During the last 10 year there has been an unprecendented number of pub closures. However, there are still over 30,000 pubs open and serving locals whether in cities or rural countryside. Country pubs are a little trickier to commute to daily so the concept of popping down to your local is different.
The closure of so many pubs obvioulsy is no shock then, that finding a pub that is open near you becomes a chore, unless you live in a big city where the choice of pubs is just the same as not knowing which bar of chocolate to choose from so many. If you’re in London then you’ll know exactly what this means. Too much choice and so many pubs that are all competing to be your local. Wetherspoons for example are practically on evey main high street in most cities but can you call a wetherspoons your local or just a place that is efficiently runs that serves a cheap pint, after all plastic smiles and formalities are not what we visit a local pub for.
Finding a pub near you that you actually want to go into will always be a chore and once found can you be bothered to walk to your new found local pub?
Shall we carry out a quick survey – it may take at least 12 months to collect enough data but we’ll set one up and see what the results yield.
The rural communities have been effected as much as the deprived areas of towns and cities, there isn’t anywhere that pubs haven’t been effected. The reasons have mostly been blamed on the smoking ban, cheap supermarket booze.
The pubs that are open and welcome the local community to visit for a pint and pie suffer from inflated ego syndrome. They forget that they have to provide reasons for people wanting to come in to their pub other than it being merely open. The personallity of the landlord or management is the fundamental key to success for the pub.
How many times have we been into a pub only to discover the bloke behind the bar is a miserable git. It wouldn’t be much of a surprise to discover that most of the pubs closing it’s doors were run by such people so the chances of finding a person like this behind the bar to welcome you is getting slimmer! So it’s not all bad news.
Like most businesses, pubs suffer from the same supply and demand variables in the weeklyrunning operation.
The biggest single factor for the success of a pub is the weekly disposable income of its locals! And if the locals are not impressed with whats on offer they will have to find a local pub that ticks the boxes for justying the weekly spend in the pub. It’s not all about drinking beer!
Finding a pub in your town. With so many pub directory websites available to help you find a local pub or a pub near somewhere you are visiting it should be easy for you to find a decent pub. This is not the case unfornately.
Beer in the Evening will tell you where all the drug dealing pubs are and where people had a bad pint 3 years ago.
Pub Explorer will tell you comprehensively what the pub has to offer and how to find the pub (quite a useful website)
But this is not the case and we are back on the subject of pub closures. Decent pubs it appears remain open but not always run by good landlords. Now there is a book title not out there! There is the good pub guide and the good beer guide but no Good Pub Landlord Guide! Maybe we’ll start writing now.
Because there are so many sources of information on pubs we often jusy pop in to pub on whim and this if fine if the pub delivers what it said on the tin and this is perhaps why the success of pub such as JD Wetherspoon
