Pubs feeling the pinch

By Alun Thorne on Sep 3, 08 10:27 AM in Head of Business

Consumer confidence may have held steady last month (the majority of us still feel skint, just fractionally fewer of us than last month) but it seems that we are spending what disposable income we do have anywhere but the pub.
Stocks in Punch, Enterprise and even that bastion of the two-for-one tipple Weatherspoons have all taken battering this morning even though the latter is still looking for potential sites and has just opened another raft of premises across the Midlands.
The pub groups are blaming the economic downturn, rising costs, cheap alcohol prices in supermarkets and inevitably the smoking ban. Now the first three reasons seem perfectly reasonable but surely it is time to stop laying the blame of falling revenues at the door of the smoking ban - I am yet to meet a single smoker (and I know a few) who has decided against going for a drink because they can't light up inside.

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2 Comments

Steve X said:

They're probably the same people who don't go into pubs anymore because wearing baseball caps is banned; the weather has been too hot/cold/rainy; they couldn't drag themselves away from the olympics on telly; and England failed to qualify for Euro 2008.

ie: they don't exist at all.

September 3, 2008 1:49 PM

Pete Robinson said:

Since July 1st 2007 pub beer sales have slumped by 11 per cent, 2000-plus pubs have closed (seven times the previous rate), Pubco shares are worth just a quarter of their previous value, and pub leases previously worth £50,000 or more are going begging at just 1p. Pub properties have become so worthless they are being demolished to save paying empty building rates. But of course it's nothing to do with the smoking ban, oh lordy no! Same thing happened in Ireland, Scotland, and now rural Wales, where it's getting hard to even find a pub still open. The ban has killed traditional pubs stone dead. Only soulless licenced food halls will survive - along with boozy, yob-culture city bars.

September 6, 2008 5:37 AM