by Having achieved more than the National Farmers Union has ever done to highlight the plight of its members, Jeremy Clarkson appears to be accidentally bringing his own brand of lobbying to another industry that has a lot of traffic on it.
“They are closing at a rate of more than a thousand a year,” he wrote in this week’s Sunday Times. “You’d have to be mad to buy one. Insane. So I’ve bought a pub.”
He’s right: it’s definitely a risky venture. The past few years have been a rollercoaster of horrors for the hospitality industry. The pandemic, rising prices and high energy costs combined to spell death for many boozers. The number of pubs in the UK has fallen by a quarter – from 60,800 to 45,800 – since the millennium, according to the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA).
The major problems with staff shortages – which Clarkson highlights in his column – are very real and many pubs are having to reduce the number of days and hours they are open as a result.
Drinking habits are also changing. More people are drinking at home – a trend that seemed locked in, but started long before. By 2015, twice as much beer was bought in supermarkets as in pubs, clubs and restaurants combined, according to the BBPA.
Tim Martin, the outspoken boss of JD Wetherspoon, rarely misses an opportunity to complain about the “price difference” between pubs and supermarkets, a result of what he sees as unfair tax discrepancies on VAT and a business rates system that benefits the scale of the -groceries. . The gap widened further in April following a 9.8pc rise in the National Living Wage and a rise in business rates.
Less than a quarter of people rate going to pubs and bars as one of their top five activities, according to PwC research (the gym, watching streaming services and cafes all rank higher – which which means that I understand less and less of my peers now) . And, in one of the strangest acts of generational rebellion, young people seem less fond of inebriation than their parents.
One less often mentioned issue facing pubs is that they occupy buildings or land which is increasingly in demand from developers due to the UK’s appalling inability to build new homes. Government statistics show that 239 pubs were demolished or restored for other uses in the first three months of the year. That’s an increase of more than half compared to the same period in 2023.
However, all is not lost. British pubs have a centuries-old track record of evolving to meet the changing tastes of customers.
In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Dr David Knight, an architect and co-editor of The Pub, who has a history of pubs in London, said that pubs are “both deeply rooted in the fabric of British society but they are also capable of great change and innovation”. .
There is some evidence that the wider pub industry may have recently turned a corner and, if not flourishing, is figuring out how to survive.
It helps that consumer confidence appears to be recovering and leisure spending is bouncing back: Barclaycard says spending in pubs, bars and clubs was up 5.9pc last year while spending in restaurants fell 6.7pc , suggesting that customers are choosing more. affordable casual dining experience.
In an increasingly cost-conscious world, the best pubs have found that their niche is a step up from the ultra-cheap fast food joints, better value than fine dining and far more characterful than the privately owned identity chains equity. UK high streets are homogenised.
Last month, Young’s and Fuller’s announced strong results. Young’s, which owns more than 280 pubs, posted a 9pc rise in annual adjusted pre-tax profits to £49.4m. At Fuller’s, which has around 400 managed and tenanted pubs, pre-tax profits rose 40pc to £14.4m. In May, JD Wetherspoon said it was shooting for annual profits at the top end of market expectations.
It is clear that the challenges for independent operators and the large pub groups are different and so are their tactics. Last year, Stonegate Group, the UK’s biggest pub operator and owner of the Slug & Lettuce brand, announced it would introduce “dynamic pricing” for drinks in 800 of its 4,000 venues. I think this would go down like a sickly cold pint in the Cotswolds and Clarkson is probably best avoided.
But there are some common themes in the pub revival. Many, for example, are adding hotel rooms to their properties. Improving the food offer – around 40pc of Wetherspoons’ sales now come from grub – is vital as it caters to the UK’s growing army of coffee drinkers.
Clarkson has said he wants “everything” in his pub to be “grown or built in Britain”. That means no Coca-Cola (fair enough) and no coffee (not a good idea). Martin recently joked that free refills of Lavazza coffee are thought to be “responsible for spontaneous displays of bribery dancing among lapsed customers”.
Clarkson may want to widen the provenance of his products to include Ireland: Wetherspoons and Young’s have cited the strong uptake of Guinness among a wider range of customers, with sales of the black stuff up 29pc in the past year at Young’s pubs.
“The fashion gods have smiled on Guinness,” says Martin, “previously passed over by blokes my age, but now widely adopted by the younger generations.”
Clarkson is no fan of Labor (he recently said he’d rather vote for his dog than Keir Starmer), but if the party wins this week’s election their ambitious plans for business rates and labor laws for his new venture. . The pubs would be very welcome; the latter less so.
However, there is growing reason to hope that Clarkson’s new venture will have every chance of earning him a bit more than the impatient scumbag.
