It's more than the smoking ban, cost of living and covid have killed many.
I run a pub for a brewery as a Tenant, prior to this I bar managed for someone else.
We've been open since August and have yet to pay ourselves. DH and I are the staff, we clean, serve pints, do all the marketing and social media. You name it, we do it.
Breweries are land owners, not breweries. They care only if they make money, they don't maintain their pubs until they're practically falling down. In our private living space for which we pay rent, part of he ceiling collapsed in the hallway in August and was reported straight away. It's still not been looked at let alone fixed.
Our brewery isn't the worst one but aren't great
We've had very little support. They expect the pub to be the talk of the town, without realising that when they allowed the last person to run it as a drug, prostitution and theft ring, it's going to take longer than 6 months to turn that perception around in an affluent, snobby area. We've not been here a year yet and it's getting there, but only very recently and down to things I've done. I work 18 hour days, whilst looking after two autistic teens.
As a pub, you can't just sell beer anymore, it's not enough. In our pub, we researched what was our competition, I posed on Facebook in the biggest local group saying I had heard the pub was being redeveloped. Very naughty of course but I asked the admin! It sparked a conversation of people who used to love the place but would never drink there anymore due to how it had gone so badly down hill. It made me go for the community local approach, however we do also get travellers in from the local Travelodge whose bar is extortionate.
We host clubs, in fact I never say no to a club.
We've hired out our kitchen as it would cost too much to run ourselves. We also allowed a food truck in the carpark too. Both pay me rent and bring food to customers. I've helped out with the local Lions Club.
We hosted 4 people for Christmas lunch this year who would've been on their own, we had a great time.
It's hard! And then we have the odd truly vile customer in which gets us down.
I love what I do, but it's never ending. I could get a job in a supermarket, work far more sociable hours, and get a wage each month! And sleep!
Take Sky sports-£25k we got quoted for a year (we declined).
HMRC is thousands a month. Accountant - £500 a month. PRS licenses so we can play music and host bands is £200 a month. And they're sneaky because they watch and if they decide you've hosted too much music they will make you pay more. Drinks cost us between £1k (bad week) and £3k (good week) a week. Our first order when we were reopening was £11k! Rent is £3k a month. Then council tax as well (£212 a month). Bands are between £80-300 a time.
It's why I always say if you can support a pub, do. If the industry dies that's a lot of people out of a job, I'd be homeless, as would many others. Its why we are all collectively livid at Labour and their stupid "penny off the pint" fantasy. When Guinness alone has gone up by 4.7% a barrel, no, we can't give you money off a pint. We know it's expensive. We know you can grab a four pack from Aldi.
Anyway that's my take as a landlady!