Categories
london News pubs

News, Nuggets and Longreads 2 March 2019: Retirement, Simplification, Adjuncts

Here’s all the bookmarkworthy writing about beer and pubs that landed in the past week, from the mysterious behaviour of dads to corn syrup.

First, some depressing news from the north west of England, in a story that’s unfolding right now: Cloudwater’s much-anticipated Family & Friends beer festival has run into a licencing issue and may not go ahead today. In a statement issued first thing this morning, the brewery said:

The police have informed us that Upper Campfield Market is not, as we have been assured on many occasions by the managing agent acting on behalf of Manchester City Council, licensed for the sale of alcohol. The attending police officer earlier this evening, the two licensing officers, a licensing solicitor, and even the night-time tzar of Greater Manchester, appear to have exhausted every option to allow us to operate in Upper Campfield Market tomorrow. If we ignore the licensing team, and run tomorrow anyway, I risk an unlimited fine or six months imprisonment.

It’s a reminder of just how much behind-the-scenes bureaucratic battling has to go on to put on any event with booze, and gives a glimpse into why entrepreneurs so often seem to end up regarding local government as the enemy.

Categories
opinion pubs

The Wrong Type of Income

landlord_whitbread_1953

We have been thinking a lot about pub companies recently, not least because of the Fair Deal for Your Local campaign. We still don’t understand enough about the details of the business model to have a strong opinion on its rights and wrongs, but one thing has been puzzling us: why do pubcos bother selling beer?

Why do they bother maintaining a buying-sales-distribution network when they could just make money from renting at market rates to people who want to run a genuine freehouse?

We wonder if the answer is tax.

At present, our tax system distinguishes between trading income and letting income, with the former qualifying for many more ‘reliefs’ (tax breaks). This is because trading is seen to be generating ‘economic activity’ while letting and passively holding investments is not. So, from the pubcos’ perspective, rental is probably ‘the wrong type’ of income.

Can anyone who works in the industry, or at Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs, confirm our deny our hunch?

Categories
Beer history opinion

Pub Tenants in Revolt

Watneys barrel.Serious discussions are underway about state intervention in the pub company (‘pubco’) business model, and pubco tenant landlords are organised and on the move with the Fair Deal for Your Local Campaign.

Forty years on, what we are actually seeing is the final phase of a slow motion response to the 1969 Monopolies Commission report on the brewing industry, and the 1972 Erroll report into pub licensing, and the Fair Deal campaign is a continuation of a battle publicans have been fighting for years.

Back in the seventies, it was the big breweries from which the pubcos evolved which bore the brunt of similar protests, and Watney’s had particular difficulties. When, in 1970, they attempted to replaced eighty tenant publicans with pub managers, the National Federation of Licensed Victuallers (NFLV) — the pub tenants union, in effect — called for its members to boycott Watney’s products wherever possible. Hotels, bars and freehouses stopped taking Red Barrel and the story of the plucky underdogs made headlines. Eventually, though they weren’t able to prevent the rise of the managed house, the NFLV did win compensation for the tenants in question, and improved terms for those taking on tenancies thereafter.

That wasn’t the only kind of protest, though, and this kind of showboating was particularly emotive:

Mr Jim Lewis recently had a wake at his pub, the Bridge Inn, near the hamlet of Skenfrith, Monmouthshire… The guests’ merriment could be traced to a real sense of loss, for the wake was for the pub itself… Whitbread and Company, the brewers who owned the pub and the two others within a radius of about two miles, had decided to withdraw the license… (The Times on 12 June 1971.)

Mock funerals and wakes are still happening, of course, as at the Black Lion in Kilburn, North West London, only last week.

We’re still learning about Erroll, and we’ve barely begun our reading on the tremendously complicated consequences of the Beer Orders of 1989, so we’re cautious to opine, but what does seem likely is that if pubcos sulk and withdraw from the market, and the model collapses, it might take twenty years for things to settle down again. In the meantime, the change would be painful for almost everyone, but perhaps worth it in the long run.

Categories
pubs

Freehouses don't embrace freedom

We recently got our grubby hands on a copy of a catalogue from a company which supplies cask beer to freehouses.

The selection on offer did include some excellent beers, but the overwhelming impression was a of a long list of the usual suspects — lots of similar brown bitters, a smattering of golden ales, and very few dark beers at all.

It made us realise that the reason so many freehouses have the same old beers on is that, even they could theoretically buy and sell whatever they like, they choose to use these middle men because it’s convenient and (presumably) cheaper.

But aren’t landlords who use these suppliers severely limiting their options? Aren’t they just acting as if they were in the grip of a pubco?