Pubs ?

snip

Well put, Paul!

I think there's two parallell markets (could even be three)

The real money seems to be huge town centre pubs selling alco-pops and plastic lager/cider to large numbers of people at weekends . Nowadays they go out already having drunk a cheap bottle of wine or two and get absoluteley pi**ed. This has the accompanying social problems that the Daily Mail readers can get up tight about. The government use these as an excuse to put up duty to prevent "binge" drinking.

In the middle are the Free Houses who specialise in different real ales from independent brewers and (usually) take care that the beer they sell is up to scratch. These are the ones of most interest to this NG. Think they are probably doing quite well financially.

And at the bottom of the pile are the PubCo owned pubs who are being overcharged outrageously for both their lease and the bulk of the products they sell. These are the ones that are closing at the rate of 4-5 a week. Beerwise they are forced to sell national brands (blands?) only and because they cannot make ends meet they try to attract additional customers by installing sky tv, etc. If they aren't closed they are charcterised be frequent changes of ownership as landlords go bust and the pubcos find another idiot with siome redundancy money or an inheritance.

Here, here!

That is why I got out of the trade 11 years ago when Bass told me they were not selling their estate but not being stupid I saw punch coming! I found an idiot to sell my lease to, thank you, thank you! The only way I would consider going back in would be if I found a free house I could afford, and I would have to do a lot of soul searching to justify that to myself. I am now a Taxi driver and there are five other people on the firm that I would classify as ex proper publicans. I would add that I was in the trade at 23 and had my pub for 15 years the last 10 of which we were in the good beer guide. All of those who taught me so much about the trade are out of it now also.

Stuart Hudson