Facebook to Charlie McVeigh

25.06.2011

Hi Charlie. I'd appreciate it if you could find some time for a discussion. I have an idea. It's called the People's Pub Partnership. In principle it's rather like what you are doing with Draft House but designed to be on a very large scale... as a social enterprise rather than a private company. It's by line is 'putting pubs back at the heart of their communities'. It aims to correct the damage the tied pubcos have done to the pub industry and the British social landscape. It will need a lot of infrastructure, supply chain, purchasing and logistics expertise at every level - with the best industry training possible. It will be an employee owned organisation operating under a constitution akin to John Lewis's. I've got a lot of high level support from within the pub industry - CAMRA, BII and etc and John Lewis are supporting it with discussion around corporate structure. I'm mapping out the essentils of the business plan which, you will understand is new territory to me, having only operated at a small level. I work on the premise that an accountant and a solicitor can set up the two biggest pubcos in Britain then a publican can do the same but a lot better, especially when it will be the accountants and legals who will be jumping to the tune of the publican javascript:void(0)rather than the other way round. I'd very much appreciate your view on this. Jason Evers has been meaning to introduce us for a long time by the way.

Hope to hear from you.

By the way I'm in court for a forfeiture hearing over the Sun and Doves this Tuesday and am busy writing a bid for UnLtd's Big Venture Challenge which has to be in by Thursday. This week is busy!

Best wishes

Mark Dodds