What would you do to help the pub industry?

Tell them all that their profit margin on spirits is outrageous, which is why they dont sell many spirits. A double Tanqueray and tonic was a ten spot in Bury last week. Litre Bottle of Tanq retails at £22 at 20 doubles @£1.10 and they wonder why they're struggling. Piss take ...take a buttie dont take a banquet!
 
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Finally someone mentions the smoking ban. Now I’ve never smoked a cig in my life (spliffs apart) and very happy to go home from a pub without stinking like a 5 day old ashtray.
Yet when I was in Florida, the busiest local bars were the ones you can still smoke in. They can’t serve food, but my local got round that by having a trailer outside with a different name (owned by the same bloke who owned the pub) serving food that if you want to, you can eat inside the pub.
Bring back smoking was gonna be my 5th idea.
 
I did my best to help it yesterday by sinking half a dozen pints of Guinness !

It probably didn't actually help the industry much, but it definitely made my legs wobble!
 
Have you seen the fast food and processed shite they stuff their faces with? Not to mention the class A's.
Then sit around their house/flat all day eyes locked onto their phones or tablets, getting off their arses only to go to the loo. Yeah, they are health conscious ;-)
The current generation don't drink. My son doesn't mind a beer at home. But none of his mates seem to have any interest in going out. 30 years ago when I was in my late teens everyone was out in pubs and clubs. If you didn't go you would have fomo. Staying in would be weird.

As a result everyone I knew had a job at 17. All working shit jobs to pay for Friday and Saturday night. Kids these days are not that arsed about getting a job cos they don't spend money like we did. They don't need the clothes.

It's weird but possibly more healthy I don't know.
 
The current generation don't drink. My son doesn't mind a beer at home. But none of his mates seem to have any interest in going out. 30 years ago when I was in my late teens everyone was out in pubs and clubs. If you didn't go you would have fomo. Staying in would be weird.

As a result everyone I knew had a job at 17. All working shit jobs to pay for Friday and Saturday night. Kids these days are not that arsed about getting a job cos they don't spend money like we did. They don't need the clothes.

It's weird but possibly more healthy I don't know.
Thinking about this growing up in the 70’s and turning 18 in 1981, we all went to the youth club and when 17 we flocked to the pub where we simply played pool and listened to the jukebox like we did in the youth club.
As you said we all worked and had money.
Each year a new flow of 17 year olds migrated from the youth club to the pub…..

Now there are very few youth clubs and generally 17 year olds are at college so aren’t in the local every night.
In the same way that from the age of 15 or 16 we all went to the game together where as that age group can only go if one or more of their parents are willing to take them and sit with them of course.
 
Turn the telly off (or have on mute if racing channel)
Turn the shit music down
Fit birds behind the bar
No kids
Spot on. 100%. The amount of plastic pubs that have music on full blast or a tv on in every room with no one watching. The landlords in these pubs have a shelf life of under 6 months and then amazingly rinse and repeat a few times before closure.
 
There is another issue which no one has (unbelievably) mentioned.
The national minimum wage for an 18- 20 year old is £10 rising to £12,21 for those over 21.an hour.
The recent increase in National Insuance is 8% on earnings over 12k.
A landlord has to pay a lot of money out before he starts making any himself.
 
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There is another issue which no one has (unbelievably) mentioned.
The national minimum wage for an 18- 20 year old is £10 rising to £12,21 for those over 21.
The recent increase in National Insuance is 8% on earnings over 12k.
A landlord has to pay a lot of money out before he starts making any himself.
Goes both ways that though. If an 8 hour shift on a Saturday pays £80 that's plenty to go out over a weekend. I remember getting just over £20 for working Saturdays as a 17 year old. At the time a pint was around £1.20. So a days work was equivalent to around 18 to 20 pints.

How many pints can you get for £80 now. Same maybe less depends where you go. But asabive kids have no interest in earning £80 and spending it beer, kebabs and taxis like we did. More likely to buy bubble tea and online subscriptions.
 
Left the ground yesterday and said to mate only good thing so far not spent a single penny
Bus pass used on match bus from Vegas season ticket already paid didn’t have anything in the ground and walked to Marble Arch
Woke up thus morning and discovered a Chinese Resaurant 5 pubs and a Wine Bar have been handsomely supported by me not to mention the licensed bandit in the uber at 2 this morning
 
Compared to minimum wage, a pint in a pub is historically average at present. If you were to say £12/£6 you're not far off the mark, so the lowest paid have to work for half an hour to buy a pint.

In 2009 those figures were about £6/£3, so very similar and in 1992 it was the same story. The boom times were the 1960s and 1970s, when you only had to work 10-15 minutes to buy a pint if you were on a working wage (no minimum back then).

So whilst beer feels expensive, I don't think it really is, and the historical figures support that. I think there are many factors:
  • People currently don't have the spending power, other stuff costs so much
  • Drink driving is (rightly) a far bigger deal than it was in the 60s-80s
  • Young people just don't drink much
  • Supermarket booze is cheap, and this one goes hand in hand with drink driving
  • Wetherspoons - My local one is always heaving, so whilst I have mentioned about pricing above, you can get the same thing for half the price all over the country
  • Culture - A trip to the pub just isn't what it was. Hard to pin down why but in my peak years (80s/90s) we just went to the pub lots. It was what you did on Friday, Satruday and Sunday. This is reflected in my comment about young people not drinking so much.
Anyway, I'm off to 'Spoons (really).
 
Remember George Heslop introducing topless barmaids when he was landlord of The City Gates ……that worked
 
The current generation don't drink. My son doesn't mind a beer at home. But none of his mates seem to have any interest in going out. 30 years ago when I was in my late teens everyone was out in pubs and clubs. If you didn't go you would have fomo. Staying in would be weird.

As a result everyone I knew had a job at 17. All working shit jobs to pay for Friday and Saturday night. Kids these days are not that arsed about getting a job cos they don't spend money like we did. They don't need the clothes.

It's weird but possibly more healthy I don't know.

They are very health conscious. The lads at our work, early 20’s, don’t drink anything like what I did at their age. I was in the pub Thursday/Friday/Saturday/Sunday and often had a couple at lunchtime in the week when I worked in London.

Tik Tok generation.
 
A chain of nationalised and subsidized pubs. Stop weird "local noise complaints" from fuckwits who buy or rent above or close to a well established pub.
Classic example of that was The Grants ( A' Fe' We ) in Hulme

For the best part of a century it was surrounded by open land and served the local community. Then they built houses all around it and those who bought the houses were shocked to learn that the pub and long standing music venue next door, generated a bit of noise, and got it shut down.
 
They are very health conscious. The lads at our work, early 20’s, don’t drink anything like what I did at their age. I was in the pub Thursday/Friday/Saturday/Sunday and often had a couple at lunchtime in the week when I worked in London.

Tik Tok generation.
Yeah. I know a lad who had a tough childhood. Quit going to school. Had issues.

In our day a lad like that would be sniffing glue and getting pissed and working in a factory to pay for it. This lad doesn't drink and works as a sports coach.
 

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