Ukraine?

See here for Part 1.

Out of the frying pan... – Part 1

This time last year, pubs had been spared the Covid restrictions that had been reimposed on large sections of the economy due to concerns about the Omicron variant. However, this led to a wave of cancellations of Christmas bookings, meaning that the trade had a dismal festive season for the second year in a row. As many of us had predicted, the fears of Omicron proved to be greatly overstated, and the general restrictions were all lifted at the end of January, perhaps accelerated by the embattled government wishing to avoid a backbench rebellion. The abhorrent plans to impose vaccine mandates on NHS workers lingered on into the Spring, but they were eventually scrapped too. The lockdown narrative has steadily crumbled as the sheer scale of the economic, social, educational and medical harms it caused have become increasingly clear, and many politicians have rushed to dissociate themselves from it.

There were, however, one or two pockets of the pub trade that, like Japanese soldiers in the jungle after 1945, continued to cling stubbornly to the old religion. The Bailey Head in Oswestry, run by a chap called Duncan Borrowman, was insisting on the ludicrous and oppressive rule of requiring masks unless seated well into this year, even though this had been officially lifted in July 2021. I assume it has now been dropped, but that’s certainly one to add to the list of pubs to avoid, at least under their current management.

This cleared the way for a year of unrestricted trading for pubs, which was helped by some hot summer weather. Although it certainly hasn’t been uniform, many have reported sales figures approaching those of 2019 or even, in some cases, exceeding it. However, they have then been hit by a wave of inflation which has increased their costs, especially energy prices, while at the same time reducing their customers’ disposable income. This leaves many pubs in a very precarious financial situation going into the New Year, and has already led to a number of closures which have spread to breweries too. To a a large extent, this inflation was the inevitable consequence of the borrowing and money-printing to finance the Covid bailouts and furlough, although the Bank of England seemed remarkably myopic in failing to foresee it. The Ukraine conflict has exacerbated it to some degree, but it’s really no more than the icing on the cake. The situation of pubs in town and city centres has been further worsened by the wave of rail strikes in the run-up to Christmas.

During the year, I have visited 128 different pubs, of which 40 were new to me. This compares with 79/18 in 2021 and a mere 60/17 in 2020. Obviously I could have visited more new pubs if I’d really set my mind to it, but I didn’t really do more than take the opportunities that were available to me in the course of my travels. A couple of highlights were a day out in Burton-on-Trent for the first celebration of National Bass Day that was actually able to take place, and being kindly taken on a tour of rural pubs in West Berkshire by Tim Thomas of the local CAMRA branch.

My best new pub was the North Star in Steventon, Berkshire, one of the most unspoilt pubs on CAMRA’s National Inventory, with no bar counter as such and a snug formed by a high-backed settles.

Runner-up was the Magazine in New Brighton, with its spectacular views over the Mersey estuary towards Liverpool. This is one of those classic pubs that is in my general part of the world, but I’d never been near enough in recent years to think, “oh, let’s go there”. Although known as a Bass shrine, unfortunately due to the supply difficulties that have plagued Bass this year there was none available when I called. I’ll also give honourable mentions to the Boat and Horses in Newcastle-under-Lyme, and the Heatons Bridge at Scarisbrick in West Lancashire, both of which have a canal connection.

On the other hand, there were one or two horror stories, the most memorable being one pub, which shall remain nameless, where my experience was completely spoilt by what appeared to be the landlord and his cronies engaging in bout of Chubby Brown-level swearing in one of the rooms. This was a pity as otherwise it was a very appealing place that came across as more genteel than rough, which made the crudity even more incongruous.

My best revisit was undoubtedly the Bell at Aldworth, again in Berkshire, another classic unspoilt pub that has won CAMRA’s National Pub of the Year on two widely-separated occasions. I had been there once in the early 80s, but never since. This was on the aforementioned tour with Tim Thomas. I was also able to renew my acquaintance with a number of pubs not visited since before Covid, such as the “symphony in brown” Cross Foxes in Shrewsbury, and the Red Lion at Dayhills in Staffordshire, a simple rural pub attached to a working farm.

Amongst all those pubs, sadly I haven’t encountered a single pub cat, although I have continued to follow the activities of Arty at the Olde Cottage in Chester, and Fiddle Pub Cat, whose pub has now closed down, but who seems to be enjoying a comfortable retirement with plenty of rodent-hunting opportunities.

To be continued...

A franchise affair

A significant development of the past few years that has perhaps not received the attention it deserves is the rise of franchise models for operating pubs owned by the major pub companies. These are a kind of halfway house between a managed pub and a traditional tenancy, under which the publican remains self-employed, but the pubco pays all the bills and takes all the sales revenue, leaving a cut of typically between 18% and 22% to pay themselves and employ staff.

All of the major pubcos now offer deals of this kind, as explained in this article in the Morning Advertiser, with Marston’s being the leaders in the field with 637 sites currently operational. Probably the most visible is Stonegate’s Craft Union, which has been positioned as a standalone brand, with the pubs painted in a distinctive livery. Most of them tend to be wet-led pubs, but some of the deals allow the licensees to run their own food operation.

From the point of view of the pubco, they avoid the commitment and administrative burden of a fully managed operation while still retaining a high degree of control over how the business is run. Most significantly, all the sales are put through their own books.

The prospective publican may find this kind of arrangement an easier introduction to the pub trade than a traditional tenancy, and it requires much less of an initial financial ingoing. It provides a much more structured operating environment, which may suit many people, although others will find the lack of opportunity to use their initiative to develop the business limiting. Running a tenancy is much more complex now than it was fifty years ago. There’s a direct relationship between the success of the business and your own remuneration, although of course that is a double-edged sword.

An important aspect is that all the bills are paid by the pubco, including the energy costs, which is a massive attraction in the current climate. However, concerns have been expressed that these deals may in practice leave people working for a pittance and can be regarded as exploitative. People are effectively entering into unsatisfactory contracts just to get a roof over their heads and their bills paid. On the other hand, several people interviewed in the Morning Advertiser article seemed happy enough with the situation. No doubt the shrill anti-pubco lobbyists will find much to criticise, but they never seem able to come up with any constructive suggestions about how pub operating companies should actually function.

When I first heard about this kind of arrangement, my initial thought was that they were a way of pubcos avoiding the possibilities of seeing their pubs lost to tenants claiming a Market Rent Option and going free-of-tie. However, that hasn’t in practice proved to be a major problem for pubcos, and in reality franchising is more a way of finding a system that works for smaller, lower-end pubs that have proved difficult to let on a traditional tenancy basis. But, whatever its pros and cons, franchising certainly seems to be here to stay as a significant part of the pub landscape, and is only likely to expand its share at the expense of tenancies. Marston’s certainly see it as a key driver of future growth.

Ailing ale

A couple of months ago, I wrote about how the unintended consequence of banning displays of “HFSS” foods in supermarkets had been a mushrooming of the quantity of alcoholic drinks in prominent view. But one thing that has been conspicuous by its absence from all these mountains of bottles and cans is beers in traditional British styles. Yes, there is Guinness, and there are Punk IPA and Hazy Jane, but the vast majority of it is lager of various kinds. There is nothing remotely resembling a Bitter. Not too long ago, there would have been slabs of John Smith’s Extra Smooth, Boddingtons and Tetley’s, and even, a few years before that, Stones. But now there is nothing.

While these beers are still available in four-packs in the alcohol aisle, their absence from the piles of seasonal drinks shows that they are no longer ranked amongst the big hitters of the beer world. And yes, those styles are well covered by the Premium Bottled Ales sector, but that again is a niche market playing several divisions below the Premier League.

In the on-trade, it is overwhelmingly cask that is carrying the standard for British ales. When cask disappears from a pub, it doesn’t get keg Landlord and London Pride, it is likely to end up with an apologetic cowl on the T-bar for John Smith’s or Tetley’s Smooth, and maybe a throwback keg mild if you’re lucky. These products are now zombie brands, receiving no advertising or promotion, and selling to a dwindling band of downmarket older drinkers. Maybe there is still some love for keg ales in pockets like the North-East club trade, but in general they are unloved and overlooked.

When Cooking Lager did his tour of the keg pubs of Edgeley earlier this year, he didn’t even mention the keg ales available. I’d assume they all stocked some form of smooth beer, but I’d guess these accounted for no more than 10% of draught sales. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of the more modern-themed pubs and bars that have dropped cask now no longer stock any British-style keg ales at all. I don’t tend to frequent such establishments, but earlier this year I stayed in a slightly upmarket hotel where there were eight kegs on the bar. One was some kind of craft IPA, but none were British ales.

When I started drinking in the late 70s, ale (mostly bitter, but still with a large component of mild) was the dominant category in the beer market. Lager was a trendy, upstart interloper. However, it steadily gained on ale, probably overtaking it at some time in the mid-80s, and has now for most people become the default beer. If you visited the house of someone who wasn’t a beer enthusiast, and they offered you “a beer”, odds on it would be a lager. As the Scottish Licensed Trade Network reports, lager has now become the quintessential pub product.

British-style ales are now on the verge of falling back from being a lower-volume mainstream product to something that is definitely just a niche. Over the next couple of decades it will become increasingly common in the on-trade to find them entirely absent, while in the off-trade the shelf space allocated to them will steadily diminish. Yes, there will still be places where they enjoy strong sales and appreciation, but they will be limited pockets in the general landscape. While cask may mount a determined rearguard action, its distribution is only going to contract, not increase. And, if you run a brewery that specialises in British-style ales, you may have a bleak future.

Of course it is a simple fact of life that customer preferences change over time. Porter disappeared, mild is now a tiny niche and bitter is going the same way. But it is a matter of regret that we are losing something that was the absolute cornerstone of the once-mighty British brewing industry. And you can’t help thinking that other nations such as the Germans and the Czechs would be more committed to cherishing such an important part of their heritage.

Yes, there has been a rise in craft IPAs, mainly on keg, but they are not ales of the traditional British style and their market share remains minuscule in comparison to lager.

Getting the bird

Regular readers will know that I’m an enthusiastic user of Twitter. In recent weeks, there has been a mixture of excitement and consternation following the $44 billion takeover of the platform by billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. I’m no cheerleader for Musk, and in some respects he seems more of a loose cannon than a knight in shining armour. After peremptorily sacking a substantial proportion of staff, there was much speculation that the platform might fall over, but that hasn’t happened, and indeed Musk has reported record traffic and user numbers.

Many of the dismissed staff seem to have been engaged not in actually running the site, but in “content moderation”, i.e. censorship. It was widely felt that the previous regime on Twitter had pursued a very heavy-handed and partisan approach to throttling and banning accounts expressing conservative viewpoints or questioning the official narrative on Covid and lockdowns. People felt that they were constantly walking on eggshells, and many accounts have been suspended purely for the opinions expressed.

Musk has said that he will give an amnesty to all banned accounts with obvious exceptions such as illegal conduct and harassment, and they seem to be slowly returning, most notably that of former US President Donald Trump, although he has engaged in his own subtle form of trolling by not actually tweeting anything so far. Another is the satirical account The Babylon Bee.

Some people, alarmed by this sudden outbreak of free speech, have taken refuge in an alternative platform called Mastodon. Now, I don’t know much about this, and have no intention to open an account, but it appears to be a decentralised network of servers, each of which applies its own policies. I have already heard reports of heavy-handed moderation, and of someone being banned for supposedly being “a capitalist”. And surely, if the whole thing links together, there must be problems when someone on one of the more tolerant servers ends up interacting with those on one of the more censorious ones.

A platform like Twitter needs a critical mass to succeed – there is no point in being there if all you’re doing is shouting into a void. This is likely to be a problem for Mastodon, just as it was for conservative-minded people who set up accounts on Gab, Parler or GETTR. Maybe some parts of it will become a cosy echo chamber for like-minded people, but that’s really missing the point. And if you are trying to operate two accounts in parallel it becomes more like hard work and you will lose some of the spontaneity.

It must be remembered that the key point about free speech is that it needs to be extended to people with whom you profoundly disagree, and indeed whose views you may find obnoxious. If it is only allowed to those you find congenial, there is no free speech. And a key feature of Twitter and similar platforms is that you can tailor it to your own tastes by your choice of who to follow, and who to mute or block so, if you so choose, you never need to be exposed to opinions that make you feel uncomfortable.

It’s also worth mentioning that Musk has reportedly carried out a major crackdown on the exchange of child porn material through Twitter, which apparently had been widespread under the old regime, although I have to say it’s not something I’d ever noticed personally.