On Wed, 6 Aug 2003 14:08:34 +0100, Alan Perrow wrote (in message ):
It also should be noted that in some instances supermarkets make no profit on sales, instead the profit is made by not paying the supplier until months later and accruing interest on the income (not that it works particularly well with current interest rates).
You've obviously never stood in a bank queue. People still use banks, people and businesses.
Wy do I find this impossible to believe. Or are you one of those who believe that tescos counts as a local butcher etc? Really?
Tosh. Any privatised monopoly will succeed, however badly it provides. I'm sure you've heard of railtrack et. al. And HSBC have just returned record profits this week, NOT by opening late hours needless to state.
Supermarkets are normally concerned with profit only, customer satisfaction may be allowed to decrease as the local businesses are closed down due to this. A similar situation will exist with JDW and other pubs in the future, if it's not already happening.
They meet that demand by providing 24-hour cash machines and telephone access, not by physically opening their branches. Not, admittedly, a very useful example for pubs to follow, but makes the point that businesses react to changing demand patterns in innovative ways.
One of the reasons that so many local butchers and other shops went to the wall is that they closed at 5.30 pm and did not change their opening hours to recognise the fact that more and more potential customers were not available during the standard working day.
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It can't have escaped your attention that supermarkets are engaged in a cut-throat war with each other and therefore can't afford to ignore customer satisfaction. However, there is more to customer satisfaction than "highly personalised service".
Few pubs have anything remotely resembling a local monopoly situation, and even if there were only half as many that would still be true.
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That rather depends on what it builds its share on in the first place, surely? Pubs are different, their cuatomers are different, so their hours are different.
Well, in my home town of Linlithgow, the pubs do all have different opening hours. My local, The Four Marys, has the shortest hours of all of them.
On Thu, 7 Aug 2003 7:54:51 +0100, Alan Perrow wrote (in message ):
HSBC also own the fastest growing 24 hour telephone banking service, First Direct, which is increaingly a big earner for them.
In message , to wrote
It is. More people are drinking at home.
In article , to writes
Bullshit. What about those pubs that use oversized glasses to ensure that their customers get what they pay for - a pint of beer? And they charge no more than pubs that sell short measure.
Please name your pub so I can be sure to avoid it in future.
In message , PeterE wrote
If all pubs were the same I wouldn't regularly walk past half a dozen pubs to visit my local.
Most pubs (regrettably) fall into the rather bland type of scotco that we see everywhere these days. I say regrettably for it has been my experience that whilst quality will out, ie there will always be some who will pay for quality, this can only work in areas of relatively high population, for the great mass of mankind is more interested in price than quality. Unless you would hold jdw to be the cornerstone of quality?:-)
Just out of interest, how many pubs were in Linlithgow say 25 years ago and how many now? Most areas have seen a continuing reduction in numbers of pubs, and I don't think it's because all landlords are bad.
??? Is here a bank which doesn't provide these?
They made it (if you read the report) by having taken on lots of debtors, debtors which most banks won't have, and hence charge higher than normal interest rates. They are also laying aside a lot of money for bad debts.
You have posted a self defeating argument. If said butchers *had* stayed open a further say 5 hours/day then they would have incurred much greater costs, and yet, unless we all took to the Atkins diet, the money spent on meat would have been constant. I have yet to hear anyone declare that supermarkets compare with a good butcher on quality, but the supermarkets win on convenience (many different items available under the same roof) and, due to lower staff costs (staff:turnover) longer hours of opening. The strange thing is that many supermarket users bleat like lost lambs when their local post office/butcher/pub shuts down!:-)
I think you mean debt! The British seem to have an incredible predeliction for colossal amounts of debt:-( HSBC's largest earner this year has been a colossal growth in its lending to people who are not the best repayers.
They turn to it (and other panaceas) when the debt becomes too much for them:-)
I have seen very little in any form of supermarket competition which seeks to address anything except price, Booth's being an honourable exception.
Those few pubs might be called jdw. A growth rate which makes me believe that price is what counts to most drinkers. Of course the sort of local pub I prefer might not be to everyone's taste, but I do confess to liking a landlord/lady who actually knows and appreciates beer, in which respect with jdw's I have been dissappointed. This is *not* as get at jdw BTW but I have to confess that were I running a decent hostelry I would not wish them to set up within half a mile of me. The buying power of several hundred pubs in one chain is slightly higher than that of an individual pub:-)
So following your "logic" pubs might as well close on Sundays as well. Please direct me to your "evidence". Currently in Scotland by the way and not a single licensee I have spoken wanted to go back to the "bad old days" as espoused by you.
Brett
Oversized glasses do not ensure full pints.
And how many pubs use them anyway?
Robin
Why longer hours? Why not shut for the equivalent time in the day, and open in the evening? As a single person who works 0900ish-1700ish it's not really an option for me to use shops which shut at 1700-1730. Like it or not, Sainsbuggers is open until 2200, which has its advantages.
Someone mentioned doctors. My GP's surgey is open in the morning and evenings (I don't know how late, but I can get an appointment "after work"), but not in between.
Yup, I agree with you totally. The interesting thing in Linlithgow is that the bar with the shortest hours is also the best bar by a long way, in may ways: better beer, better food, and far less trouble.
Sadly, yes, this is all too true. There is a scheme in Linlithgow to open a JDW type mega bar to accommodate over 700 drinkers at a time, in an old cinema.
Er, no, absolutely not.
Back then, I believe there were about 10. There are now 12 (I think). But the town has also grown markedly in that time (more than tripled in size), so it's hard to draw any lesson there.
Robin Cox7/8/03 10:51 PM
If the glasses are filled to the marking on the glass - that is a pint. If there is then a shallow head on it - that is slightly more than a pint. Beer is sticky and I don't want a sticky glass.
No doubt 'smaller' pint glasses are marginally cheaper to buy. If oversize glasses were used for nitro keg froth styles it could mean in theory less profit for the greedy pubs who calculate the shortfall measures in additional profit.
However, IMO there seems to be more beer 'wasted' and spilled by this stupid process of 'topping up' undersized glasses right to the brim, than any wastage or supposed loss of profit from oversize glasses.
I wish more now did. This was the way beer was dispensed in the north of England 50 years ago. Aged 15 (I looked older), in Newcastle upon Tyne, my first pint of old style draught Bass in a big glass - gorgeous stuff!
The idea of filling a modern small pint beer glass to the very brim with beer or lager and then having it slop all down the outside of the glass; then over the bar; then over your hand; then over the floor and carpet; over the tables - is patently ridiculous.
We don't do this at home and we don't do it when serving any other item of food or drink anywhere... So why? They don't do this when I've been abroad
- but I've seen many a Dutch, German or Danish barman de-froth the glass to aid filling the right measure. Only in the UK could such 'traditional' stupidity have now become the accepted norm'.
CR
In message , Chris Rockcliffe wrote
This sounds like Wetherspoon training. "We cannot fill the glasses as the customer always spills his drink"
The problem isn't so much will liquid to the brim but the measure that is an inch, or more, short as found in many pubs.
The 'norm' isn't a full pint or even the 95% pint. Real ale drinkers probably do get a better deal than those people drinking the Nitro-keg products, except in pubs that use tight sparkers. However, for every good pub (beer measure wise) there are a dozen that routinely attempt to serve a pint that is well below even the trade's short measure guidelines.
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