August 5th, 2008
Travelodge has gotten excited this week at the government’s announcement that it is to spend £10 million of our money to re-generate three venerable old seaside towns; Blacpool, Dover and Torbay.
They don’t make it clear how this money will be split up, or even if it’s a typo because £3.3m won’t go very far in Blackpool or anywhere else, but I do think throwing £10m at three dilapidated old resorts is pretty much feeding strawberries to donkeys.
I live on the coast near Blackpool, and have seen first hand the decline in the town over the last couple of decades or so. To be fair, Blackpool is very good at what it does. What it does is play to a fairly straightforward audience of weekend pissheads and the ‘grey’ pound, markets that are wearisome and, erm, naturally declining respectively.
I do see some parrallels between tired English resorts and the licensed trade in that they both have an element of managed decline. I’m not a fan of local politicians, who is?, but the decision makers in Blackpool have been pretty creative over the years. It’s gone from being a solid, classic, family resort to the squalid shit-tip that we see buried in under a blizzard of blood and vomit every weekend these days without succumbing to the near total social and economic collapse that has hamstrung places like Morecambe.
Similarly, once thriving pubs seem to get passed through several smaller companies who manage them to a smaller and smaller profit but it keeps them alive for a while until they get boarded up and then pulled down or converted into carpet shops. There are some mercurial talents operating in this sector and I admire them.
We are good at managing decline in this country, from Empires to Pubs, and I do believe that it will be a feature of our lives for the foreseeable future.
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July 30th, 2008
The man who captained Sunderland to one of the biggest upsets in FA Cup history has become yet another victim of our trade, it was announced this month that he has gone bankrupt after ten years running a pub in the city.
Brian Kerr captained Sunderland to their famous 1-0 victory over leeds in 1973. It was pretty much traditional for footballers of that era to retire into pubs and it’s always sad to see them come unstuck.
It must be galling for guys like him to see the amount of money that arrogant, semi- talented oiks earn in the game these days. Even habitually violent ex-cons can command £1.5 million a year and will never do a days work in their pampered lives.
If there is a Brian Kerr hat being passed around I will throw a few quid in, and maybe they could send it to me via St. James’ Park and see if anyone over there has enough of a conscience to help out?
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July 29th, 2008
Marstons and Punch have both made statements this week.
Marston’s have announced that helping tennants through hard times in this financial year will cost them £2m. Punch haven’t told us how much their lessees have had returned to them in assistance, but they have said that their shares are up some 14% as a US hedge fund has taken a 10% stake in their company.
I suspect that Punch are quite good at what they do, make money out of a pub estate, but the contrast with Marston’s could not be more stark. Punch have acquired a reputation as one of the more ruthless pub operators out there, which presumably means their numbers stack up.
Marston’s, on the other hand, have proven to be one of the more enlightened operators who will do everything they can to help their tennants survive tough times, although this business philosophy would appear to have cost them a considerable sum of money.
It may change at some stage, with somebody somewhere deciding that Marston’s need to be more ruthless and less benign as a landlord, but it’s possible that their saving grace is the fact that they are still a brewer as well as a pub owner and it’s in their interests to maintain standards and continuity to ensure throughflow of product.
Punch may be a successful pub estate operator, but Marston’s still manage to run good pubs and that is to be applauded in these testing times.
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July 14th, 2008
There are reports in the papers this week about a couple in Norfolk who have been fined a total of £8000 for defying the smoking ban, and the story of the guy in Blackpool doing the same thing is well documented.
I kind of admire this. I’m not a smoker and am personally glad to have the pubs smoke free, but there is something noble about such stoicly futile resistance to change.
We’ve seen it before, think about old ladies being unable or unwilling to pay their council tax, and it only ends in a couple of ways; both of which are not great results for the person fighting what they see as the good fight.
For both these sets of people, the ultimate answer will be prison or bankruptcy; possibly both. That’s a hell of a price to pay for having people light up in your pub rather than just outside.
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July 7th, 2008
Regent Inns’ share price took another pummelling last week, down to just over 3p ( yes, three pence ) at one stage before ‘bouncing’ back’ to finish the week at around the 4p mark. I’m kind of staggered by this. It’s not too many years ago when that share price was over 300p, I know things change but that is a dazzling fall.
I have some friends still at Regent, and many more throughout the industry who I met through my work at Regent Inns, and am genuinely sad to see where they have ended up.
They have made the decision to fight for their market share though, and knowing the people I do at Regent I believe that they have a chance of trading their way out of the situation they are in. They are clearly not breaking their banking covenants and there have been significant changes at the top; good luck to them.
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July 7th, 2008
Good to see some positive news in the press this week with the Suffolk brewer reporting a 1.4pc increase in pre-tax profits despite having had what they described as a ‘bloody hard year’.
I’ve said it before but some things are worth repeating; I admire Greene King.
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June 23rd, 2008
The Sunday Telegraph claims that UK beer sales have dropped below the five-billion-litre mark for the first time since 1975, according to figures provided by the British Beer and Pub Association.
Times they are a changing for sure. When I first started in this industry it was all about beer, even lager was supposed to be served in half pint glasses and drunk by ladies.
The sales mix has changed beyond recognition, and as the drinks industry has become better at responding to (or driving, depending on your point of view) customer demand, so drinkers have become more sophisticated and demanding in their wants.
Twenty years ago, a bloke who asked for anything other than a pint of bitter was either on a special diet or about to have his sexuality questioned. Bitter tasted pretty nasty, but getting used to the taste was a rite of passage that we all had to navigate.
I’m not surprised that beer volumes are dropping, tastes are more sophisticated and much of the market that used to drink in the pub is sat at home; a place where he can smoke tabs and drink cans of lager at 60p a pop.
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May 27th, 2008
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May 22nd, 2008
Pizza Hut and TGI Friday’s have agreed to give staff 100% of the tips that they make, following the launch of a new fair tips campaign. Unite, the trade union, is calling on restaurants and hotels to sign up to the fair tips charter, by ensuring that tips and service charges are distributed fairly among their employees.
It’s news to me that there is, or ever has been, any other system than giving employees all of their tips. What’s been happening to the rest?
I do think that people have a right to expect to hang onto tips, but the whole tipping culture has me a bit flummoxed and offended on occasion. I once read a quote by some sanctimonious tit along the lines of ‘this will always be a low paid industry until we learn to tip properly in this country’.
That whole notion is so wrong in my mind. Are we really supposed to believe that we must pay for the product, whatever that may be, and then make a contribution towards the staff wages? I very, very rarely tip in this country and will not patronise any place that imposes a service charge.
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