City Diary – 3 July
Sceptical take on pubco review
Mike Bell: Running best Enterprise pub in London?
Morgan Stanley analyst Jamie Rollo takes a fairly sceptical view of whether the new Parliamentary look at pubcos is anything more than a damp squib. Rollo, who attended all four of the TISC 2004 hearings, notes: “Remember that the previous enquiry did not amount to much, in the words of Chairman Martin O’Neill, in a passing aside: ‘I suspect we’ll come out with a typically British, nit-picking and pragmatic conclusion, but no overall solution’. And so it proved.”
Feeling the raw power of sushi
A little more evidence of the gentrification of the public’s taste in food. City Diary discovered, a few weeks ago, that Peach Pub Company’s Old Mill in Berkhamsted has sushi on the menu (and it was very good). Now Butlins is to open its first sushi bar at its site in Bognor Regis (Butlins chefs have received training from two Japanese sushi specialists). Where will it all end?
Putting meat on the bones
Property whizz Robert Tchenguiz blames the smoking ban, later licensing and supermarket prices for the demise of his Laurel Pub Company. He tells Property Week: “These three problems we had in one year. It’s like being a butcher and then you have mad cow disease.” Or is it like being a butcher who chops off the best cuts and sticks them in the freezer — and then finds he has problems selling what’s left? Or is it more like being a butcher who can’t make ends meet at his over-rented shop where he previously owned the freehold?
Wowing them with innovation
Orchid Group, the GI Partners-backed managed company headed by Rufus Hall, has a reputation for innovation. There’s even a bit of innovation going on with the English language. Hall tells City Diary that the company has a word for the small bits of innovation that it introduces at its pubs — weewows. Wee as in small, wows as in wow factor. Catchy, eh?
What’s hot and what’s not at S&N
Fascinating fact from brewer Scottish & Newcastle (S&N). The UK’s leading brewer attached cameras to the heads of pub customers to discover where they look first when they arrive at the bar. Turns out that the conventional wisdom on where the hotspots are is largely wrong. Contact your local S&N representative, City Diary supposes, for more information on where the hotspots really are.
Shaming Britain’s dodgy boozers
We all know there are pubs that just aren’t good enough. City Diary has come across a blog dedicated to naming and shaming them — www.dodgyboozers.blogspot.com. The site’s blurb says its mission is a “celebration of a Britain that is slightly shabby, where plastic bags still fly from our trees and there’s a black bag taped over the broken pane in the gents”. If it puts a nail or two in the odd sub-standard coffin, it has to count as a public service.
Wetherspoon whittles away
More evidence of the fanning out of JD Wetherspoon into smaller and smaller population centres. The company is planning a £2m conversion of the George Hotel in teeny Whittlesey to start in September (the site will revert to its original name — the George Hotel). Whittlesey, which is a few miles from Peterborough, has a population of 15,000, but anyone under 30 tends to head towards nearby Peterborough at weekends.
JDW targets Portland for 2012
Talking of JD Wetherspoon, word reaches City Diary of company property scouts looking hard for a venue on Portland, the island set to be the home of sailing events in the 2012 Olympics. Public relations spokesman Eddie Gershon confirms: “We are keen to open a pub in Portland and are having a look at the island, but there are no specific sites at present. The situation is, we have only recently sent property scouts to Portland to see what’s available.”
City Diary offers minder service
Anyone who knows glamorous public-relations maestro Maureen Heffernan will know she can hold her own. Word reaches City Diary, though, that a recent visit to Ascot saw Maureen receiving more, er, attention that even she is used to from a male admirer. City Diary is now offering its services as a minder at all public functions attended by Ms Heffernan.
Standard picks start debate
The London Evening Standard’s City pages reviewed, in an article strewn with factual mistakes, the current state of pub sector share prices recently. There was a box that listed the major companies’ best pubs in London. The choice for Enterprise was the Portobello Gold, the site run by arch-Enterprise critic Mike Bell. You’d really have to be pretty humourless to fail to see the funny side of this,
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