Current Issue Highlights
What you must know before running your own Pub
Picture the scene, if you will. A glorious summer’s evening in one of the prettier parts of the English countryside. The old village pub, dating back hundreds of years and the heart of the place for all that time, is doing a roaring trade. The car park is packed, the small brasserie fully booked, the garden full of families enjoying the last rays of sunshine, the bar full of people waiting patiently to be served.
It is a magical
moment, so much so that few of us cannot at one time or another thought – why
on earth don’t I just quit the day job, say goodbye to commuting
and instead become a pillar of the local community by taking on the local
pub. And given the crowd round the bar and the full restaurant, we should
have no trouble making a bob or two as well.
If that feeling persists until the next morning, plenty of opportunities for pub management beckon. Entering ‘run your own pub’ into Google generates hundreds of hits, most of which appear to offer exciting business opportunities which seemingly cannot fail, with full training and support to help you learn the ropes, to boot. What on earth have you got to lose?
The answer is rather a lot.
Taking off the rose-tinted glasses, running
a pub remains the tough business proposition it always was, with the added
drawback that you are often working 14 hours or more a day, seven days
a week. And even after all this effort, the sobering fact is that 60% of
new licencees fail.
Even if they do succeed, the hard work, stress and
insecurity can take a terrible toll on marriages and families if publicans
are not very careful. In such circumstances, the temptation to sample the
stock too often and too freely can become overwhelming. So before you venture
into the licenced trade, even in the guise of the perfect country pub,
here are some key questions you need to ask yourselves:
First and foremost, a pub is a business, not a local charity, and it
must pay its way. Mr Micawber’s admonition in David Copperfield about
the importance of sixpence profit (result happiness) as opposed to sixpence
loss (result misery) remains as painfully true as ever.
So it is essential
you really know and understand the local market, for both food and drink.
You must have the £15-100,000 you need for ingoings, stock at value
and legal fees before you even get hold of the keys – and woe betide
you if you borrow it from the bank or, even worse, add it to your existing
credit card debts.
You must develop an utterly robust business plan, taking all the professional advice you need. Not only that, but the plan must not be relegated to the bottom drawer of the desk and left to gather dust. It must be reviewed and if necessary revised at least once a quarter, again with independent professional input. You must negotiate as favourable a lease as possible from the ‘Pubco’ (a company that owns pubs), and from your suppliers – inappropriate and/or inflexible contracts have been financial bear traps for too many otherwise very good publicans over the years. You must know how best to market your business.
And you must price your products correctly – a single penny on a pint, or not, can make a huge difference to your bottom line. You must know where all the money is coming from and where it is going, so accurate book keeping is a must. Suppliers must be paid on time, the Pubco will want its rent, ditto. And worst of all, Her Majesty’s finest, in the shape of her Tax and Excise men, will want their cut, too. Always remember, therefore, that running a pub can be a very easy way of losing quite serious sums of money if you get it wrong.
But there are many human, as well as financial, imperatives that are
essential in running a thriving pub.
This will involve a massive lifestyle
change for many new to the business. Can you get on with your partner if
you are cooped up in the same place for many hours each day? Will your
relationship cope with the inevitable stresses and strains business partners
have to deal with, on a daily basis? Can you manage and motivate your people?
This is absolutely essential, for unhappy staff tend not to be too bothered
about maintaining a good atmosphere, customers will notice – and
will drink somewhere else.
Can you deal with drunk or difficult customers?
Can you build a successful working relationship with the (often) even more
difficult brewery or Pubco?
Can you cope with the seemingly unending merry-go-round
of new legislation, regulations and visits from the Environmental Health
Officer?
And if you consider all that sort of stuff can be ignored whilst
you get on with the real business of pouring pints, think what impact a
story in the local paper about the dead rodent found in your cellars during
a snap EHO inspection might have on your customers.
Which is not to say that running the pretty country pub – or even its somewhat less beautiful urban counterpart – cannot, for the right people, be a great way of life. One website offering advice to pub landlords has the following quote from a successful – and anonymous - licencee:
“We start work around 7.30am on most days. We don’t take a full day off because, living over the shop, you’re always finding things to do. The day is full of routine things, cleaning, stocking up, food prep, cellar work, accounts, banking, cash and carry, and that’s as well as opening, the pub it just never stops. The burglar alarms went off at 3am this morning, the police came round and I got back to bed at 4am.
We only get a proper break when we go away on holiday, but then you tend to worry about what’s happening while your not there. That’s where mobile phones have helped, I keep it with me all the time just in case. I wouldn’t call it hard work but it can be 12/14 hour days with no social life and months without any proper time off but I can’t imagine doing anything else it’s my life and I love it”.
So be warned. The old village pub is still there, and running it can be incredibly fulfilling and, for those with real business acumen, pleasantly profitable. But if you do go in, go in with your eyes open. Do your research. Make sure you know how to run a business and how to get on with all sorts of people, even in stressful situations. And always remember that it’s the customers’ job to drink the pub dry, not yours.
