The retaurant and pub trade has come under much scrutiny in the last year or so. Hundreds of establishments have been forced to stop trading and close their businesses. Why? The press has printed numerous articles blaming everything from the smoking ban to cheaper prices meaning even stiffer competition from the supermarkets. The Telegraph recently claimed up to four village pubs a day are closing down. In the same article they say that the industry is facing the lowest beer sales since the Great Depression.
Lancashire Evening Post ran a front page story on Wed May 7th claiming more than 20 Preston pubs are set to go in £1.7 million sell-off. However the LEP claims the closures will not be down to the smoking ban or even low priced competition in supermarkets. Instad it seems the problems are thanks to high taxes and soaring costs.
Pub bosses have said to be forseeing trouble ahead for sometime and have no issued a stark warning that in three years the traditional local pub could die out. Soaring costs of alcohol have caused the landlords to start other money making schemes. For example the landlord at the Plunginton Hotel has set about making money from his bowling green claiming that alcohol prices have left little room to make a profit from. Other money making shcemes in the North West have seen barber shops and even laundrettes installed into them!
So why, has my brother chosen now to set up his own business? Gareth says: “I like a challenge!” He’s not wrong there!
“What’s the point in running an already successful business - someone else’s business, helping and maintaining their business and not seeing the benfits yourself, when you can put what you have learnt into your own business and learn even more along the way.” Gareth Higgins – pub/restaurant landlord
A major problem, it seems, is the smoking ban. Despite many restaurants and pubs providing heated areas for the smokers it is having an affect. People don’t like to be made to feel like lepers but unfortunately being sent outside everytime you spark up is making the smokers grumble.
“You have to look at the positives. Ok, so the smoking ban is making people think twice about drinking or eating out – but on the other hand the customers who keep coming back appreciate the lack of coloured walls stained by smoking, or the taste of smoke on their palette as they eat. We have just been through the winter. The grumbles are not so much about going outside – but the weather outside. It’s nearly summer – people like to sit outside then anyway. If you keep looking at the negatives, the odds are your business will be closed before the beginning of 2009.”
