Pondering the Pub Thing Again

You know I love pubs. You don't? Look, I even owned one for a while, that's how much I love them. Owning a pub, it turns out, isn't always quite as much of a love thing as just going to one on a Saturday night, getting a bit tipsy and making slightly knob-head innuendo flirty jokes at the nice lady bar staff. Which is fun, until you get home, sleep it off, and get next day it gets pointed out by your partner, who of course was there too, that actually, you really are a knob-head. You remember through the haze of the hangover that actually, yes, you realise now, and for a few hours vow to never drink again. Or at least not quite so much. At least until next week at any rate.

The problem is, when you own a pub, and that drunken knob-head is in fact making irritating flirty jokey innuendo at your partner, you realise that actually drunk people, when you are not drunk, are very much not funny at all. But still, they are part of the territory, and you have to remain calm, as a person of responsibility, when you are the pub owner, and the person who might have to be up in the docks should anything turn nasty. Trying to square some of these circles was the reason I started writing this blog in the first place. Ultimately the stresses made us decide to leave the pub, before it got the better of us, although arguably, it already had.

I'm really going quite far off the track with this opening, but it is relevant background I think. And just to point out, we are just over a year into having our own licence on-trade outlet again¹, on Millom Station. You might have heard of it, it's called Hardknott OnTrack. We like it. We'd like it to be busier, and open more often, but it serves it's main purpose, which is to ensure there is somewhere in my town we can get Hardknott Beer served the way I want it. Due to the way I have it staffed, I'm normally only found in there sober when it's closed, generally fixing something. Any other time I'm found in there I'm a drunken dick-head. The arrangement seems to work OK, most of the time.

I possibly didn't need to give you that "I think I know what I'm talking about" preamble to introduce the main theme of this post, but I think the wrapping around the subject helps to make more of what would otherwise be just a favour for someone.

Earlier in the week Frances Brace, a British Guild of Beer Writers member forwarded me some information about a pub in her village that was potentially never going to open again. Asking if I could raise awareness as the village is trying to raise enough money to buy the pub and run it as a collective. The pub is call The Duke of Marlborough in Somersham I'm only too pleased to try and help, although I'm not sure what mentioning it on my blog will do, but happy to do so.

It got me thinking, as oft times I do; If no one want's to buy and run this pub, then perhaps this is just a lost cause? Putting all your money into a pub, or even finding a bank that will help out, can be a bit daunting. Haven't you heard? Pubs are struggling, so why would anyone in their right mind want to fund such a daft idea. If you think I'm working against Frances' request, bear with me.

The trouble with owner-run pubs is that often you become too close, too passionate, too caring. Very often everything you've ever owned has been ploughed into the pub and it is the licensee's whole life, and complete existence. Couple that with long days, a need to unwind, and a pint or two at the end of the day and you can end up with an incendiary situation when dealing with the thing day-in, day-out.

Could pubs run by the community be the very thing? I used to think not. How on earth can a pub be run by committee? That's just daft.

But it does seem to be working. In Cumbria there is the Hesket Newmarket pub The Old Crown. This is reputed to be the country's very first community owned pub. Why does the model seem to work? Why should a pub that doesn't seem to thrive under private ownership seem to do OK when run under the guidance of a gathering of pub enthusiasts?

I feel I do understand a little. For a start, a pub has a large user base. People who own the pub, in a collective, are likely to want to use their asset. They are also providing a feed-back into the pool of ideas, but generally off-line, rather than as a drunken knob-head saying "''eresh mate, what syou wants to do ish..."

I've had some great ideas when I've been drunk. I've also had some really lousy ones. The trouble is, when you've had a long day, and trying to unwind, the last thing you want is some drunk trying to tell you how to run your business. Rather than being receptive to new ideas, the scenario tends to make me more determined to ignore them all, even the ones I shouldn't.

A committee of genuinely caring people, who love the pub, and can discuss collectively the ideas, hopefully whilst not too drunk, may generate a truly inspirational environment. In any case, so long as they keep the job ticking over, and the books balanced, whatever they do, they'll be maintaining the pub the way they want it to be.

Most importantly, if the pub is in the hands of the community, perhaps it is more loved. Despite the fact that most licensees work very long hours for precious little reward, very often annoyance is directed at the licensee for "ripping off" the beer drinker. At least in the case of a pub run by the villagers, and other interested parties, the price of the pint is at least going back into the village asset with full transparency of the economics involved. The pub goer is empowered and given a little bit of control, and everyone is happy.

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¹It is now over 5 years since we sold our first pub. It is interesting that many people are unaware that we are no longer there. Indeed, we recently decided to stop supplying that pub with any beer at all, hence no mention of the pub's name in this text.

How much, is too much, for a pint of beer?

The title here is the opening question used by Mike Zeller of BBC Radio Cumbria this morning as he opened his piece on the question of prices in the centre of the Lake District compared to some town centre pubs. His point is that generally prices of beer in tourist locations are more than in city centres.

You can hear a recording of it here.

There does seem to be a confusion between towns and cities. And of course, sweeping generalisations abound.

It seems Radio Cumbria like to call me in to fill a few minutes. Never short of an opinion, and happy to get my brewery a free mention, it's a good exchange between me and the local radio station.

They always phone me up the afternoon before, give me a little gist of the subject, and I have a little think about what I might say.

This time I was determined to get across the point that buying beer in a pub is about a lot more than just buying beer. You are buying a service, renting a part of the pub for the time you are there. Possibly sharing your sorrows with the barman. Perhaps pushing your luck with the pretty young barmaid, who really doesn't need to be flirted with by some bloke who she'd not even tolerate outside her job.

We complain about pubs closing. Far too many are closing, it is claimed. And then, we complain about beer in pubs being too expensive.

Now, I understand about PubCo's. I understand about the smoking ban. I understand about beer duty. These are all undoubtedly influences on the pub's fate.

However, I'm pleased I managed to get in a key point at the end: if people don't value pubs enough to buy beer in them they will die, commercial fact.

Rubbish at any price

I often find myself disagreeing with Roger Protz when he writes, I'm not really sure why but something doesn't seem right when he talks about pubs. He can sure come out with some pearls of wisdom but they are often buried into bigger messages that don't make sense. Although he takes up the cause of the pub I can't help feeling that he is generally out of touch with the real problems facing the thousands of small businesses that form the pub industry. He does try, bless him, and I believe he's a very nice guy.

Last week there was a piece in the Morning Advertiser titled "Careless talk costs pubs" and on the page in the printed version is a big picture of supermarket own brand lager with large star badges proclaiming the 22.5p per can. Although this is a trade paper it does get seen by the man on the street, surely this is the sort of careless talk that does cost pubs. OK, so the picture may not be Rogers fault, I'm guessing he only provided the words.

Why are we, the trade, comparing 2% rubbish lager against the quality service that we provide? We shouldn't. The stuff in the supermarkets is often so rubbish that any price is too much. We need to get out and tell people how wonderful pubs really are. We should be shouting out that people should go to the pub because it's great and a service worth paying for. Lets stop this negative image we are all now projecting.

I firmly believe that we need to point out that pubs charge a little bit more because they are fantastic places to enjoy great products. It's about added value. No self respecting pub would want to sell a lager that is only 2% and tastes like fizzy water. The trade needs to stop talking down the industry and start showing customers how great the trade can be.

It's quiet for us mid week this time of year. We rarely take enough money to cover the overheads, but I'm not complaining. We're getting jobs done that we need to get done, like the new disabled loo and capping the chimneys. More importantly the phone has been red hot this last couple of weeks with people forward booking our rooms for later in the year. I really do think it's going to be the year of the "Staycation" holiday. All we need is a glorious summer.

If people are to stay at home this summer we need to entice them into the pub. If the trade keeps reinforcing the idea that everyone would be better staying in the back garden drinking 2% own brand lager then perhaps that is what they will do.

Pubs are great. Pubs are fantastic. I love going to the pub and always have. I believe many people do love to go to the pub and don't mind paying for quality, comfort and top class service. You can't buy any of that at the supermarket.

Guide me

My pub is, at least for now, in the Good Beer Guide. It might come out after this little tirade, but for now we are very proud to be in it. We also understand how difficult it is for every branch to make the selections each year. Although it is very difficult to be sure how important it is to my business overall, it certainly brings in some custom. When we get customers who choose the pubs they visit from the Guide, they sometimes ask how the selection is made. It is often commented that pub x just does not deserve to be in and pub y is much better and should be in. "Why is this so?" they ask.

In a pub last night along with some other CAMRA colleagues, there was a discussion of the relative merits of various pubs. I ventured that pubs that are selling exclusively beer from one large brewery are not as good as a pub that sells a variety of beers from many different breweries. "After all Jennings is a national brand" I, perhaps foolishly, threw in.

Well I was firmly rebuffed. Apparently it is not a national brand but a local beer to Cumbria. You can barely get it outside Cumbria, I was told. We have some very staunch local support for Jennings and this is good. I like most of their beers and last night I particularly enjoyed the Cocker Hoop with it's good hoppy aromas. The Cross Buttocks I thought was not so nice, although I don't know why.

I don't know about the readers experience, but since Marstons bought Jennings their beer seems to have been turning up all over the place. I believe that the Cockermouth plant has been expanded because of the increase of sales of the beers and of course I'm not complaining about that.

Then there is Robinsons, who frankly make some of the most uninspiring beers I have ever come across. They seem to be working their way into the Lake District and competing with Jennings. There are even some Robinsons pubs in the Good Beer Guide, although I can't understand why.

The reason in my mind for the Good Beer Guide is to inform visitors to an area about the very best real ale pubs. Locals don't need to be told because they already know. For me, being in the guide is important and it is important that there is a standard. There seems to be a pattern of pubs going into the guide because they are close to someone's house and it's their favourite local, not because they are superb pubs and have a well kept selection of exciting beers. Putting pubs in the guide so as to spread out the geography seems barmy. If there is a concentration of good pubs in an area then put them all in the guide and the barren areas will show up as such.

I cannot understand why a competitor of mine is not in the guide when they have a selection of well kept ales that are not determined by some bean counting suit somewhere. Why can good pubs like this get overlooked when others get put on a pedestal for providing the same thing that is provided the country over leaving the real ale tourist feeling cheated?

Of course the main thing is, if you do disagree with the choices locally to you, then join CAMRA and attend the meetings.

It's a matter of perspective

I believe it is an exciting time for Real Ale and speciality beers. It is the only part of the beer industry that seems to be doing OK. It is also an exciting time for the hospitality industry. More people are eating out than ever before. With the current economic crisis many people are thinking twice about that new car or moving house or that extravagant shopping trip. But we all need little treats and eating out is one such little treat that can fill the gap when we can't afford larger treats. They are "bite sized", can be justified case by case. The standard of food in this country is thankfully improving and more and more people are looking for something different.


Pubs are part of the hospitality industry, but there is much to be worried about here. Pubs are closing and the industry is running the risk of going stale. Restaurant style service is gaining ground and the habits of customers are challenging the position of the pub.


Now before I go any further, I have to point out that I really am a strong supporter of CAMRA. Without CAMRA we would very likely have little real ale and we would have to drink some sort of fizzy substitute. Having an organisation to support the beer and pub industry provides a useful lobbying group and has been, amongst other things, responsible for the duty discount that small brewers like us enjoy.

I know many people who are members of CAMRA and I'd like to think that some of the local branch members are friends of mine. This does not mean that I have to agree with them though. Most CAMRA members come from the perspective of the consumer, after all the organisation is a consumer group. CAMRA's main aim is to protect the rights of drinkers. It has been very successful in doing this for over 30 years.


Without CAMRA the pub and beer industry would certainly be different today. Although I do believe that CAMRA is one of those things that was bound to happen in some form or another. In the USA for instance there is an incredible growth of craft breweries and various beer organisations. It still remains a fact that CAMRA has had a huge positive influence on pubs.


But there are thoughts that are different to the CAMRA perspective. Some of these alternative perspectives come from drinkers who have some different views and some people who's livelyhoods rely on beer. Sometimes these can be the same people, like me.


I am getting the feeling I need to justify my voicing of opinions here. It would seem that my friend Ted thinks that I'd be better off brewing beer, especially if it had oak in it cut up with my diesel chain saw. I wonder if he thinks I'm winging about things that I can't change. Maybe he's right. But I feel an urge to express some of my own views. I will accept that they are only my perspective and everybody has a right to their view. I feel this is a better way to do it than getting out my soap box in the bar and putting everybody off their pint, although that does happen sometimes as well.


When we came here we had a rather rosy view of how to run a pub. Bright eyed and bushy tailed we set to trying to make it work. Very soon we found there were a huge stack of unsolvable problems. This stack of problems must be similar in many other pubs. It's just a question of how severe the problems are. Further to this I believed that serving good quality Real Ale that was well kept was all that CAMRA required and if you did this CAMRA would be the pubs saviour. I think CAMRA would like to believe this to be true. I'm sorry, but it's not, at least not as much as I think it could be.


Now we did go through a very dark period when we got to dislike CAMRA quite significantly. But we started to brew beer and amongts other things we got into the Good Beer Guide. I decided that the only reasonable thing to do was to join CAMRA. After all, if you can't beat them, join them. This was the start of a road to understanding better the perspective from their point of view.


It's still the case though, that if you are trying to make a living out of beer you are always considered partly the enemy. I think this is something of a shame. CAMRA want cheap beer, quality beer, comfortable pubs, cheap beer, full pints, cheap beer, a good variety of beer, cheap beer, no pubs shutting, cheap beer.......


The demands are not all achievable and certainly not all in every single pub. There are plenty of beer related blogs that are starting to explore these issues and I think this is good. I don't agree with some of the things that are said, but the discussion is very healthy, providing we keep it good humoured and try at least to appreciate all perspectives, if we can.


We believe we have changed the style of service at our property to one that is sustainable and that has a future. I intend to cover some of the issues that may be preventing the move forward of the whole of the pub industry. Pubs are failing and I believe part of the reason for this is a failure to move forward. I do believe that CAMRA hinder this to some extent by objecting to some ideas that may well be the future of the beer industry. This future requires us to look at the whole concept of the pub as we know it.


As I said in the beginning, it's an exciting time, I hope you will enjoy sharing this excitement with me.

It's political....

According to Charles Foster in his wonderful 10 Reasons to drink Real Ale, ale is political. I always knew this. But what is interesting is the problems that this creates. Political normally means thinking either left or right. This has created a cognitive dissonance for me recently.

I have always thought of myself as politically free. I don't vote for who most closely upholds my deep values, but for who I think will be better for me, my family, my friends and my wider community. There is a wider compassionate part that also looks at the people I don't know but who are truly in need of help. I believe that this classifies me as a floating voter.

I have always thought that the mass marketing from multinationals is generally bad. It makes us buy something that is fit for purpose, but may not be good, is consistent in quality, rather than good quality and where most of the value is in the marketing and the costs of the route to market. Whether you like it or not, and I don't like it, it is the thing that keeps the vast majority of our economy going.

It has been recently proven that real ale is more likely to be consumed by affluent people. But wait, don't we feel that CAMRA is a little bit lefty? I think it gives that impression and so does Jeff Pickthall on his blog. But look at the replies to Jeff. Most seem to disagree. On another blog Kerran Cross, who is very clearly to the left of politics, seems to think real ale is the preserve of the rich.

Anti-globalisation is seen as a lefty point of view. Perhaps this is the key lefty impression that CAMRA exudes. But wait, buying local, organic, hand crafted and artisan is for the poncy right surely?

Ann and I travelled down to London recently on Virgin Trains. We could have taken the car and avoided the drunks and constant users of Virgin Mobile phones, but it would have cost us more, emitted more CO2 and taken longer. The red wine was reasonably priced but not good quality. The beer in the buffet car was not worth having. We could have travelled First Class but we're not that poncy, yet.

Without Virgin, or something similar there would be no Intercity trains. Yes, there is the option of a nationalised industry, but is that really any better? It may not be any worse, depending on your viewpoint.

The French drink wine. They drink a lot of it. The social class of the drinker is irrelevant, it is still a national drink. The price of the wine varies incredibly. The consumers disposable income effects the choice and there is a relationship between quality and price, even if there is some question about how much that quality is really worth. The french really care about the provenance of the products they buy and do not consider it poncy to care about that.

Is this because there is only so far you can go with the economy of scale of the production of wine? Grapes are not something that can be harvested with great big combines in huge, oversize fields after cutting down all the hedges. Barley is produced in this way and there is little difference that the quality of the barley makes to the beer. We never think that beer is better because it is made with barley grown on a sunny slope overlooking a Mediterranean beach and has been hand picked by a fair maiden just after sunrise. Hops are different, but I'm ignoring them for now.

So beer can be made, distributed and sold very cheaply in supermarkets. Beer can also be sold more expensively in pubs. This is by necessity a more costly route to market. It can be made in smaller, regional breweries with less economies of scale and perhaps a little more care but because the route to market is shorter there might be cost savings here. It can also be made by small breweries, who perhaps care less about profit and more about people. The brew pub probably benefit from some nice cost savings such as beer duty relief and a very small transport network, but it's still a significantly more costly way to deliver beer to consumers because of a lack of any economies of scale or mass marketing.

Real ale is most successfully produced by small breweries. This appeals to both the anti-globalisation people just as well as it does to the artisan snobs. Perhaps the dichotomy that exists is because real ale appeals across the board to anybody who cares. People who care tend to have a view and when it comes to politics they tend to categorise into left and right. The more you care, the more vocal and passionate you might become.

Perhaps it is a false dichotomy because although Real Ale is political it is both left and right. It is just a view which is passionately held by many. Perhaps CAMRA is not left or right. Perhaps it is just political but individuals left or right views do come out and then opposition to these views precipitate across the organisation and outside.

The government is big, it thinks big, it looks after the big companies. It won't make any difference to the little man if the other side gets in, they will think about the global position as well - and real ale does not fit with that.