I’ve only got two friends. Yep, after more than six decades on Planet Earth there are only two adult men that I could call on in an emergency at four in the morning who’d genuinely be willing to help. One of them was the landlord of my local pub. For the sake of this article let’s call him Micky, for that is his actual name. Micky is a particularly kind and gentle soul, shrink-wrapped, paradoxically, in a thousand scary tattoos. A sheep in wolf’s clothing, you might say. Anyway, he gave up his pub a few weeks ago and I don’t blame him. Not only was he the chef, the butcher, the Instagram photographer, the marketing manager, the decorator, the gardener, the bookkeeper and the barman, he was also the HR department and mental health therapist. Anyone who’s been involved in hospitality will know that managing staff can take up most of your time. If Micky wasn’t standing in for the flaky Gen Zedder who called in sick again, he’d be separating two murderous knife wielding commis chefs or having to endure an hour’s tearful tale of micro aggressions behind the bar. Not an easy job.
Now, take all this and add in the Reeves effect: the doubling of business rates, the increase in the minimum wage, the fiddling with NI thresholds, new recycling taxes, relentless food inflation and the world’s highest energy costs and you have a perfect storm. A storm which, sadly, he couldn’t ride out this time. You see, it’s not just profits that are squeezed, it’s life’s motivation itself. Dedicating your life to an industry, a community and a five hundred year old building, the realisation that there will no longer be any financial return is soul destroying to say the least: knowing there will be no more holidays, no chance of that new kitchen, no hope of replacing the dodgy boiler.
He rang me in tears to apologise for letting us down: ‘us’ being the community, the regulars that rely on him, not for beer, but for moral support, a bit of company, and most importantly, a sense of belonging. All the reasons the British pub was invented for Christ’s sake! And now, thanks to a government that doesn’t understand how the country works, and indeed, despises those that attempt to prosper within it, we have lost him, and a thousand good souls like him.
But the problems run far deeper than hoping Sir Keir does another u-turn. For decades, successive governments have bullied beer like it was the fat kid in the school playground: another couple of pence here, another few pence there, teeny, tiny straws on the back of the poor, moth-eaten camel they’ve always taken for granted. Beer took the brunt because it comes with inbuilt justification: ‘alcohol is bad for you..we’re simply protecting your health’.
As a comparison, if governments had decided for ‘health reasons’ back in say, 1985, to tax our national dish the way beer has been taxed, a portion of fish and chips would currently cost about £18. Precisely. Whether we like it or not, products carry their own price parameters: invisible, yet universally understood. No one would pay twenty quid for a tube of toothpaste. Not because they can’t afford it, but because it’s overstepped its invisible threshold. Likewise, outside the lunacy of London, six or seven pounds for a beer pushes it across the line from a daily reward into a weekly treat. That changes the business model entirely. Governments tax things we can’t easily give up, but the heavier the tax burden the greater the change in our behaviour. Sadly, this is what will seal the pub’s fate.
Beer is a drink to be supped, gulped even, not sipped like wine. But when the price of a pint is not far off a shop bought bottle of red, something has gone badly awry. Inevitably, regular punters have learnt that grabbing a selection of bottled beers from the supermarket instead, can save the best part of fifty quid.
Much like the decision to turn the heating on, the price of a pint of beer was never a factor in whether or not to go to the pub, not even in my poverty stricken student days. Sadly, just like turning on the central heating, it bloody well is now. When they tell us Britain is currently poorer than Mississippi I guess this is what they mean.
And that’s not the worst of it. Five years ago, as we went into lockdown, I predicted the rise of Homo-Trepidatious, a new breed of human that’s distrusting of everything. But it’s much worse than I thought. Today’s youth isn’t drinking, smoking and not having sex because they’re super health conscious, but because they are scared. Turns out, locking kids in their bedrooms for two years has some serious consequences, and the demise of the pub may very well be one of them.
It’s quite clear that governments see our pubs as a glorious network of cash cows that however hard they are milked will keep on giving because they’re central to our way of life. They are wrong. We haven’t just reached the tipping point, I’m afraid we’ve passed it. So the next time you go for a Sunday stroll with the unspoken understanding there’ll be a refreshing pint waiting at the the end of it, you may be disappointed to find that the local you now only use once a week has closed for good.
Oh, and Micky? He’s currently deciding where best to apply his people skills, somewhere that might actually reward him. He’ll be fine.
Cheers to that!
Howard Saunders is a writer, speaker and The Retail Futurist
howard@22and5.com
@retailfuturist
