Why are so many pubs closing down?

[Spangles1963]

I was listening to a radio phone-in programme last night about the number of pubs in Britain closing down. Apparently it's an average of 20 per week! Now,I'm not a regular pub visitor nowadays,although I was in my twenties and early thirties (in my mid 50s now).I probably go to a Wetherspoons about once every couple of months these days. But I was shocked to hear this figure quoted. At this rate,there'll be none left within a few years. Just out of interest,I did a tally of how many pubs I could think of in the area I live that have closed down in the last few years. It was 8! Various factors have been blamed for the demise of pubs,from the smoking ban,to the availability of cheap alcohol in supermarkets. What do MNers think is the reason,and has anyone else noticed so many pubs closing down near where they live?

MargaretCavedish I think there is much in what you say.

Many pubs have closed around here and I can think of one in particular that many people were shocked to see closed. Admittedly it is in a rural location and I think this can sometime be a problem as people always have to drive to get to it. However, this pub was a bit of a landmark location (the road it is on is even named after it!), is in a lovely area, has ample parking and lots and lots of passing trade including many walkers and cyclists.

Nevertheless for at least two years it has been closed up with To Let signs displayed.

Thing is - it was never a very nice pub. From its location you expected it to be all cheery log fires and bonhomie. In truth it was just a beer shop - a bit bleak inside and frankly I thought it smelled a bit funny. I would have thought with the right handling and a bit of effort that particular pub should be a gold mine.

Aragog ours are mainly all chains that have vans drop off loads of frozen meals to justbe reheated. Children’s meals are the typical pizza and chips etc no just smaller versions of the children’s. If we go out to eat it’s £30 adults main, £18 children’s mains, £35 puddings for all plus drinks that’s £83 before the children have 2-3 drinks each and 2 drinks per adult.

My curry place have a for 1 person deal £8.50 which actually feeds two (large rice, large curry, samosas and flavoured chicken chunks) add a few naans, poppadoms and chips £24 One bottle of wine £5-£7 two beers £5 and buy in fruit shoots/j20 £3 for the kids comes in well under our pub meal and it’s much more relaxed and we can still buy a brand new dvd to watch with pop £1.57 for 1kg bag of corn to pop in the machine or buy in some chocolate cake or ice cream for a few pounds.

slarty - but if you don't live with a wife you hate, there's less incentive to find a place to hide away from your home!

We used to go to our local weekly along with half the town. 11:30pm doors would be locked with us all still in there. Between 1:30-3:00am the landlord would start giving us that lived furthest away lifts home. But you knew everyone in there, and everyone would do work for each other- decorators, electricians, gas men, landscapers, builders etc. There was always someone to ask to help with something!

Here in multi-cultural Leicester ‘dessert parlours’ have sprung up in recent years.

Well I was clearly a student in Leicester 20 years too early!

I don't think it's the smoking ban. I think that demographic has been dying out. Yes those pubs are closing but cafes are opening up daily on the high street instead. That's where young people meet each other now. I saw an article saying getting drunk is seen as embarrassing by today's youth. And I think generally drunkeness is seeing less and less socially acceptable. People are moving into suburb type areas so they might need to drive to a pub which would get them arrested...

I have young children and don’t go to pubs anymore except for on the odd night out or very occasionally for Sunday lunch. In my parents’ day they had their local where they’d go a couple of times a week, take the kids to hang around the car park on weekends (sounds awful but we actually enjoyed it! ) and this just doesn’t happen anymore. People spend their time differently, I know DH and I are a lot more child and hobby - centric than either of our families were when we were growing up.

I'm happy to report a new bar (cask ale, wine, gin and so on) is planned to open just up the road from me in June. I usually go to Wetherspoons' but it will be nice to have an alternative. It's a small local brewery behind it.

Also, a bit of a conspiracty theory, the government is keen to shut down public spaces where people can meet and talk.same as with the libraries.

Probably be better off shutting down the internet in that case really. Drunk old men aren't going to take the gov down.

Some of the people talking about pubs being a real little community...

That is nice if you are a part of that community, but if you aren't, or you just want somewhere to drink, then that can be a pain.

There was a pub I refused to go with back where I used to live because it had a half dozen regulars in all the time. It felt like sitting in the lounge of someone you didn't know whilst they all chattered about things you didn't know or care about. It's been refurbed, and now it doesn't just have half a dozen friends in it, it has about twenty.

The Cafe Nero opposite the supermarket I frequent is rammed on Saturday at 10am with people in their fifties and sixties. A generation ago they would probably have been pub-goers. It doesn't have Sky blaring out football inanity, the coffee is decent and the loos have been cleaned this century. There's a pub down the road. Last time I walked past in the evening there were two bouncers, and the police had pulled up to deal with a drunken bloke vomiting on the ground. It's hard to imagine why people would prefer the former to the latter.

My kids, when in their teens, frequented Costa and the slightly less corporate but a chain nonetheless Lounges. A generation ago they too would have been in pubs (and it's a separate discussion about whether teenagers would be better off drinking snakebite in pubs than drinking Glens vodka in houses).

Pubs are ideal if you are white and want to watch football on the telly and are too tight to have it at home, while eating reheated ready meals and drinking expensive beer, wine that's been open for a week or a limited range of cheap (in quality, not price) spirits. It's a trip back to 1973, including the carpet, the ethnic diversity and the casual sexism and racism. Don't ask for anything involving mixed drinks, because they don't want your business. I used to go to pubs a fair amount, then I realised that I could do something, anything, else and be better off.

My kids aren't at home any more. I still don't go to pubs, because I have better places to spend my money and couldn't care less if every pub closed down tomorrow. They don't go to pubs, as students, because they have better things to do.

When we first mived here, there were 15 pubs just on the High Street. We tried most of them. The one where everyone turned round and stared at us the first time we went in was the best one! A real old time pub, un-refurbished in any way. I remember pausing in the doorway as everyone stared at me, with hostility I thought, but actually they were the friendliest once they'd 'seen' you.

CuboidalSlipshoddy
Wow bitter much?
Sounds like you just live in an area with / go to shit pubs
The pubs round here are all lovely with a wide range of premium drinks and fantastic food. No racism either.

Central heating and more choice of TV.
I lived in a dive as a student - damp, freezing, gas and electric kept cutting out. It was bearable as the lovely pub up the road was happy for us to spend hours writing essays and nursing a 40p pint of cordial. Warm, dry, large tables and functioning toilets. About a dozen old men did the same, with books and chat.
Went to the pub a lot as a scientist as many days involved set up experiments and poke every two hours. Again, a dozen people like me giving them a couple quid most days, plus a dozen old men propping up the bar.

I'd expect pubs to pick up with the rise in overcrowded housing, but the ban on under-18s in so many after 7pm, and the prices, puts people off. And people drink less partly because beer and cider and wine are all more alcoholic, and going home drunk or to work hung over is frowned on. And more men actually like spending time with families now. Commutes being longer doesn't help.

The thriving pubs are the ones which do coffee and cake and get people in during the day, have at least some food, put on events, and create some community including non-drinkers. It's hard work and needs imagination.

Lots of baby groups in my local as the main bar doesn't do alcohol til 11, so babies rule and afterwards parents have cake etc in the back room, People have lunch, a library has a branch inside, there's pub quizzes and football and films in the back room - and a few lone older drinkers too.

Changes in demographics? Increasing Muslim and Asian populations. Younger generation working harder (longer hours/more unsociable hours) and being very health conscious. The wider population being more health aware. The availability of alternative meeting places like coffee shops and night clubs. I think it's just a cultural shift away from regularly going out to drink alcohol and chat.

I went to pubs through my 20s until I had DCs. I rarely go out at night these days because of babysitting. I hope there's some nice ones left in a decade when I get some independence back

The smoking ban was around 2007, so around the era of Northern Rock and the early stages of the credit crunch so it would be difficult to seperate out the effect of each of those influences.

I favour rural pubs with character. I'm put off by giant screens be it sport or news 24 in the background. I want to hear conversation not have blaring music out of the speakers or muzzy quizzes where I can hear lots of noise but not the actual questions.

The pubs nearest to me have survived. One is a rural pub predating the estate out on the edge of it. Cosy, busy. I wouldn't rely on walking the kids there and risk it being too full. One on another edge, good for a bar meal. The one closest is very much a grill/ reheat type menu (not that the others aren't but they are better at it) Management has changed around a lot and quality varies on who's running it. It's picked up a regular clientelle from the next neighbourhood where many pubs have failed. It's the kind where you cringe as you see the family at the next table getting comfy with their bottles of wine as their children are allowed to go into trip/noise hazard mode. I've had too many evenings where I've had to remind myself that I'm not at work and I'd best not tell the little darlings off (I doubt that the parents are of the it's a village mindset). The convenience of the location isn't worth the bother of the atmosphere.

On my last night out in town last summer, it seemed too early to head back to the babysitter after a filling meal. Heaving noisy pubs didn't appeal and we ended up in a lovely cafe/bar, sipping some peppermint tea from a nice china cup/ tea pot listening to a live singer. Rather enjoyable.

The pubs round here are all lovely with a wide range of premium drinks

"I'd like a Martini, straight up with a twist".

"We don't do poncy drinks".

Seems like a business plan. That one's a Chinese buffet now. Good riddance.

There is a pub near me I have never been in, literally 5 minutes walk.
It’s clientelle come from a certain estate (no pubs there).
Occasionally they get a new owner who tries to make changes but it’s a waste of time as no one else wants to go in there.
I’m surprised it’s still open, it looks busy on bank holiday weekends etc. Rest of the time it looks dead

While I wouldn't expect them to reply like that, I also wouldn't expect a pub to automatically do cocktails, just as I wouldn't expect to get real ale in a cocktail bar. They're quite different things.

I also wouldn't expect a pub to automatically do cocktails, just as I wouldn't expect to get real ale in a cocktail bar.

Cocktail bars: often staying in business. Usually don't have casks of Old Stoatstrangler behind the bar.

Pubs: going out of business at an increasing rate. Have gin, vermouth, ice and lemon behind the bar. Are willing to mix gin and tonic with ice and lemon (ie, not poncy) but not willing to mix gin and vermouth with ice and lemon (apparently, poncy). Go bust, then: I don't fucking care. How hard would it have been to put some gin and vermouth in a glass?

If they want to be fussy about their willingness to combine drinks in particular combinations on the grounds of perceived ponciness, why do I care if they stay in business?

I'm really not convinced that cocktail bars have better attrition rates than pubs - they certainly haven't in my local area, and generally they're a bit 90s, aren't they? And of course you can not go to pubs because they don't serve cocktails and that's what you want, but you do seem weirdly angry about it.

Cocktails might be a bit 90’s, but gin is obviously having a moment.

Cocktails might be a bit 90’s, but gin is obviously having a moment.

Quite. And drinking gin with a small amount of vermouth in it is timeless. Hotel bars will do it. Restaurants will do it. Almost any bar in the US will do it. But not, apparently, UK pubs. I'm not asking them to get special ingredients, or special glasses, or anything. Just to mix ingredients they have on hand, in glasses they have on hand, for money I have on hand: pretty much the definition of what pubs do.

But apparently, a concern about what is and isn't a pub drink combination of the ingredients they have on hand is worth turning trade away for.

It's not as though I'm asking for some silly confection with a parasol and 73 ingredients: I'm asking for the drink that Dorothy Parker and Winston Churchill drank. It has two common ingredients, plus ice and lemon. It's a cocktail in the sense that shandy is a cocktail.

Everyone seems to be suggesting that pubs are closing for financial reasons.
It is certainly the case around here that most of the pubs that close are re-opened a few weeks later with a new tennant.
The ones that close and do not reopen usually close because the police of the authorities object to the license because of drug dealing, criminal activity, under age drinking or sexual exploitation. It puts a totally different outlook on pub closures than the one usually put across by people like CAMRA etc.

Reasons I've noticed - before the internet / social media people met up with their friends or work colleagues at pubs or clubs to socialise. Smoking ban. Cheap alcohol available from shops. Pubs that are surviving seem to offer good food, pub quiz zes, hobby groups a place to meet up, or they are in a desirable location for town, holiday destination. Trip advisor and other review sites has killed off the bad pubs