The ideal British pub should be a warm, cosy and friendly place where customers can refresh body and soul with nourishing, well-served food and drink in the company of like-minded people, says Andrew Jefford
I went off to the supermarket yesterday afternoon, where I watched a woman in the queue buy a few groceries - and a slab pack of Carlsberg Export. As I waited, I thought about how I would feel if I ran a pub - insulted, cheated or simply resigned?
The customer was in her mid-twenties, unaccompanied by children, and didn't look like an individual excessively reliant on alcohol: perfect pub-going potential, in other words. Yet it was all going to be hauled home to drink...at the table over a four-course dinner? Hardly. In front of the telly, with a few pieces of microwaved pizza? Much more likely.
This started me thinking about the type of strategies hosts should adopt to counter the rise of home drinking. The old days, when everyone in a locality would gravitate to the pub not only for a drink but for entertainment and social interaction, are gone. Television,
followed by video and DVD, has provided a huge number of entertainment options over the last 50 years; music is available on the
mp3 or sound-system tap wherever you want it; the internet provides a kind of social interaction and every permutation of the alcoholic repertoire can be bought from retailers to drink at home (or almost - more of that later.)
A pub at the beginning of the 21st century needs to offer an attractive space. It should be a
honeypot - the kind of place where people love to spend a few hours. The imperative social functions of the past may have been lost, but the British pub remains, for most people, the simplest, closest and friendliest alternative to one's own living room.
As anyone who has spent time looking for a new flat or house will readily confirm, most people's homes are not particularly appealing spaces. The desire to go out is always there. And the successful pub is the one which capitalises on that most effectively.
Setting the tone
The definition of success depends on core customers - a Yorkshire Dales walkers' pub needs to differ from a Hornchurch community pub. But there are some common denominators: brightness, warmth, cleanliness and comfort - even in the toilets - are essential, combined with a friendly atmosphere, which comes as much from the regulars as from the host, who plays a key role in setting the tone for the regulars. The smoking ban has the potential to greatly expand that appeal.
As far as drinks are concerned, any points of difference which mark the pub out from the home-drinking alternative are especially important. It doesn't take a lot of skill to empty big-brand lager into a glass and the home-served version doesn't differ too much from the pub version. Bottled RTDs are identical wherever you drink them. But well-served real ale cannot be duplicated at home, so pubs that try to serve real ale in superb condition usually find a core of faithfully-returning customers. Despite the advent of the widget, most drinkers still prefer pub-served Guinness to pre-packaged alternatives.
A good wine list - not one stuffed with identikit formula wines - will pay dividends, too, although it may need some initial selling by sample to get customers on board. And there's nothing to stop any publican "personalising" the drinks range by, for example, creating his or her own range of mixed drinks or perfecting the recipe for a really good mulled wine in winter. Anything that customers find hard to do at home is worth doing.
Creative flavour
Be creative with non-alcoholic drinks, too, since customers are going to want to drink less alcohol in the future than they have in the past, and unless you can offer them what they want, they have another reason to stay at home. Unlikely as it may seem now, mid-evening customers will request cups of mint or chamomile tea sooner or later. Get ready to offer them a choice of three or four.
Food is also a major draw which provides customers with reasons to go out. I only realised the other day just what a treat a pub meal could be when I heard from a teacher friend that she sometimes has to teach 11-year-olds how to use a knife and fork. Apparently some households don't even possess a kitchen table, and traditional family meals no longer exist for many families for a variety of reasons, so the chance to sit around a pub table and share a meal can be unique.
Popular dishes that customers find hard to replicate at home offer a great incentive to visit a pub. In this convenience-food age, that could simply mean genuinely home-made meals such as steak-and-kidney pie instead of a ready-made, microwave
version.
Don't be afraid of simplicity, though: even the pickiest still long for a great ploughman's lunch, with heaps of crusty bread combined with well-chosen English cheeses, high-class pickle, chutney or relish and a splash of salad.
Remember to offer a few cheaper alternatives, either using smaller portions or less costly raw ingredients. Almost everyone has less money - or bigger debts - than might be imagined, and those who feel a pub gives good value return more swiftly than those who feel that the cost of an evening out means it has to be an occasional treat.
Social hub
A sense of social interaction remains the anchor of a pub's appeal. Even if customers don't actually talk to anyone else while they are in the pub, the proximity to other people will mean they go home feeling a little less lonely than if they had spent the evening watching telly alone - a powerful reason for coming out in the first place.
Creating the right atmosphere requires more skill than those outside the trade ever realise, and it can easily be destroyed by poor use of music or screens. Major sporting fixtures may be ideal for communal watching, when the ups and downs of the big game can be shared and comment exchanged, but at other times silent TV images aimlessly dribbling or loud, intrusive music filling the air are can distract and irritate those who prefer to chat. And chat is the foundation stone of a pub's atmosphere.
No pub has an absolute right to exist any longer and even those who feel that communities need pubs must recognise that many of our fellow citizens live totally pub-free lives.
But the vast majority still welcome the idea of a pub as a cosy, friendly communal hub where body and soul can be refreshed with nourishing, well-served food and drink in the company of like-minded people.
And those who come closest to that ideal have least to fear from the home drinker.