On one Facebook publican's question about buying a freehold pub from Punch Taverns
You can almost guarantee that
it will need to be rewired, plumbed and basically everything needed to
get it up to code. It will leak heat like a sieve in winter and struggle
to be cool in summer. As it's in Burton there is a chance that it got better over the years than most of the country's pubs but I doubt it.
This area - individuals
taking on former tied freeholds and turning them round is an important
subject because it's one potentially very
significant way ahead for the pub industry. If large numbers of
individuals who are easentially able to run their businesses well but
have been starved of cash, and had their business development hamstrung
by the pubco tie, were able to take on their freehold and invest wisely
then push ahead with an invigorated business that's had a major shot in
the arm and is then run by people who have free of tie purpose and can
see a meaningful future working in their pub ... It could transform our
landscape and if it happened on a big enough scale would have a
significant impact on the whole economy.
The point is that pubcos are a
blight on the pub sector. They starve the whole industry of cash and
liquidity, make it impossible for small businesses in the sector to
raise borrowing or get equity investment by making the whole industry look
financially toxic - so the sector has not been substantially invested
in for three decades which is why it's being abandoned by customers.
Government won't legislate against the tie because it fears the
consequences of the pubcos' demise with thousands of pubs coming into
the market with no buyers. The fact is there are thousands of potential
buyers out there - they're the publicans who run the pubs already.
The problem here is that behind the scenes at Westminster and in the
fabric of our nation's decision makers, the central myth of the pub
sector is it's seen as an industry where every individual pub is a small
business that cannot thrive or even survive without having the backing
and strength and economy of scale of a big brewer or pub company behind
it. It is total nonsense that's been promotes by all the big companies
since before the beer orders because it's a lie that suits them. One way
and another as long as the tie remains In any way shape or form it
means the big companies stay in control, supposedly 'nurturing' or
'partnering' poor weak individual publicans who otherwise would fall
foul of being unable to compete in fiercely competitive world of pubs
run by chain operators.
It's palpable nonsense. It's gobbledygook it's the paradox that keeps the status quo in place.
A free and fair market where publicans were allowed access to
affordable finance and they owned their freeholds would radically change
the pub industry to make it what it should be: something for Britons to
be proud of.
Main problem with the whole
toxic sector is the only people who've been making enough profit out of
it to be able to raise finance against their activities are the people
who are not actually running the pubs. Pubco's perennially efficient
asset stripping activities have stripped the pub sector of investment
while making it a pariah for banks and institutional lenders.
There is money available in
some circumstances where if you take the pubco's usurious levy out of a
pub's balance sheet and p&l and the publican's left with the profit
and the wherewithal to invest in the business but then, even when the
pub's in the pubco's disposals list, the pubco often will sense an easy
ROI and demand a ludicrous sum for the freehold.
No comments:
Post a Comment