How the Pub Industry has been affected?

[Pimp]

Hello

I am a student doing BA Hons in Banking & Business and at the moment i have been assigned a course work where i have to research about how the Pub Industry has been affected by the 24 Hour drinking license and the Smoking Ban. I have already done allot of research and asked my local pub but i wanted to gather more information from.

Perhaps you guys can help me. Please tell me your views and experiences as a result of the smoking ban.

Thank You

 

[Ferg]

Well in the country many of the village pubs around cumbria have had to invest in outdoor covers and heating - hardly helping us promote 'carbon neutrality' huh ^_^

In country towns pubs it just means large groups of people loitering around outside, aww they look so cold.

.... nothing worse than an ex-smoker for feeling sorry for them teehee

 

[yorkkev28]

I think the introduction of the 24hr drinking culture was a very bad idea. The idea that somehow the british people would embrace the cosmopolitan ideals of our European neighbours was rather short-sighted.
The attitudes towards alcohol of a good portion of the British society has been well documented in recent years. Everything from the 'Club Reps in Ibiza' to 'Street crime UK'. Most of the programs center on the ability of British people to get absolutely trolleyed 7 days a week.
Throughtout History we have gone OTT on alcohol. Drinking sensibly is a phrase which isn't in most people's vocabulary.
So the introduction of 24hr drinking had exactly the opposite effect of what was intended. People saw the introduction of 24hr drinking to be an excuse to drink more.
There are however, mitigating circumstances to the drinking culture. As you well know, the cost of housing in the UK has gotten to astonomical proportions. There are lots of young people who are earning a decent wage but have nothng to channel this money into since they can't afford housing. More and more live at their parents, but still have a large pay packet so they tend to just piss it up the wall.
It's also to an extent, part of social inclusion. I have first hand experience of this since not going out on the piss for nearly a year now. The number of people that i see now has significantly reduced. People who i regarded as friends, were in reality, more drinking buddies. so id say that people don't wanna feel left out so they just join the drinking club.

As for the smoking ban:
Being a smoker myself, i have noticed the difference. I somehow feel like some sort of irresponsible social lepher who is left on the fringe of society by my choosing to smoke. Im not against the smoking ban, and i think that banning smoking in city centre pubs and restaurants is a good thing. However it is in the working mens clubs mosly centered around the industrial heart land of the North East where the biggest impact has been felt.
Most of these clubs are attended by the industrial working classes and while its true that not all of these people smoke, it is in most cases that the non smokers are in the minority. In my local working mens club the number of members attending since the introduction of the smoking ban has significantly reduced, to the point where the management are considering the economic viability of the club.
I see the intorduction of the smoking ban as the death knell to social clubs.

Hope my comments have aided you in your work.

 

[Pimp]

I have shorten the report for you guys. This is what I have found with my local pub:

Firstly to do with the smoking ban my pub did suffer but then changed tactics and benefited in terms of profit. Now a lot of you might find that hard to believe but let me explain. Before the smoking ban most of the profits made by the pub where liquid (liquid = drinks) around 70% liquid and the remaining 30% came from selling food, cigarettes and crisps etc. The customers it had where mainly smokers who came to the pub to have a chat with their friends, smoke and get drunk so that reflects the figures. After the ban, the pub lost a lot of customers and consequently the pub started to loose profits. Now at this stage the pub manager who was extremely experienced decided to act straightaway (for time is money). This is what he did to save his pub, Firstly he had to attract customers into the pub but this time his attentions where focused on the family orientated pub. He redecorated the whole pub to make it more appealing to a family, the pub had a kitchen but it was hardly used and was out of date so he installed new kitchen appliances he then employed a new chief to design a new menu that was cheap, taste good and quick to make which is ideal for families. After doing this the pub started to attract allot of families, couples and older aged customers. The manager now tells me that the pub is doing much better than before the ban, it has had an increase of 20% in profits. This is how the profits are split: 45% liquid (5% - 10% none alcoholic) and 55% from food.

The conclusion is that perhaps the reason why the pub industry as a whole is doing so badly is due to a number of reasons one of them is bad management. Now a good manager must see a different opportunity and grab it, perhaps some where to slow to react to the ban or simply didn’t see what else they could do. Yes my research did not focus on the whole pub industry and the reason why my local pub did well is because of good management but I think this is a model for other pubs that are experiencing problems with the ban and might consider taking this approach.

The figures above are just estimations

I haven’t finished my research as I have yet to look at the 24hour licensing which my pub doesn’t do. So I will look somewhere else.

Thank you for reading and hope that my findings where fascinating to read.

 

[Pimp]

I should have been more clear in my post above what i meant was that this could be one of the ways a pub could make money. I am currently looking at how the 24hr licensing is affecting pubs and what i have found is another prime example of good management taking the initiative and acting quickly to a problem. A massive pub in the town center of where i live has changed tactics completley different from the other pub i talked about earlier. This pub sells drinks during the day like normal but this time has installed new pool and snooker tables. Many people come to drink a few pints and play a few games of pool/snooker. This is what i found very interesting, they have installed pool/snooker tables that can be completely removed. When the night comes they remove all of the snooker tables and eating tables and turn the pub into a semi night club. This is ideal because its right in the center of town so attracts teenagers who go clubbing down town. I went there a few times and found the place to be crowded so great for business.

These two pubs have chosen different tactics to survive this ban and have done very well out of it. These tactics where chosen to suit the area the pub is situated and the type of people in that area. This to me makes business sense, now a lot of people might object to this and say that our traditional pubs will decrease as a result of this. I think the managers are not to blame after all they changed their ways to survive and keep the business running.

 

[yorkkev28]

How will these pubs survive and change tactics once alcohol is banned?

This will be the next step, in the governments war on anything which is bad for us. I can smoke 20 cigs in one night and not want to fight, be rowdy, have sex with anything which appears female, be sick all over the floor, piss in doorways/peoples gardens/in the street, destroy peoples property. And they say that smoking is anti-social!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*rant over.

 

[Pimp]

Lol... yes i agree with you. When i was doing my research for my course i was amazed to find out how many pubs there are in Britain. 60,000 pubs are doing business in Britain today. Binge drinking costs the taxpayer millions a year and yet we put up with it, i guess because where an alcoholic nation.

Stella, kronenbourg, carlsberg, kingfisher, cobra. i could go on lol mmmmmmm :)