With pubs and restaurants preparing to reopen on 2nd December it looks like this time they will not be having the support that was seen over the summer with EOHO.
But was that scheme as successful as it first appeared?
Of course, everyone loves a bargain and the prospect of a cheap meal out sounds like of course, it would be a good reason to venture to your local but I am sceptical because I think there was a lot more going on this summer.
1.There had been a build-up of demand
We had all been locked in our homes for over three months. The first lockdown was far stricter than this one.
If you remember, we were not allowed to meet anyone from outside our household, we were barely sure we could go outside at all. Queues for the supermarkets were standard and at the beginning, everyone was so scared they barely knew if they could speak to each other outside.
So of course, when the pubs reopened everyone didn’t just want to go they needed to. They needed a place to experience a bit of normality, to remember what it was to feel part of a community to have a shared experience and of course to be able to spend time with our friends and family.
The pub, the local cafe and the restaurant overnight become a necessity.
2. The weather
I have been operating hospitality businesses for over 20 years and worked in the industry for over 25. You have good summers and bad summers, and it all depends on the weather.
If you are a pub with the luxury of outside space you spend all year praying for good weather, heatwave and dry weather can be tracked by your accountant over decades.
The British are programmed to flock to pub gardens in hot weather. It is part of our ingrained culture just think of cool pints of larger and Pimms with cumber and strawberries (I can tell you that the manufacturers of Pimms definitely know a hot dry year from any other).
2020 was a fantastic year for the pub garden and it would have been with or without Covid. The bonus that 2020 had for the pub though was that in any normal year prolonged hot weather means that people increase entertaining at home, so BBQs and garden parties. The market for the pub garden is shared with the home garden.
But not in 2020. Summer came and July the 4th and everyone was sick of their own space (see point above) there was a build-up of demand.
3. The staycation
One of the strange phenomenon which I will never be able to fathom (or for that matter even prove to be true) is that customers appear to just know what everyone else is doing.
Sometimes you can have the busiest bank holiday because everyone is staying at home and then suddenly the next one, everyone has decided to go away! Whilst planning to be busy is easy knowing how busy is impossible.
But this year no one left the country - well very few did.
On any normal year through the summer you can expect a great number of your customers to be on holiday at any one time so not everyone is coming to your venue all at once some are away.
This year everyone stayed and if they didn’t stay close to home they visited friends and family across the country or visited new places and so it was almost as if there were double the number of potential customers on your doorstep for the whole of summer. and (see the 2 points above) the pub was where they headed.
4. furlough
Lots and lots of people did not have to get up for work in the morning… need I say more?
5. Working from home
See ‘furlough’!
So, whilst EOHO was a lovely idea, I am sceptical it really had the impact it is credited with.
I am not criticising the idea, support for the hospitality industry is always welcome and particularly now when we are experiencing such trauma but it does worry me that help was squandered in summer and that intervention is probably more useful to the industry now when it is cold outside when leaving the home is difficult.
Admittedly after another lockdown, there will once again be built-up demand but this time with the cold weather and the need to be inside and therefore the restraint of social distancing, the prospect of Tiers and a curfew… it is just so much harder for the customers to find the reasons to visit.
But let us hope that some bright spark comes up with another scheme to help out this winter cause these next few months are when the industry is really going to need it.
