Well the current tennants (who have ran it for the last 3 and bit years) have gone this week, and reports are it will closed until Greene King can find someone else to run it, or stick a manager in. Suppose its up to whoever take over if the riff's nights will continue or not.
I fear that the Compton Swan won't be the only West Berkshire pub closure over the next few weeks. Christmas trade has not been up to expectations for many of them.
They are all being shafted by the breweries no matter how hard they try.
I fear that the Compton Swan won't be the only West Berkshire pub closure over the next few weeks. Christmas trade has not been up to expectations for many of them.
They are all being shafted by the breweries no matter how hard they try.
I wonder why this was.
Do villagers choose to travel into Newbury or Reading rather than frequent their local?
Do villagers choose to travel into Newbury or Reading rather than frequent their local?
I dont expect you ever went there - but the Compton Swan was always quite busy. The problem was'nt lack of trade.. it seems even with a good turn over pubs still cant make a profit if their tied to a brewery.
I dont know anyone that went into Newbury on NYE. It costs a ridiculous amount to get a taxi back from Newbury even on a normal night (about £35 - if not more).
BTW - the people in the Crown and Horns in East Ilsley quit last night too!
I would have thought that someone at Newbury Today would read this forum. It is obvious that they don't because they have only just picked up on the Compton Swan story.
I do read both websites and was interested to note that up until a couple of days ago they were still advertising the Newbury Weekly News at 65p per copy. They have now rectified this and the new price of 70p is being quoted. (Following that price hike, I don't buy the hard copy anymore, but prefer to read my news online).
Meanwhile, the Bricklayers is apparently due to become an Italian restaurant.
I make it 10 pubs shut down in our area in this recession...can anyone name them?
Shut down for good, or shut down for a while until the brewery/pubco finds a new sucker?
Blue Ball, Clock Tower have, I suspect, gone for good. If the information in this thread is true the Bricklayers has gone. Pig & Paper has definitely gone.
The KC, the Wellington Arms, the Fox & Hounds (Chieveley), Catherine Wheel, Gun, Three Horseshoes (Donnington), Swan (Compton), Crown & Horns (East Ilsley), Butt (Aldermaston) - and, I'm sure, plenty more have seen the landlords go bust.
Let's face it, plenty were disappearing before this recession started.
The Nut & Bolt.... oh hang on that was the last recession....
Is The Red House in Hampton Road still a going concern? The most hidden away drinking spot there can be,
The Red House was open a few weeks ago with no immanent signs of closing. I think it is a free house and has a 'hard core' custom base, and refreshingly,a juke box!
Shut down for good, or shut down for a while until the brewery/pubco finds a new sucker?
Blue Ball, Clock Tower have, I suspect, gone for good. If the information in this thread is true the Bricklayers has gone. Pig & Paper has definitely gone.
The KC, the Wellington Arms, the Fox & Hounds (Chieveley), Catherine Wheel, Gun, Three Horseshoes (Donnington), Swan (Compton), Crown & Horns (East Ilsley), Butt (Aldermaston) - and, I'm sure, plenty more have seen the landlords go bust.
Let's face it, plenty were disappearing before this recession started.
Quite. Three new pubs up for sale in the last few weeks....The Five Bells at Woodspeen, the Ibex at Chaddleworth, and Railway at Hungerford.
Perhaps a sign of the times that CAMRA isn't too bothered about losing pubs these days.
Several factors have caused the decline of the pub trade over the years and it started about fifteen years ago when the government decreed that a brewer was restricted to owning a certain number of pubs, probably I believe as an EU initiative. The reduction meant that the national brewers such as Bass, Allied breweries, Courage and so on had to trim their ownership. The level of ownership included tenancies where the brewer owned the pub and tied the licensee to their own beer, wines and spirits and fruit machine suppliers, taking a share of machine income. Managed houses and hotels were included in the count towards ownership. Brewers, because they didn't go through frequent property re-valuation processes were more interested in selling beer and although pub rentals were a profit centre, in most cases, so long as they saw a rental income and some machine income, were happy with that. The managed house divisions of the various companies took on the larger profitable houses and they were managed by teams of area and district managers with a local manager in place. The first kick back was that brewers then had to shift houses onto the market place and there were a few pub owning companies that sprung up who took some but a lot went into the free trade. Free trade means that the pub owner although to some extent was free to source wines and spirits, in a lot of cases partial ties to brewers were maintained. The big deal though was that these new free house owners lost the "paternal" support of the brewery company and the major overhead, they now had a huge mortgage to find each month. Because of the decline in brewery output with most of the majors loosing considerable barrelage to smaller brewers, production became a bit of a problem and they started looking around for buyers of their brewing plant and the brewing names. The whole situation was made worse by supermarkets starting to sell canned beer at cheaper rates which meant that another brewery outlet, the tied off licences also came under pressure and they in turn were sold off by the brewers or just closed. The Australians were the major players in the brewery re-organisation as they were experts at tinned beer, freezing cold from the fridge, with the Courage brewery, one of the first to sell out and relinquish all their pubs as a brewery company. The Aussies wewren't interested in running pubs. Even Bass brewers took the sugared pill and are no more. There you go, hoisted by our own petard in the name of competitive trading and we are now where we are at this moment with pubs going nails up all over the place. Were we better off with the brewery tied pub system. CAMRA thought not as they considered that the brewer wasn't producing quality beers and were pandering to the tastes of the major pub spenders rather than the few guys with beards, pipes and a good palate. The government decided not as they thought that the system wasn't fair. We don't in hindsight, because we are losing our Sunday lunchtime hostlery. What do you think. This is a quick precis of the situation and I'm sure that others may see it differently.
Interesting that nearly all the local closures are village pubs, whereas nationally most of the closures are non-food suburban tied pubs.
I wonder if this could be linked to our 'no rural development' planning rules. Some of our village schools are half-full, while the Newbury and Thatcham schools are expanded or rebuilt.
I remember a previous landlord of the Ibex asking WBC if he could put a signboard in a field along the A338 as Chaddleworth is off the beaten track, and he was told no, due to a ban on advertising in rural locations.
But this is a minor point. Pubs are being killed by taxation and regulation.
It's not just a Greene King thing, but they do seem to be one of the keener breweries to crack the whip above the heads of their tenants and either drive them on to ever harder graft, or drive them out of their pub so they can get another sucker through the door....
Perhaps Greene King has some excellent sales patter prepared for dishing out to potential landlords and they are relying on a relatively rapid turnover of landlords chasing the dream? A few glossy brochures, a great 'training package', the promise of running 'the only pub in the village "A little God Mine it is squire...", then, after the wide-eyed new landlords are patted on the head and handed the keys the GK rep points to the small print in the tenancy agreement...
The Cottage Inn in Upper Bucklebury is a case to point.. (The Three Crowns/Peppercorn as was). How many tenants has GK flushed through there in the last 5 years? If it wasn't for the Royal Wedding last year and the general inventiveness of Gary and Mandy behind the bar they would have given up and packed up a while back.. Gary has mentioned to me the lack of support from GK and the painfully steep charges GK make on his profit margin. But another pain is a new resident to the village, in a new development adjacent to the pub, is campaigning to get the pub closed down because of noise. They moved next door to a pub but have non-stop raised issues about evening events Gary organised through last summer..
Another pub that's struggling is The Old London Apprentice (not sure if that's a GK pub) . The landlords were sold the dream but handed a pup and it's driving them to despair.... The landlord is half the man he was a few years back.. Painful to see and I'm not sure how much longer they can keep going. There's certainly no 'profit' or 'gold mine' located down Hambridge Road anyway, despite the occasional flush of racing punters through the door. The margins just aren't there for that to make a great difference.....
The first kick back was that brewers then had to shift houses onto the market place and there were a few pub owning companies that sprung up who took some but a lot went into the free trade.
Not really - the idea behind the Beer Orders (1984) was to reduce the monopoly the big six breweries had on the trade through their tied houses. They failed completely because the breweries simply hived off their pubs into separate pub owning companies - the pubcos. Instead of splitting pub ownership into smaller batches the opposite happened - for instance Courage and Watneys put their 10,000 or so pubs into a single company - so the pubcos ended up owning even larger holdings of pubs that the big breweries ever had. Relatively few went into the free trade until later, when the pubcos began to sell of less profitable pubs.
And it didn't help the pub tenants in the slightest - the pubcos continued all the restrictive practices of the breweries (notably the beer tie) - but without the incentive to support any particular brewery. So the big breweries all disappeared into multinational chemical factory operations and the pubcos shuffled the pubs around between each other, every now and then hiving of groups of their pubs into new themed chains etc. (usually to make their balance sheet look better). Without the brewery ties the management had lost the old incentive of providing an outlet for the brewery - so they soon lost any interest in pubs remaining pubs - if they were worth more as a building site, a private house or an Indian restaurant then that was what they would become. Entrepreneurs came and went, all hiving off as much capital as they could, many going bust. Most of the stability of the old system of integrated brewery/pub businesses disappeared and huge amounts of capital disappeared into the pockets of dodgy managements - even today I'd bet that the management overhead of pubcos is massively higher than that in the days of the big six.
Interestingly CAMRA still claims their campaign that resulted in the Beer Orders was one of their great achievements.
Greene King has grown from an also ran in the 1980s to a size that would have made it a challenger for the big six of the 80s (Courage, Watneys, Allied Breweries, Scottish and Newcastle, Bass Charrington and Whitbread) - it certainly would have made it to No 7. Fortunately for them the Beer Orders have been repealed, so they can continue to buy pubs and breweries and grow into a brewery as big as one of the big six. It's operating techniques are those that made the big six such a target for CAMRA etc (though the beer is probably better). However, compared to the pubcos Greene King has one difference - it needs its tied houses open and operating to sell its beer.
Of course one of the main reasons for pubs closing is alcohol consumption by men aged 16-24 has fallen since 2000.
I think that is a given.
I think fewer people drinking in pubs is down to a number of reasons which include:
Cheap supermarket alcohol (served 24/6ish) Smoking ban Internet (keeping in touch with people, gaming, etc) Home entertainment (gaming, 24/7 TV) Drink driving attitudes Cheap and available 'alternative' drugs
I think this is a major point in rural pubs. Driving drunk and over the limit is totally wrong, obviously. However people are so scared of getting pulled in by the police they wont even have a single drink and drive anymore. Combine this with the lack of Taxi's at a sensible price, means people just dont risk going out at all...
Not really - the idea behind the Beer Orders (1984) was to reduce the monopoly the big six breweries had on the trade through their tied houses. They failed completely because the breweries simply hived off their pubs into separate pub owning companies - the pubcos. Instead of splitting pub ownership into smaller batches the opposite happened - for instance Courage and Watneys put their 10,000 or so pubs into a single company - so the pubcos ended up owning even larger holdings of pubs that the big breweries ever had. Relatively few went into the free trade until later, when the pubcos began to sell of less profitable pubs.
Yes, pretty much, time goes by so quickly, I should have said 25 years ago. The transfer to major pub owning companies outside the brewery ownership was what I implied but the bigguns didn't trade too long as such as there was some creative accountancy which took place between transfers to re-value the pubs to a realistic market value before the selling started. The old brewers in a lot of cases didn't hold the freehold on their books at a realistic rate because to increase the valuation would have shown a trading profit which would have been taxable. So, the end result is the same but clearing the way for the Greene Kings to build it back up again. The difference is that GK are not quite as paternal, if that is the word to use, as the Bass, Courage, Grand Metropolitan tenanted trade management was. I'm glad that CAMRA see it as a feather in their cap. I bet a lot of landlords don't see it like that.
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