Tag: Enterprise Inns

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Enterprise Inns: empowering publicans with cutting edge market information

A brief footnote to the sad story of one of my favourite locals, the Alma on Newington Green.

The Alma is now being offered up as a new tenancy, with applications closing this week. I was impressed by the level of detail on the website for prospective tenants – every aspect a curious publican might want to know about is covered. There’s even a guide to local competition – clearly a key factor in how the business might perform. So it’s great to see the website giving a run-down on what else is in the area so interested parties can accurately assess the opportunity:

Screen grab from Enterprise’s website about the Alma tenancy

There’s just one problem with this. No, actually, there are quite a few:

  • In 2011, the Nobody Inn was renamed the Clarendon. In 2012 it has a massive refit, substantially changing its offering, and was renamed the Dissenting Academy.
  • Bastille Brasserie closed down at least three years ago and is being converted to flats.
  • There’s no such pub as the Crafty Fox in the area. They might mean the Snooty Fox. But you can’t be too hard on them for getting the name of the pub wrong; it’s not as if they own it or anything. Oh, hang on – yes they do.
  • There’s no mention of the Hops & Glory (formerly the George Orwell) or the Leconfield (formerly the Oak Bar) – two craft beer pubs that offer significant competition to the Alma, each less than five minutes walk away. But you can’t be too hard on them for not knowing these pubs exist; it’s not as if they own them or anything. Oh, hang on – yes they do own the Leconfield. 
It’s great to see Enterprise’s local area manager having such a great grasp on the area he is paid to look after.

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Tackling the thorny topic of the PubCo tie: it just got personal

Yesterday beer writers en masse were accused of ignoring ‘the elephant in the room’ – the issue of the PubCo tie.

There are three reasons I haven’t really written about this topic very much before now:

  • I’ve been really, really busy, playing catch-up on my recent books since my laptop was nicked two years ago. 
  • The anti-PubCo campaigners can be a bit spiky. When you’ve lost your job, your life savings and often your home, in circumstances that you feel are grossly unjust, you have every right to be angry. But it can be a bit like trying to deal with a lion with a wounded paw.
  • It’s really bloody complicated. The issues very quickly gets into conversations about legal technicalities and contracts, which makes it hard to understand in the first place, and harder still to then break down into short, focused, interesting articles. 
I’ve now caught up on my work. The PubCo campaigners and I have reached a point where we can chat amicably over a beer. And they’ve patiently helped increase my understanding of the technicalities. So I’m now ready to jump in.
The impetus for doing so though, is that the whole issue just got personal. 
Sometimes, businesses fail. Sometimes, publicans aren’t cut out for the job. Sometimes, people don’t understand what they’re getting into. Being a publican is a tough job that requires a very broad set of skills, and I know that I would be a disaster if I ever attempted to run my own pub.
That’s why the boss of Enterprise Inns, recently dismissed the campaign against the current PubCo model as the work of “failed or failing publicans looking for someone to blame.” 
Taken purely literally, these words are correct. But the clear implication of phrasing it in this way is that publicans should in fact accept the blame themselves. The consistent rhetoric from the PubCos is that most tenants and lessees make a decent living, that they help those who are struggling, and that if these publicans fail? Well, it’s not our fault – they knew what they were getting into. 
I’ll be examining the ways in which this argument falls down in the face of reality a lot more closely, both here and elsewhere, over the coming weeks. And I will be asking the PubCos for their response to the points I raise. I don’t want to rant about this issue – I want to present the truth about it.
But first, I want to focus on one pub close to me whose situation doesn’t make any sense at all if Enterprise Inns is speaking the truth.
The Alma on Newington Green, North London, is by any reckoning a popular and successful pub. Well-heeled Islington residents consider it a gastropub – the food is excellent, way beyond typical pub fare, locally sourced and seasonal, the ever-changing menu determined by what’s fresh and good. The home made sausage rolls on the bar for those who don’t want a full meal are awesome. 
The beer is well-kept, and there’s a passion for cider – North London CAMRA recently named the Alma its Cider Pub of the Year, which the pub added to a list of other awards it has won. When I was in there on Tuesday night there was a choice of six draft ciders. The place was busy for a Tuesday night, but then it’s always ticking over, and it’s difficult to get a seat on the weekend.
The Alma is an old Victorian building, full of nooks and crannies, with everything from big, bright tables by the windows for spreading the papers out during Sunday lunch, to shady sofas for intimate late night chats. The decor is stylishly shabby and doesn’t try too hard.
The licensee, Kirsty Valentine, is a force of nature. She’s an instinctive publican who realises that a great pub is about creating a great atmosphere. She’s become a solid fixture in the community, and a major player in the local business association.
Newington Green is now gentrifying rapidly. This wasn’t always the case. The Alma used to be a dive, like most other pubs in the area. When I first arrived in Stoke Newington most people wouldn’t dream of drinking there – you’d get the bus down to Islington instead, where the pubs were crap chain concepts, but at least they cleaned their lines more than once a year and you didn’t run the risk of getting glassed. When Kirsty arrived, the Alma was the first pub that raised the standard. It helped turn Newington Green into a destination, starting ripples that spread. One by one, the other pubs near the Alma have been done up too. Newington Green is now a great place for a pub crawl, with the Snooty Fox, the Dissenting Academy and the Edinburgh Cellars all offering great beer and great food. This is great news for the drinker, less good for Kirsty, who now faces increased competition. Her response? Last year she organised the Newington Green ‘Aleympic’ pub crawl, which saw pubs in the area working together to create a fun activity, benefiting all the pubs that took part, making the cake bigger rather than fighting over shares of it. 
What I’m saying is, to any rational observer, the Alma looks about as different from the idea of a ‘failed or failing pub’ as you can possibly imagine.
So how could it possibly be failing? How could Kirsty be facing losing the pub – and how could there be a possibility that the pub itself might not survive?
I have copies of a pile of correspondence between Kirsty and Enterprise Inns that’s about three inches high. She’s spent most of her time over the last three or four years fighting her PubCo – which claims it only wants to help – on all fronts. 
The basic problem, as she sees it, is that the PubCo model effectively means paying rent twice – wet rent and dry rent. Dry rent is the straightforward rental she pays to the PubCo. Rents are reviewed regularly. They can go down as well as up, but if the profitability of the pub increases, the PubCo will do all they can to take most of it, essentially disincentivising the publican from improving the business the way Kirsty has. 
On top of this, she pays a ‘wet rent’ by being compelled to buy all her beer through Enterprise, or face stiff penalties for buying ‘out of tie’. This limits the range of beers available to her. But more than that, she’s paying up to double the price of a cask or keg compared to if she were able to buy it from the brewer direct. This means she has to charge higher prices for a less interesting range of beers than her competitors.

Basically then, it’s much harder for a pub to make a profit under this scheme than one that is free of tie. And if you do manage to make a profit despite this, the PubCo will try to take it from you. 

This is the double bind of the PubCo tie that many licensees are complaining about. Enterprise’s defence is twofold: firstly, they will offer help to anyone who is struggling. And second, the publican knew what they were getting into when they signed the deal, and Enterprise can’t be held to account if new publicans had unrealistic ideas. I’m sure that in some cases this is true. But the number of cases where ‘failed and failing licensees’ tell how they have been misled, lied to and ripped off by their PubCos means that if they are not being honest, there are an awful lot of them coming up with remarkably consistent and detailed lies. 
Kirsty’s battle with Enterprise is happening on so many fronts, it’s impossible to go into detail here and still expect you to read to the end. But in summary, the result of her fight is that Enterprise now want her out of the business she has built up, and will shortly be taking legal action in an attempt to make that happen.
Should Enterprise be victorious, apart from a brilliant publican facing financial ruin and losing her home, there are two possible consequences: one is that Enterprise stick in another tenant. The other is that they close the pub down, and sell it for redevelopment, with a change of use stipulation – a fairly common practice. It takes all of ten minutes to walk to the nearest Sainsburys from Newington Green. I’m sure Sainsburys or Tesco would love to turn this beautiful old boozer into yet another supermarket. 
The next battle Kirsty wants to fight is to ensure that, whatever happens to her personally, the Alma remains a pub – given that it’s popular and the local community like it that way. To this end, yesterday she launched the ‘Battle for the Alma’ campaign. She is applying to Islington Council to have the pub declared an Asset of Community Value (ACV) under the recent Localism Act. This would prevent Enterprise from initiating a change of use from the property being a pub. This was the first step in a campaign that ultimately saved the Ivy House pub in South London from being redeveloped into flats when the local community were perfectly happy with it as a local pub – which is now doing great business.
If you know the Alma, if you have ever been there and enjoyed it and wish to see it saved, visit the Battle for the Alma website and sign the change.org petition, giving Islington Council the stories and reasons why the Alma deserves to be saved (beyond the simple common sense reason that it is a thriving, successful, popular pub that by any sane reckoning should not even be under threat.) It will make a real difference.
I’ll be writing about the lies, bullying and neglect Kirsty has suffered in due course – and asking Enterprise to respond. But this first step is important and urgent – we have until next week. If you know and love the place, please give this campaign your support.

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Yeeeessssss, it’s in(n)!

The George Inn, Borough High St, SE1. A while ago.

After a couple of false starts (or false endings I suppose) I’m back in the real world.  On Thursday I pressed ‘send’ on the manuscript of my new book, and this weekend my editor becomes the third person in the world to read it (after me and the Beer Widow).  From here it’s full steam ahead with edits (hopefully not too many) cover designs, bound proofs out to reviewers and so on, leading up to the launch later this year.

I started this book almost a year ago.  Then in October I had my laptop stolen.  It wasn’t backed up (it is now) and I lost every last bit of work I’d done on the book.  I started making my notes again from scratch on 7th October.  I sent the book off on 1st March.  I hope I never have to work to that kind of timetable again, but I think I got away with it.

It’s been confirmed that the book will be called SHAKESPEARE’S LOCAL: Five Centuries of History Seen From One Extraordinary Pub.  It tells the story of the George Inn, Southwark, South London, and everything that has happened in it, to it and around it, and the people who have eaten, drunk, stayed, worked, performed and fought there.

It’s not really a beer book as such – it’s a bit of a departure on that score (though there is one chapter that centres on one of the most famous breweries the world has ever seen).  But it is a book about pubs – not just this one pub, but all pubs, especially inns.  These days we use words like ‘inn’, ‘tavern’, ‘alehouse’ and ‘pub’ interchangeably, but at one time the differences were so stark they were enshrined in law.  One aspect of the book is the story of how inns were essentially the lynchpins for Britain’s entire economy, facilitating the movement of goods, money and people that enabled both the Industrial Revolution and the growth of a mercantile class.  Before we had town halls, municipal buildings, assembly rooms, theatres and concert halls, the inn was the only building in town with large meeting rooms and spaces, and it performed all these functions.

It’s also the story of Southwark – an extraordinary town that was once the centre of the world.  London Bridge was the only bridge across the Thames from Roman times until 1750.  Anything coming to the capital from the south east or Continental Europe came up Borough High Street and past the George – that’s why this pub was just one of twenty or so inns along a half mile stretch of road, along with innumerable alehouses and taverns.  The bottleneck across the bridge meant many people simply stayed in Southwark.  It was just outside London’s jurisdiction and the Citys’ laws didn’t apply, so Southwark became home to nonconformists of every stripe, fugitives and refugees from across the world, villains, rogues, whores and wasters, most of whom popped in for a pint (all except the puritans, who dismissed pubs as the ‘blockhouses of the Devil’.)

The story of the George is the story of the last survivor of these great inns.  It was never the biggest, most famous, most beautiful or important – even though it was big, famous, beautiful and important.  Chaucer chose the inn next door to the south as his start point for the Canterbury Tales.  Both Dickens and Shakespeare chose the inn next door to the north as the setting for key scenes in their respective works.  But they all knew the George, and the George is the one that survived, carrying the legacy of what was once the most important street of pubs in the world.

The story of the George is also the story of some bizarre characters who once drunk there.  There’s Sir John Mennis, Comptroller of Charles II’s Royal Navy and inventory of a literary genre I’ve chosen to call Stuart-Era Fart Poetry.  There’s John Taylor, the Water Poet, who once rowed from London to the Isle of Sheppey in a boat made from paper with oars of salt cod tied to sticks.  There’s Shakespeare, Dickens, Chaucer, Dick Turpin, the Sugababes, Samuel Pepys, Philip ‘the most miserable man in the world’ Stubbes, Samuel Johnson, a monkey riding a horse, and possibly the greatest pub landlady who ever lived.

But the main character is the pub itself – just a pub, and so much more, like all pubs are.  When you see what it’s been through, the survival of the George makes a mockery of anyone who says pubs are dying out.

That’s the gist of what I told my publisher’s sales force when I had to present the book to them a couple of weeks ago.  It wasn’t easy – I had to follow a debut novelist whose book is already tipped for great things and is in discussions about movie rights – and Rastamouse.

Wha’ g’wan? I share a publisher with this mouse.

The creators of Rastamouse had them a-rockin’ and a-rhymin’, grown men and women squealing with delight.  “Follow that,” said my publisher.  I tried.  It seemed to go down well.

So well, in fact, that they moved the publication date.  Shakespeare’s Local will now be published on 8th November, right in the middle of the peak Christmas book buying period, competing with comedians’ memoirs, ‘Katie’ ‘Price’ ‘novels’ and glossy cookbooks.  The cover design hasn’t been finalised yet, but even from early designs it’s going to look like a very nice present to buy someone.

So now, finally, I’m back to blogging.  I’ve got loads to write about as I reacquaint myself with the beer world and start leaving the house again.

I hope you all played nice while I was gone.  It’s good to be back.

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‘The Brewery Tap’ – the next generation?

Imagine you’re a microbrewer.  You’ve established a few successful beers and have won the odd award here and there at SIBA competitions and CAMRA festivals.  Sales are showing healthy growth and you’ve got some local recognition.  In a few years time, you might have to expand.  But there’s one thing now obsessing you.

Your own pub.  You want a brewery tap.

But you can’t get one.

Buying a freehold pub is a financial step too far – you just haven’t got that kind of money to hand.  You could of course get a lease or tenancy from one of the big PubCos but what would be the point of that?  The tie means you’d have to take beers from their limited range, and your not on it – you want a pub that showcases YOUR beers, as you want them to be seen.

This is a scenario facing many micros at the moment.  To some, it’s a symbol of what they’re fighting against – an outdated model in the British beer and pub industry.

But now, things are changing.  And it’s my old mates at Thornbridge who are leading the way, with the first pub on an interesting new deal with Enterprise Inns.

Well, not quite leading the way.

Three years ago, Midlands brewer Everards started a scheme called Project William.  They took over defunct, failed pubs – the ones that we read about that are closing every week – and went into partnership with local brewers around the Midlands and the north of England.  Everards invested in refurbishing the pub – in partnership with the local brewer – and took a traditional tie on lager, soft drinks and spirits – meaning the publican had to buy all these from Everards at their rates.  This is usual enough for PubCos and regional brewers.  But they made cask ales free of tie, simply asking that one Everards beer be stocked on the range.

Now, if you were a bog standard pub that relied mainly on industrial lager (as most of these pubs were before they failed), it doesn’t make much difference.  But if you’re a micro looking for a pub where you can stick six handpulls on the bar to showcase your own beers plus a range of other interesting micros, it’s giving you what you want from a pub with much lower risk and investment than you’d get elsewhere.

There are about twenty Project William pubs now, and they’re all – apart from one uncertainty – booming.  Everards gets the return on its investment from the other drinks.  The micro gets its Brewery tap.  A community gets its pub back.  Everyone wins.

I wrote about Project William in the Cask Report and The Publican.  It’s such a clever idea, the biggest question for me was why no one else had done it, why the big PubCos didn’t take heed.

Well now, someone has.

Thornbridge have worked with Enterprise – one of the two giants of the PubCo world with between 7,000 and 8,000 pubs – before.  The Cricket Inn in Totley is an Enterprise pub, but the leasehold model is not ideal for a brewer with as many great ideas and beers as Thornbridge has.  So brewer and PubCo have been talking about doing things differently.  When Enterprise decided to take a leaf out of Everards book and create a different kind of leasehold, Thornbridge was the first to jump.

The result was the Greystones:

God bless Farrow and Ball.

This was a failed pub in Sheffield called the Highcliffe, a great building that had just become a haunt for local, erm, ‘characters’, the kind of people who spend more money in a toilet cubicle than at the bar.  The refurb was a joint investment – with Enterprise chipping in most of the cash.  Thornbridge are free of tie on ales so they can showcase their range.  Enterprise gets a big pub run by people who know what they are doing.  Sheffield gets yet another amazing craft beer pub, which also has an emphasis on ‘arts and the local community’, with gigs and other events happening regularly.

The Greystones opened on November 3rd.  It sold 3000 pints in its first 48 hours.

So if you’re that ambitious micro, it’s not simply a case of walking up to Enterprise or Everards and saying, “Gizza pub” – they need to be convinced that you have the business acumen to make it work, and that if they pay for a refurb it’s going to pay back.  But if this model catches on – as it surely will – we’re going to see more abandoned pubs revived, and a much greater variety of drinks on British bars.

Hats off to Enterprise – not always the hero in stories about British pubs – for having the vision to do this.    Props to Everards for coming up with the original idea in the first place.  And well done Thornbridge, yet again.

I’ll be doing a Hops & Glory event with a tasting of Thornbridge beers at the Greystones on Thursday 16th December.

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