Analysing pub closures

Last week, I referred to a study by CR Consulting demonstrating how the smoking ban had been the primary cause of pub closures over the past three years. Dave Atherton has now written about this at more length on the blog of the Institute of Economic Affairs.

While in-depth research would be required to ascertain accurately the relative impact of various factors, the statistical evidence certainly appears to support the view that the smoking ban is playing a pivotal role in the rapid decline of Britain’s pubs. If this is the case, the policy implications are clear: to reduce the rate of closures, pubs and clubs should at the very least be allowed to provide separate ventilated smoking rooms.

Turning in his grave

I can’t imagine that the great economist and philosopher Adam Smith would be very impressed by the plans to implement a 45 pence per unit minimum alcohol price in his native land. But the arguments against it are very well summed up here by Dr Eamonn Butler from the modern-day institute that bears his name.

Even if cheap alcohol were the problem, how should you deal with it? Putting up the tax would at least be defensible economics. Minimum pricing isn’t. Price controls just mess up the market system and produce all sorts of perverse results which may be hard to predict. And once the politicians have started to regulate one price on the supermarket shelves, where do you think their public-spirited intervention will stop?

Shame about the food

Pete Brown says here in The Publican exactly what I’ve argued about pub food on several occasions in the past – that pub menus haven’t significantly changed in a quarter of a century, and the vast majority of menus are, with a few exceptions, pretty much the same as each other. Indeed, there was more originality in pub menus in 1980, when there was more of a spirit of experimentation and “suck it and see”, than there is now. When there is so much innovation and variety in the restaurant sector, even down to the everyday “family restaurants” on your local retail park, pubs remain mired in a hackneyed, old-fashioned world of “hearty fare” and meat and two veg.

This represents a crushing lack of imagination, innovation or listening to customers. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with these dishes per se, but they form such a tiny, narrow sliver of what we now like to eat as a nation, and when they’re all identical, and when there is simply no option of a nice, tasty meal that is going to be less than 75 per cent of your daily recommended intake of fat and calories, I suddenly realised why I find eating in pubs to be largely a depressing experience.

I’m not saying I want sashimi platters with my pint of ale. I’m not saying there is no merit in hearty fare, or traditional British dishes.

But when you look at almost any other aspect of pubs – décor, beer selection, ambience – there is incredible diversity as you roam the country, even within a single town.

Beyond snacks and sandwiches, I rarely eat in pubs now because the food is so consistently dull and unappealing. Traditional English gristle and stodge blighted my childhood – it’s the last thing I want to eat today.

Yet on the same website we have Jessica Harvey praising “retro nostalgia pub grub” which surely is the last thing forward-looking pubs should be promoting.