Despite the recent easing of restrictions for both outdoor and indoor hospitality, new research shows that almost a quarter of Britain’s licensed premises have yet to reopen. The partial reopening of the sector has been largely hampered by the continuation of social distancing guidelines. Nearly 7.5% of Britain’s pre-lockdown total of pubs and restaurants have already closed for good. The Caterer has more.
23.7% of Britain’s… licensed premises have yet to reopen despite the return of inside service, new Market Recovery Monitor research from CGA and AlixPartners reveals.
The snapshot data found just under 25,000 venues are still shut, with similar trading numbers in England (76.6%) and Scotland (77.4%), but a notably slower return in Wales (69.6%).
The Market Recovery Monitor showed slightly more pubs have reopened than restaurants. Around nine in 10 high street pubs (92.9%), food pubs (91.8%) and community pubs (89.6%) are back trading, alongside 89.2% of casual dining and other restaurants.
However, social distancing and restrictions in place still make it unviable for swathes of venues to open, and 45.2% of Britain’s sports and social clubs remain closed, alongside 50.9% of large venues and 27% of bars.
More than 8,500 premises… have already closed for good.
Karl Chessell, CGA’s Director for Hospitality Operators and Food, EMEA, said: “The return of large parts of hospitality for indoor service was a landmark moment for consumers and businesses alike, but it is alarming to see that so many venues have still not been able to welcome guests. Many will have decided that restrictions and space constraints make opening unviable, while some sectors like late-night bars and nightclubs are still completely off limits.
“It will be an anxious wait to see how many of the venues that are holding on until the final easing of restrictions will be able to make it through. Sustained support is clearly going to be needed to save thousands of vulnerable businesses and jobs.”
The continued presence of a fear of Covid (“Covid Anxiety Syndrome“, as it has been labelled) means many people have struggled with returning to normal life. This will no doubt have created further difficulties for publicans and restaurateur hoping to maximise sales after many months of forced closure. Recent polling from Ipsos MORI shows that 14% of British adults aren’t looking forward to having dinner in a restaurant with friends and 18% aren’t looking forward to going to the pub.
The Caterer report is worth reading in full.
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Yep, the cafe my son works in is still only doing takeaway because they were given so much grief last time enforcing the mask guidelines etc but were reprimanded by management if they didn’t, so they’ve refused to open up until masks are no longer required.
Perhaps someone could ask Lana Del Rey where she gets her masks from 🙂
She is complying with the law, I have not wasted money on a muzzle. The law says face covering so I just wrap a scarf. I only use it for food purchase and have not done any other shopping . Their loss, my gain as my savings are mounting.
“ Recent polling from Ipsos MORI shows that 14% of British adults aren’t looking forward to having dinner in a restaurant with friends and 18% aren’t looking forward to going to the pub.” For this to be meaningful we need to know how many of those are scared of covid and how many are put off by T&T, face nappies etc. And of those who ARE looking forward, would they look forward MORE without the covid safety theatre, or is it essential for them?
You’re right. I will not set foot in a restaurant, cafe or pub until the track and trace nonsense at the door stops and I certainly do not want my meal spoiled by seeing staff or fools in masks.
+1. not going anywhere that inisists on any of this stupidity, including my office. Remove it all and I’ll be there.
Nor me. Who wants an evening amidst the knickered zombies?
Here here !
And you are far from alone. Who wants to wander in and out of shops/coffee-houses/cafes etc if masks are required? At the moment these places must be struggling. Until masks and distancing are officially abandoned none of these places can expect a return to normality. Even if masks go, they will still have to deal with lower footfall resulting from the coronaphobes.
This is very true. It is also apparent that many who baulk about going to the pub do not generally go them anyway. Their main objection is that they simply don’t want other people enjoying themselves in a pub either. In fac,t p*****g on others chips seems to be the primary driver for many in the Cult of Covid.
While a lot of Zero Coviders are no doubt driven by puritanism, others may be driven either by a thirst to be in the public eye, or by a fear that the next pandemic really will be a Chinese bioweapon (as the CCP now know that their totalitarian regime could snuff it out at home while Western democracies would be left helpless).
I am sceptical about going to the pub in the current climate and I have no desire to go for a meal in a pub / restaurant.
This has FA to do with C1984. I no longer believe ANY of the Covid myth and have not done so since last April. I am certainly not scared of it and have never obliged by falling for any of the nonsense. None of it.
“Going to the pub” is a ritual in its own right – it is a carefree act of enjoyment usually with friends, in a relaxed environment where freedom is triumphant. One way systems, no ordering at the bar, face nappies, signing in and out, two hour time limits, early closing, bloody apps for ordering, no standing at the bar, no beer mats and on and on…
The joy has been sucked from the experience and much as I miss the pub I will NOT comply. Some pubs are taking a more relaxed approach and these I will support albeit grudgingly.
My sons car broke down last night so he called the breakdown service he’s in. They couldn’t fix the problem so had to bring his car home. He couldn’t be given a lift back home with his car because he didn’t have a mask and couldn’t sit in the cab with the driver. He couldn’t sit in his car on the back of the breakdown truck as it was more than 5 miles, so I had to drive the 1/2 hour journey to pick him up.
The jobs worths are loving this rubbish.
A lot depends on why anyone goes to a pub, and what to expect. I go to a pub:-
I don’t go to:-
Until such time as things revert to pre-March 2020, I won’t be parting with any amount of money to be treated as a disease-ridden criminal of limited intellect.
We have established our own freedom pub
We don’t use the gulag pubs
There is one smallish pub fairly near to me, where the clock stopped in 2019. No signing in, no masks on staff or customers, no table service, and talk to anyone you like wherever they are and proper draught ale to go along with it. It’s doing very well.
I sort of want to ask where this pub is so that I can visit, but it would be a bad idea to broadcast the location methinks. I dont want to spoil the fun things in life for others.
It is a pity that we cant have much more of this low level non-compliance. The police cant arrest everyone. If you do get arrested for standing up and having a pint, then think of it as using up the police resource allowing someone else to have a bit of freedom somewhere else. If we all non-comply together, we can win this.
I should think there might be one or two out in the depths of the countryside, hereabouts. Unfortunately, the locals for me are pubs in a honeypot seaside town of second “homes” and so forth. Looking at the comments on Tripadvisor for them, my preferred venue attracts criticism of either excessive zeal for Covid measures, including the insanitary temporary outside lavatories, or failure to have stronger ones, in about equal measure.
I salute anyone who has enough guts and savvy to operate as your pub does, but I guess that, in absence of patrolling hi-viz halfwit “marshalls”, there is the ever-present danger that some passing pro-lockdown quisling killjoy will dob it in to “the authorities”
BBC headline
‘Five things we learned about Sir Keith Starmer’
1 He’s a prick
2 He’s a prick
3 He’s a prick
4 He’s a prick
5 He’s a prick
Every time I watch an Andrew Lawrence skit on him it makes me chuckle. “Hello, you don’t know me but I’m Sir Keir Something and for the past year I’ve been leader of the Labour Party”.
The problem with Labour is that all of their policies are against the interests of the working class. Mass immigration which causes lower wages and higher house prices being the key policy which hurts ordinary people the most. Working people dont want to vote Tory, but they are a far better bet than the Libs or the Labs.
As someone pointed out with all of this covid lockdown nonsense, Keir Starmer has no backbone. If he did he would take the party back to where it once was, and look at the key issues that affect working people and mould policies around that. He has no backbone though and will do whatever it takes to appear popular to the Guardian.
It has nothing to do with backbone, he’s a globalist lackey.
Yes, it could be that as well.
Yes, it’s a both, not an either/or!
Ah, yes. “Libs”. An endangered species, rarely spotted as it hides in the backwoods, either hibernating or in suspended animation; likely both. If it does emerge, it is only to sneer at the other animals and foment discord, before again disappearing, muttering, as it goes, “Bollocks” to something or the other.
It’s Tory propaganda to claim that Labour has lost the support of the working class: the real key to the current Tory hegemony is their overwhelming popularity with the retired, which is mostly based on a promise to protect their housing wealth.
Corbyn was the most popular Labour leader since Blair (he actually got a higher vote share in 2017 in England and Wales than Blair did in 2001), but his Third-Worldist views were weaponized against him very effectively two years later, and the Corbynites have now shot themselves in the foot with their enthusiasm for Zero Covid.
Well, upick for accuracy of the 5 statements, but the headline is all wrong (surprise, surprise as it comes from the home of fake news) – we already knew!
It would appear from my own experiences and what is posted here that it is something of a lottery whether a pub/cafe pursues ‘Covid Safety’ or take a rather more lax approach and just pays lip service to the ‘rules’ and ‘guidelines’. Of course, this is an issue in itself and it shouldn’t be this way. I am a pub goer in that although I am not a regular in one particular pub I am someone who regularly to pops in several different pubs as and when I feel like but wondering if an establishment is ‘friendly’ or not is something of a turn off. I do not totally blame the establishments per se as they are largely hamstrung by ‘government guidelines’ and other such nonsense but some are pushing the restrictions too far and I won’t be going back. I have been to several pubs since they opened up but to pretend it is anywhere near normal would be something of a stretch. I never wear a mask myself but watching the absurdity of others don theirs for what is often little more than three strides makes me weep in my ale.
It’s nowt to do with “covid anxiety syndrome”. I reckon there’s a fairly large cross over between the type of bedwetter that won’t go the pub now and the type of person that never went the pub anyway.
I’m staying away because being confined to a table with limits on who and how many people you can interact with in a room full of wallies with surgical masks where you can’t even visit the bar is not a “pub”. I suspect many are the same.
Get the pubs back to normal and the people will return.
I agree with this completely. I find all the petty, idiotic and unnecessary restrictions put me off totally. I would like to use a venue near us for ‘mini-conferences’ for my Latin, Greek and Hebrew groups, but I will NOT use them if they insist on face-nappies, hand-gunk, anti-social distancing and wiping down tables after use. As skybluesam said, Get the pubs back to normal and people will return.
It really is quite simple.
As well as all those who can’t be arsed with the control freakery and being treated as if they have rabies there is another aspect to reduced going out / spend.
Millions of people are not in smug middleclass occupations.
They have either been or are aware they may be, made redundant, have reduced hours, no bonuses for foreseeable future, down to one household income, or even jave severe doubts about the future now the statists are in control.
They respond rationally by cutting their outgoings and save for a rainy day at best.
Meals out in the pub are an easy miss, have a barbie and brew your own beer.
Look at the takings of all the home brew firms, 50% of their products are sold out.
People haven’t stopped socialising, they’re just doing it more cheaply below the radar.
And apart from having a go at home brewing, quite a few local breweries do home delivery as well. A little more expensive than buying from supermarkets, but still a lot cheaper than most pubs.
Talked to a small village pub landlady this week. Trying to start again, but so worried they will be closed by a variant that they daren’t invest in food, lost money that way last time. The lack of certainty is killing them by inches.
But … who wants pubs, where the people talk to each other, and whisper defiance of their betters? The shire would be safer without them. Sauron Inc has plans for development which are much better, Stay home, stay apart, stay obedient.
And balls to you mam!
It’s not just ‘Covid anxiety syndrome’ which is to blame. Whilst we are required to wear masks in shops many people are spending less time in the high streets than before.
Resist and reopen, and arm yourselves if necessary.