Punch lines
I attended the ALMR/Morning Advertiser seminar on leases in Birmingham last month. A most interesting affair. I was impressed with all the speakers. Giles Thorley [Punch] spoke with passion and conviction shame about the visuals that replicated a Specsavers eye test. If you have 4,000-plus pubs, surely you can find a picture of one of them. Two years ago (MA, 1 November 2001), I wrote, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, of 10 changes that I suggested Giles should make, on moving from Unique to Punch. I feel it may well be pertinent to offer a mid-term appraisal. 1. Let's get the priorities right first. I suggested he pinch the coffee machine from Unique at Thame. The one in Fradley was inferior. Result: excellent new coffee machines at Punch, free water, mints, liquorice allsorts and toffees 10/10. 2. Office in the middle of nowhere: Punch employees faced starvation at Fradley, if Mabel the sandwich lady was off sick. The site clearly chosen by a chartered surveyor with no thought for humanity. Result: a move to Jubilee House with Morrisons within walking distance and dampened only by heavy traffic issues 9/10. 3. Communication: lessees were getting "Dear blank" letters with their bonuses. Appears not to happen now 10/10. 4. Vanguard lessees were complaining they had gone from "Dear Fred" to "Dear Lessee". Mixed result: some improvement, but not as good as it was 6/10. 5. I suggested finding the Holy Grail would be easier than evidence of any licensees' forums. Result: forums introduced 10/10 (I think I might be getting close to a nomination for the Xmas card list). 6. The lack of a code of practice on rent reviews. Result: charter introduced with the concept of a panel involving independent experts paid for by Punch 9/10. 7. Why undermine ex-Bass lessees' businesses on lease renewals by eroding their gross profit margins and removing established discount terms. Result: it still does 0/10. 8. The Punch growth lease with its emphasis on rent v beer volumes. I asked: Is this not a short-sighted strategy in a beer-declining market? I have to accept that for new licensees or where there is to be a major investment or indeed where the previous licensee has been "buying out", such agreements can be lucrative. For those licensees who have established and "plateaued" their businesses, more flexibility is required. If you've got an ex-Bass lessee, who has been a model of reliability, where's the problem in allowing the same terms of trading to continue? 5/10. 9. Business development managers v licensees and the number of pubs that BDMs have to look after. The attempt to change the emphasis away from BDMs to BRMs (business relationship managers) with an eight-weeks visiting schedule is laudable, but licensees remain cynical. No one admits to seeing the BRM that frequently. Complaints over frequent BRM personnel changes remain 5/10. 10. Punch a happy ship? Only time will tell, although there is no doubt that Giles and his colleagues have made a real attempt to improve matters. Comments such as "the new Inntreprenuer" are unfounded and undeserved. I do though, feel the choice of name is wrong ie, Punch. Whilst I accept it was in the Punch Tavern that the company was founded, what if it had been the Flitch of Bacon at Little Dunmow or the Creag-nan-Darach Hotel at Plockton? You get my drift. I feel strongly that Punch is an unsuitable name for a pub company. It implies violence, aggression and neither compliments the thought of pub going or reflects the partnership with its licensees that the company is striving to achieve. Change the name! Jury still out. Back from the brink "Ouch!" was my immediate response when I read David Elliott's reported comments in the Morning Advertiser on a certain pub in Oxfordshire. The highly-respected MD of Greene King Pub Partners decreed that the pub was unviable. This was a bold decision to make as I have learnt all too frequently. Today's unviable public house is tomorrow's success story. Take the Wendover Inn in Greater Manchester. It was closed just over 10 years ago by the local police and described by the TV programme World in Action as the worst pub in Britain. Last month, it won the Union Pub Co Best Community Pub Award. I was at a meeting of the normally sedate Stourbridge and Brierley Licensed Victuallers Association when all of a sudden they went into Marxist-Leninist mode the reason for this revolutionary militancy was the Golden Lion on Bridgnorth Road. "We ay happy, bin we Phil," said the chairman. "Thus bin three fellas gone bust in nine month. Yow got to do somett wi Ansells or we shall object to licence." "I'll have a word," I promised. Ansells was very amenable. The pub was on a semi-disposal list and was brought forward. It sold very quickly and cheaply to a lady entrepreneurial publican, who changed the name, introduced food and abracadabra guess who in the next 12 months won the Stour-bridge Pub of the Year Award! The King's Head at Holt, Norfolk, was the scene of the largest damages case when a licensee took on a pubco (Clewer v Inntreprenuer). The licensee was awarded some £250,000 in compensation. He had gone bust, yet, a few years later, the pub was adjudged Morning Advertiser Family Pub of the year 2001. The Bathams Breweries' empire of nine pubs had one on the outskirts of Kidderminster that never quite fitted in with the rest of the estate. One of the issues was the large council estate at the back of the pub. My advice was to sell it. So Bathams did and the new owner appeared to suffer a decline in trade. Word had it he was desperate to sell, so he did to Tim Martin. Suddenly, the Worcestershire pub started to boom as a community outlet first under the JD Wetherspoon banner before being sold on to Laurel. Moral: never describe a pub as unviable or it may come back to bite you in the posterior! phildixoncmbii@aol.com
