There was talk recently of the government helping pubs to stay afloat but it seems to have been put on the back burner.
Well the thing they go on about is as per their
manifesto "
to protect our pubs we will maintain our Brexit Pubs Guarantee that means the duty on drinks on draught, such as beer and cider, will be less than in supermarkets"
Which sounds really impressive until you realise they trimmed it by 10%, making the duty on a pint 6p less than the supermarket equivalent. That's really going to help pubs.
Well it's competitive industry for sure, but far more margin than beer, though your point on energy costs is valid. Pubs that serve food generally have a better chance of survival.. they make far far more margin on food sales rather than beer sales. Got to be good food of course..
A beer only pub is struggling. Nice food attracts people. Profit on a pint only won't keep a pub open
It varies - both models can work. Food has higher margins but higher fixed costs, so sometimes the food is there to break even so that you sell more beer, and sometimes vice versa. And doing food does commit you to one or more chefs...which doesn't make life any easier! Let's just leave it at that.
The point really is that we've become impoverished over the last decade or so. Prices have risen, wages, by and large have not, tax thresholds have not.
One analysis has it that if growth had continued at the pre-2008 level, the average Brit would be £14k better off. Instead large parts of the country (outside London) are heading for the economic level of Eastern Europe, we're going to be sending plumbers to Poland soon to take advantage of the better wages.
Two things that haven't really been mentioned have been the effect of increasing the minimum wage, which has gone up over 60% more than inflation - can't begrudge staff better wages, but it's a big cost for businesses like pubs.
And the biggest one is the effect of pubcos screwing up pubs, in some cases deliberately so that they can sell them for redevelopment, but often just because they're not local and just don't understand the pub so just try to screw as much money as they can out of it in the short term regardless of the long-term effect.
Lots of pubs closing and yet there are still so many s*** pubs around with bad beer and not so many customers.
To take one example I know, a pub that was the real heart of the town, that was paying extra rent for the privilege of being free of tie, so that they could get all the good stuff in, whilst also having the standards like Carling for the folk who didn't want the fancy stuff. Paid rent all through lockdown, then their lease expired and the new manager from the pubco offered them a tied deal which made no sense economically so they had to walk away despite all the work that had gone into making it a great pub. And so they offered the same tied deal to someone who had other pubs with them - but with a limited tied selection and at tied prices that meant they had to charge over £1/pint more than anywhere else for stuff like Carling. So not surprisingly nobody went and they handed back the pub within a few months. Then another tenant - same story, stupid prices and lasted a few months. Now a third tenant is in there, and presumably they've got a bit less greedy on the tie, but it's just a crying shame as the place will never recover what was there before.
Pubcos are a huge problem, and not enough drinkers (or politicians) understand how or why they are the problem.
