Café or Pub?

There was talk the other night in the pub about onomatopoeiae. Strictly, of course, such a thing is one or more words that imitate or suggest the source of the sound they are describing. Now a pub isn't a sound, well they can be quite noisy, but it's a building. Think about it though, if you had never heard of a pub the sound makes you think of some smelly, damp, squelchy thing you'd avoid if you found one by the side of the road. Of course, unfortunately, sometimes this is actually the case when it comes to pubs.

Now there are plenty of bloggers out there telling us how bad pubs are. It's no wonder nobody goes in them, they should just jolly well tidy themselves up, oh and also at the same time provide cheap booze and nosh into the bargain. I run a pub and therefore I understand all too well how difficult it is for a publican to balance price against customer expectation of quality. The problem is where exactly to pitch their product; at the cost conscious customer or the quality conscious customer?

One of the things that the publican can do very little about is the building. OK, a lick of paint here and a few nice comfortable chairs there, a big plasma screen telly, if that's what will work and maybe, if he's flush with cash, knock a wall down between two rooms to make a nice open plan type of affair. But, bottom line, he's stuck with the bricks and mortar he has. For many pubs that is not a problem, once the inside is good and there is a customer base that grows things can be great.

One busy week last summer, on our day off, we managed to get to a town late afternoon. It's nice when we are out to get some food made by somebody else. We spend all our time trying to make other people happy we might as well enjoy some TLC ourselves. Because I like pubs and beer and like to help to support our industry we search out pubs to eat in. However, because we always seem to get away late, due to this supplier needing to be phoned for an urgent delivery, or some other administrative humdrum necessity, we quite often get to town after lunch is finished. The rural pubs that we do enjoy visiting for lunch would already have stopped serving and so we decided to explore a town that is well known for good food.

On this occasion it was approaching 4pm. We walked past several new build café type places, which I thought looked nice, but decided on a traditional pub. This particular town is a little unfamiliar to us so pot luck was required. We chose a nice traditional Victorian facade pub, it was difficult to see inside but I'm normally happy to take pot luck.

Once inside a pub I feel uncomfortable turning around and walking out just because the pub turns out not to have the facilities I like - it seems a little rude. On this occasion I should have realised as soon as I saw the very obvious and slightly overbearing plasma screen TVs showing dart games. However, I do know that every pub has to play to its clientele so we stayed and ordered a pint of the one hand-pulled beer. Sadly, it would seem, that was off and the suggestion by the landlady was that the cask had failed to sell quickly enough. I found this interesting as the pub clearly was not a quiet one.  The fall back position of nitro-keg Guinness, which I have not had to suffer for some time, was accepted with reluctance.

After all we were only looking for lunch. A quick look at the lunch menu confirmed the usual suspects of Cumberland Sausage, Cottage Pie, ubiquitous curry and other similar traditional rubbish. No doubt the darts fans would be right at home with this along with their pint of bland mass produced lager or nitro-keg John Smiths. One thing was for sure the prices were extremely reasonable and three lunches plus three drinks came to less than £20.

Conversely, I could have chosen one of the nice cafés with their big windows letting in bags of natural light giving an airy and less stuffy environment altogether. The lack of distracting and frankly offensive in-your-face sports channel and an increasing number of interesting bottled beer selections make my recent eating experiences in licenced cafés much more pleasurable than the traditional town centre pub. Indeed, it is my experience that pubs generally don't do wonderful food, its beer soaking stodge prepared to a budget. Equally, the buildings of traditional pubs can often be constraining and creating a situation where the style organically drifts towards my onomatopoetic description I began with, as much due to the desires of the regular drinkers as to anything else.

Regular followers of my views will rightly wonder why I write this negative view of pubs. I regularly get upset at writers who simply state that pubs, generally, need to try harder. My point here is that the general view of the pub is that it has to provide a traditional environment that fits the desires of the established customer base. New build cafés and modern refurbished bars often provide a better, more modern style but then get accused of being overpriced and snobby.

I'd finally like the reader to consider the constraints the building that is the pub puts on the operator. Many traditional pubs which "should try harder" have an uphill struggle against such things as accessibility, food hygiene, fire safety and other reasonable legislated conditions of operation. Many pub operators are doing a great deal of work just to keep up with these and are having a hard time competing with more modern new builds and refurbishments.

Equally, it can be difficult for a pub to portray the style to the passer-by. Many traditional pubs are in Victorian buildings which might well portray a romantic notion but high window ledges and narrow windows can make it difficult for the passer by to get any sort of glimpse into the interior. This is a problem that concerns me about my own place, short of propping our door open, which makes the bar cold, we find it difficult to portray an open "feel" from the outside. We've tried placing an A-board by the road, several times, but the number we have lost due to them being blown over or run over is depressing.

If a pub is delivering a service that is satisfactory for the bulk of its customer base then where is the problem? Despite the example pub above not being to my taste it is an operating pub that provided a service that was popular with some. Further more, it goes to make me wonder whether we would in fact be better off ceasing to worry about the pubs that close, perhaps some buildings are better off being put to alternative uses.