We welcome Dave, Mk2, who has been recruited to head up our bar. He is due to start in February to start organising and getting us ready to open some time in March.  We will start with weekends and build from there as we recruit more people heading into summer.

For those of you not in the loop, over the winter we have been closed. There were many reasons for this but the reality of operating with uneven competition caused by the energy crisis was primary. The cost of running a pub business is very much dependent on energy consumption, with big cooking and heating costs and big refrigeration and cooling costs often working against each other in old inefficient buildings. Our pub became instantly more expensive and uncompetitive the moment we started a new energy contract, this was why the governments energy support scheme was so important but since our business is predominantly profit making in the summer, government’s lack of decision as to energy support post March was paralysing our ability to budget and therefore plan and recruit.  It lead to us closing until we could know what we were dealing with.

Sadly, despite waiting for the delayed and delayed energy support announcement from HM government, and despite the promise by the brief Truss led government to protect the pub industry, our latest government’s diabolical energy help package may as well not exist.  The discount offered has been cut to just 2p per Kwh and will save us approximately £2000 off a £50,000 bill.  It is a bill which will rise by £34000 from last year and is staggeringly difficult to deal with.  The chancellor has spun the message that energy prices are coming down, shame the retailers are reluctant to pass this on and, in the meantime, have many of us tied into another expensive contract already.

(Please excuse me whilst I have a full on rant)

What our hopeless lot in Westminster fail to ever understand is what £30,000 means to normal people. What £30,000 means in a small business with a smallish turnover. It is devastating. Every supplier, including the breweries that supply us are also reeling because we all realise that the market, you normal people, are disappearing fast as the price of a pint in a pub increases and increases. Taxed to oblivion whilst our friendly government supports and is is paid for and lobbied by big business - including supermarkets, energy companies and the financiers that underpin them.  Supermarkets uncontrolled power really irritates me.  They can use alcohol as a loss leader to entice its custom, a custom that has no realistic choice but to shop there but it can't afford not to. It seems perverse that Tesco are our cheapest supplier for booze, even cheaper than Booker the wholesaler of booze and food who Tesco were allowed to buy a few years ago even thought we are supposed to have a monopolies commission.

Government policy sucks too and so does their spin that they are holding increasing beer duty.  Policy is to tax beer ever increasingly (like cigarettes) with duty which currently amounts to about 34% of a pint.  It then taxes their tax by adding VAT (like petrol). It does this because alcohol is 'bad for us' yet it has no minimum pricing on a supermarkets who, with the aid of such whopping turnover, continue to allow alcohol to be sold cheaply as a loss leader whilst undercutting the market of pub and small retailer.  This practice is in direct argument for Government reasons to add duty in the first place.  Government fails to ever see the pub and its value to community and tourism, it sees the city of London, investors, and itself and protects its big businesses that fund it. Sadly, our local MP is supposed to know her local area and is supposed to represent our community. I have written, as have others, but deaf ears means the demise of the pub will outlast her and her rotten party.

Anyway, sod em.  Rant over. 

Despite all efforts, expect some price increases which we have no choice but to pass on. We will absorb as much as we can and try to create and find value where possible so that as many of our customers as possible have the chance to enjoy what we do even if less often than normal.



Your support is incredibly appreciated.