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.