Free at last

Interesting developments in Stockport recently where both the Railway on Wellington Road North and Little Jack Horner’s on Wellington Street (pictured) have been bought from pub companies by their sitting tenants, and the Magnet just down the road from the Railway has been sold to new free trade owners who have turned it into a multi-beer alehouse. This is a very positive development and I wish all three pubs every success. They will be freed from the dead hand of pub company control and be able to source the beers their customers really want at more reasonable prices.

But “going free” is a double-edged sword. You have cut your ties from the brewery or pub company, but that means you no longer have anyone looking over your shoulder to keep you on the path and tell you when you’re going wrong, and you no longer have any outside marketing support. You are truly on your own. For a keen, competent licensee, that should be seen as a challenge, but for some it can lead to complacency and slipping standards.

It is probably fair to say that, over my drinking career, many of the very best pubs I have visited have been genuine free houses, but so have some of the very worst.

One particular bugbear of mine is that, freed from any higher oversight, free trade pubs can all too easily end up with a plethora of incongruous, home-made signs both inside and out, which puts across a sloppy, unprofessional image.

Also, unless you are consciously going down the “alehouse” route, it is important to have a permanent real ale of ordinary bitter strength that is what many of your regular customers drink.