pub

#pubsmatter they are the warm lights in the night that keep you safe on the streets.

#pubsmatter they are the warm lights in the night that keep you safe on the streets.

In a previous role was privileged to be involved in the promotion of my local area, working with other businesses and the wider community to encouraging investment building spaces that felt safe, places that people wanted to visit.

Over 10 years there was so much I learnt about how cities, towns, and communities thrive.

The complex ingredients that are required to make our places work for the people who live in and visit them. The combination of economics, human behaviour & public policy.

This has huge implications. Without the commuters and the office workers who will be in the city and what will the purpose of the city be?

With fewer people in the city, there will be an impact on retail and hospitality businesses based in the city…

but hospitality businesses are the warm lights in the night that keep you safe on the streets.

I feel too grown up to say it but ‘it is just not fair’

I feel too grown up to say it but ‘it is just not fair’

Even before Covid the legal requirement for an operator was immense.

Our licenses require us by law to be responsible for the behavior of everyone on our premises at all times if we are on site or not.

But Covid and the Government response has thrown up a whole new set of legal responsibilities overnight which change sometimes daily.

With the implementation of new rules, sometimes with no notice, there is no time for the local enforcement authorities to even decide their local interpretation.

So whilst operators are trying their best to interpret the dribbles of information that they receive and the different interpretations from different bodies from Central Government, to Local Government to our varied trade bodies the enforcement authorities are doing the same thing and coming up with different ideas.

The mess that is ensuing is the operator, whilst working exceptionally hard to keep everyone safe (and incidentally trying to save their business and communities in all this) being called up for breaches of the ‘rules’ whilst neighbouring operators ‘get away’ with other seemingly more significant breaches.

I feel too grown up to say it but ‘it is just not fair’

Did Eat Out to Help Out actually help?

Did Eat Out to Help Out actually help?

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.

The Future of pubs & bars post Covid-19

The Future of pubs & bars post Covid-19

The environment within which we are operating was changing anyway. Covid-19 had just accelerated things. There is going to be a sudden and potentially dramatic change but customers will still exist.

Businesses that are going to thrive in the future are going to be those who really understand their customers and work on how they incorporate all that understanding into their business.

First considerations

First considerations

No matter how many times I create a new venue or transform a business, there is a thrill.

You are taking an idea that exists only in your head and making it a reality - if it was easy everyone would be doing it!