Bad service won't help Pubs!

I'm very disappointed to report that the number of bad reviews coming into Pubsulike has escalated. This, at a time when you would expect most publicans to be pulling out the stops and doing their very best to encourage new customers into their establishments. I have selected a few of the reviews received over the last 3 weeks and hope that you will see my point of view.

The Bell Inn, Winterbourne Stoke, Salisbury

"Making a stop at what I could recall as being one of the few options for a meal on the return journey from Thruxton to Frome, my wife and I were annoyed by and very disappointed with our visit to the Bell Inn at Winterbourne Stoke.I don't wish simply to replicate earlier reviews, but the almost all of the details of poor service listed so far also occurred to us. I asked the thoroughly miserable young barmaid for two highchairs for our two children (2y 3m & 8m) to be told in a grunt that they didn't have any. I was astonished by her manner and by the reply. We decided that we'd manage as we were all hungry, despite the fact that there was a very limited menu with few options offering any kind of fresh vegetables. " [Read the full review]

The Rising Sun, Lacock, Chippenham

Have just got home after a lovely day out with friends. We travelled from Cardiff and they travelled from Reading meeting at the Rising Sun for lunch, what a disaster ! The Roast of the day was beef,chewy and tasteless, the accompanying vegetables were cold and tasteless, and the Yorkshire pudding !!! I don't know how they dare call it that. To add insult to injury it was all smothered in the most tasteless and greasy gravy. I have never complained about a Sunday roast before but I must say that I found it quite inedible. [Read the full review]

The White Hart, Pirbright, Woking

Sad to see that there are a number of people that have had similarly bad experiences here. Great looking pub, with a good beer / wine list, let down terribly by the food and service. We went on an admittedly busy bank holiday weekend, and were told that there was a 35 minute wait for main courses, which was fine as we weren't in a hurry. We ordered some bread with oil & vinegar to tide us over (which took 40 minutes to appear) [Read the full review]


The above are just 3 samples of bad service being dished out to customers. The interesting point is all these customers were in the Pub for food and therefore would have been spending a reasonable amount of money. I'm at a loss to see in these hard times why the managers/landlords do not take heed of peoples complaints. It would seem looking through the tens of thousands of reviews that many of the bad reviews are not isolated incidents but indicative of the sort of service the particular establishment provides.

Come on Publicans the British public are out there trying to support you but please give them some decent service and at least some courtesy that costs nothing after all!

Rural Pubs hoping for a good Spring and Summer

Having visited many rural Pubs recently, the concensus of opinion seems to be that if there is a good Spring and Summer this year the trade should be good as more people are preparing to holiday in the U.K.

The only problem with this reasoning is how many of you would put money on 2009 being a bumper year weather wise?

Pubs are closing at the rate of 39 per week. On a recent drive from the North of England back to West Wales I counted over 30 pubs closed and boarded up. Some were advertised for sale and others just looked deserted a very sorry state of affairs.

Pubs now need to examine every aspect of their business and look for new ways to entice the customers in and more importantly make sure they return time and again.

Conventional advertising has become increasingly expensive. I was talking to one landlord who had spent over £100 just to advertise a weekend event recently, he has since joined Pubsulike and advertises his events on his Pubsulike pages and intends to put smaller adverts in the papers in future directing them to his Pubsulike pages. He reckons this will save him several hundreds pounds a year!

We have decided to continue with our Credit Crunch busting offer of a completely free trial membership for 6 months to prove how Pubsulike can help your business.

Christmas is hard work......

Christmas Menus

I never continue to be amazed by the number of Publicans that complain about lack of business and then when an opportunity like Christmas comes along do nothing to promote their Pub or Bar.

What do I mean by this?

Well today the owner of the offices in Cardigan (http://www.parchouse.co.uk/) Dave Leonard popped in and asked several of the tenants or guests as he likes to call us, whether we wanted to go for Christmas lunch at a local establishment, I guessed it would be one of the many Pubs and Bars in the area that serve food. But no, it was the Wildlife Centre in Cilgerran (http://www.welshwildlife.org/) and why had Dave decided on this? Quite simply because someone at the Wildlife centre had the initiative to drop a small rather non-descript menu leaflet through the doors of the offices here. They now have a booking for about a dozen people at about £20 per head, nice little bit of business.

How many publicans have done the same?

I know of a few but not enough, the 100's of members of Pubsulike already have the opportunity of displaying their Christmas Menus, which give them an immediate advantage over the competition. In the forthcoming Pubsulike 2009 the ability to choose from over 50 different menu styles all of which are guaranteed to be printer friendly and an emailing option which allows direct transmission to contacts will increase further the effectiveness of Pubsulike as an advertising medium.

I'm reminded of the BT advertising campaign that stated 'work smarter not harder', this is what publicans must now do, it is what the public expect and any less will not bring about the new business they desperately need. We have spent hundreds of hours this year integrating new ideas into the new Pubsulike 2009 system many of which have come from seeing how sites like myspace and facebook operate. Why? Because people have grasped the web and are now using sites like myspace on a daily basis to communicate and inform, Pubsulike is adapting to these new requirements and will ensure it offers all the tools needed to promote your Pub or Bar.

Credit Crunch Killing Rural Pubs

This new blog post is unfortunately not a happy one.

Having just listened to the Chancellor's statement in the House of Commons this afternoon and his announcement of a cut in VAT to 15% from the 1st December 2008 makes me wonder will this help in any small way the Pubs and Bars that are suffering so badly at the moment?

Unfortunately I think not.

Having travelled throughout the UK this year and visited 100's of Pubs I have been most upset to see the number of establishments that were either up for sale or closed up completely. One town in Cornwall had 1/3rd of it's Pubs closed since I had last visited 18 months ago.

The consensus of opinion amongst the landlords I have spoken to is to blame the supermarkets with their low cost drink. I have to say that I am in agreement some tied tenants I know cannot purchase drinks from their suppliers for what they could get them for in their local Tescos. A ridiculous state of affairs!

What can Publicans do?

Over the last 10 years Pubs have changed considerably and the emphasis on providing good food has become a major influence in the general public's decision to favour a particular establishment, but come on not every Pub in the land can become a Gastro Pub!

Other publicans have decided to provide more live entertainment but this comes at a price, assuming you were to employ a solo singer which typically would cost £120 - £140 for an evening. This entertainment would have to bring in an additional £250 - £300 just for the landlord to break even. A real life example would be; Did the pub sell an EXTRA 100 PINTS, the answer is probably no. If the entertainment were to be provided on a Friday or Saturday night, traditionally the busiest nights for most Pubs, then chances are the Pub would be busy with it's regular clientele and whilst the regulars may stay a little longer it is doubtful they would drink much more than they would normally. For the entertainment to attract people from further afield then the Publican would have to advertise. Even a small advert in a local regional newspaper will cost between £30 - £40 making the additional revenue needed rise to £310 - £390 so it get worse. Of course I am writing this from a rural perspective, I appreciate that in larger towns or cities where the cost of getting to and from the Pub or Bar is considerably reduced live entertainment can and does work profitably, but in rural areas where the cost of a taxi would probably have to be added to the evening's drinks bill an evening out at the Pub has now become for some prohibitively expensive.

So will the 2.5% cut in VAT make any difference?

Even if the cut is actually passed onto the public the 2.5% is not going to make much difference to a night out at the Pub. Let's assume that a typical non binge drinking couple come out for a meal; starters, main and dessert and a couple of drinks each.

Before 1st Dec 2008

2 * Starters @ £4.00 = £8.00
2 * Mains @ £10.00 = £20.00
2 * Desserts @ £5.00 = £10.00

2 Glasses Wine @ £3.10 = £6.20
2 Pints Beer @ £2.60 = £5.20

Total £49.40

After 1st Dec 2008

Take 2.5% off the total gives a saving of £1.24

I really do not think this is going to make any difference to a typical couple coming out to the Pub and this is assuming that the 2.5% is passed on, but think about the logistics, the Publican is going to have to re-price his menus and re-print them, not a 5 minute job. Plus many Publicans are using the flat rate VAT scheme, how is this going to work? All in all the 2.5% VAT cut is not going to make any big difference except to say the psych0logical one. You know; the feel good factor, if the media back this as a good step along with the other changes announced then people may actually come out to the local for a couple of drinks and that is all that is needed in many rural pubs, just 5 or 6 more customers each evening can and will make the difference between life and death for your local Pub.

Just listened to the Radio 4 news summary and it was annoucned that the cut will make no difference to drinks or fuel prices!

I hope my next post will be in a more cheerful vein.

Threatened by Landlord over Pub Reviews

Well here's a first. This evening I took a call that had 'knocked on' from our Sales Office. Our new IP based phone system routes calls to whoever is available at the time to answer them, in this case it was myself.

The caller insisted on knowing my name but refused to give his or his Pub's name, then went on to say that 'his' Pub had just had a £300,000 refurbishment and he was fed up with hearing that it had been reviewed badly on; http://www.pubsulike.co.uk/ I asked him twice as to the name of the Pub concerned but he refused to let me know the name.

Instead he said:

I WANT MY PUB TAKING OFF YOUR SITE NOW!

YOU'LL KNOW THE NAME OF THE PUB WHEN YOU GET A VISIT!

Well if that's not threatening behaviour I don't know what is. I'm a member of the BII and doubt very much if this individual is as his attitude indicates he is clearly not a 'fit and proper'* person to be running a Pub.

If he had the courtesy of providing me with his name and the name of the Pub concerned I would have looked into the situation. We receive hundreds of Pub reviews every day of the week and with over 56,000 Pubs, Bars and Inns listed it will take the Pubsulike researchers some time to trawl through every bad review to see if we can identify this individuals Pub, my view is if this is his normal attitude any negative comments are probably well deserved.

The phone number he used was 05601 766290 this is a non geographic number normally issued with a broadband calling package. We called the number back but did not get an answer. All our calls are recorded and upon replaying his original call to a legal colleague he agreed that it definitely constituted threatening behaviour.

I'll ask the 75,000 plus weekly visitors to Pubsulike to help identify this person, why not look through the Latest Reviews and check out the bad ones see if you know which Pub has the misfortune of being run by this individual.

If you know the identity please email reviews@pubsulike.co.uk

Oh well you can't please all of the people all of the time!

* Fit and Proper was used by magistrates a few years back to describe the suitablity of a person to hold a licence.

Pub or Restaurant?

Now here's a good question:

When is a Pub not a Pub?

Answer:

When it thinks it's a Restaurant.

The reason I mention this is more and more often I am receiving comments from Pub customers all over the UK saying, things along the lines of:

'My Pub isn't a Pub anymore it's turned into a b****y Restaurant!'

'Can't get served a decent Pint anymore, they don't seem interested in the regulars'

'Kids all over the damned shop, I only came out for a quiet Pint!'

Well unfortunately for those amongst us that just wanted to come out for a quiet drink this is becoming more and more common.

The reason?

Quite simply economics, it is extremely difficult nowadays to make money out of selling just Drinks.

I will recount the tale of a Pub owned by one of the major Pubcos. The previous landlord who was lucky enough to own the Freehold, sold up and moved on, the purchaser was the aforesaid major Pubco. The Pub then went on the market. Although it was based in a reasonably busy Town the Pub was a little off the beaten track and had gained a reputation for underage drinking and permitted consumption of certain substances! Basically it needed a good clean up and start afresh. This is what the new tenants then undertook and having spent a considerable sum on acquiring the lease and refurbishing the Pub, reopened to initial good reviews. However the tenants had not run a Pub before and did not have the capital behind them in order to re-establish the Pub as a Pub/Restaurant which was essential for it to survive financially. It would take far longer than 6-18 months for it to become established and within this time the major Pubco had put the rent up to a figure that was completely unrealistic.

I remember sitting down with the tenants and working out the number of Pints they would have to sell just in order to meet the rent, it was over 775 pints each week and that was before Council Tax, Electricity, Gas, Oh and of course WAGES!

Now I know some of you landlords out there will say 775 Pints that's nothing I do that in a busy weekend, but you are probably running a Large Town Centre Pub with lots of passing trade.

So getting back to the point, this Pub had based it's business on Food being the major earner and not Drinks, all the plans had been based on the takings being 70/30 or perhaps 60/40 Food and Drink. In the end the business failed and the tenants moved out having lost their entire savings!

The Pub has since been taken over again and also decided it needed to be supplying Food in order to make it pay lets hope they have better luck than the last people, because if the Pubco gets the rent it wanted 18 months ago this Pub is going to have to be serving a lot of Pints to pay it's way.

It's a sad fact that traditional Pubs can no longer exist on just the Drinks trade, perhaps in a large Town centre it's ok, but in the rural areas where Taxi costs are exhorbitant no Pub could expect to survive on a couple of Pints from each of it's regulars.

The major Pubcos aren't worried though because they have a queue of hopefuls just waiting to part with their hard earnt/borrowed cash, so I'm afraid to say the Restaurant/Pub is here to stay and the little Country Pub serving a Pint and a Packet of crisps is going to fade into oblivion.

What's happened to good service?

I don't know if it's the miserable weather causing us to get an increasing number of bad reviews, but over the last few months we've seen a decided increase in the 'BAD COMMENTS ' received for Pubs. In a few instances we have even been sent recorded delivery letters with photocopies of the bill and a detailed letter asking us to approach the managem,ent of the Pub on their behalf. In these instances we pass on the comments to the Pub concerned in the hope that they will rectify the situation.

A few people have been known to put on a review in the heat of the moment and then email us a few days later to ask us to remove it, which is fine, but I always remind the person that they should always address any complaint to the managment at the time. This is where I'm finding an increasing number of Pubs seem to be completely devoid of any visible managers! Where are they all when they are needed? I can tell you in more than one instance when I accompanied one of our researchers to a Pub, the managers and his mates were all upstairs watching Sky Sports and couldn't be bothered to come to the bar to answer a Ladies complaint.

There seems to be too many 'unsuitable' people going into the Pub trade now, I was told by a senior manager for a large Pub group that it is easier to get a Pub than a mortgage on a house, so they have lists of people just queuing up for Pubs!

Please continue to let us and the 75,000+ visitors a week that visit Pubsulike.co.uk know your views on any Pub, Bar or Inn you visit I can assure you that in an increasing number of instances the Pubs have taken notice!