List of all posts by user:

Good luck to him, far better to have a community pub serving local needs than to be owned by a company with no interest in such concerns.

I have to agree you could have the cleanest kitchen on earth but unless the folder is filled out you would be lucky to get 2 stars. Equally there will be some kitchens with higher ratings and all the boxes ticked which would have lower standards (no suggestion of you falling into this bracket).

There already seems to be a conflict in their brief of translating commitments from the pubcos when they are described in the report as: FLVA (Federation of Licensed Victuallers Associations) is a members' organisation looking after the business interests of self-employed licensees in the licensed trade.

Why has the model gone wrong you ask? Is it because the model has been abused to the point where many see it as no longer viable? I put it to you that the reason is because tied landlords are paying free of tie rents and then double for tied products. The real issue is that the big players became a little too greedy operating a system based on a 75/25 split in the favour of the pub companies whilst tenants bare all the costs. This split is naturally based on unrealistic FMTs with costs at 10-15% below benchmarking. Fortunately my experience of publicans who have landlords (not pubcos or brewers) experience a relationship where they just take rent for the building favour square footage as a guide. They do not get ripped off by tied beer prices and strangly enjoy help from brewers and suppliers both in pricing, merchandising and support. Sadly these kind of deals are few and far between.

Simon i fail to see how the pubcos will be celebrating? They have just tied themselves to abide by the RICS guidelines and ALMR benchmarking, their tied prices will have to be shown on the BII website with free house prices shown in comparision. There code breaches will now be very public and lack of action may trigger what we have seen before which is the unions getting involved and then such breaches become resolvable but publically noted. They will have to carry out deeds of variation for all of their leases containing upward only rent review clauses at their cost also. The BII may just have been given the teeth they and tenants always wanted. The report buys them time to continue their disposal programs and try to manage their debt and they now face having to be completely transparent in their dealings with new leasees which will see a huge drop in uptake of their pubs potentially. In the meantime the OFT would seem to have been given a wider remit to investigate the issues raised by CAMRA which can again be challenged. There are many other triggers that can start a full Competition Inquiry being instructed before next year. Hardly time for celebration, maybe some brow wiping and planning for further disposals. Last time Tuppen gave some vaguely positive news their shares went up by around 20% and today they have gone up by 0.75% which tells a different story some might say.