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Monday, November 26, 2012

The People's Pub Partnership We Ain't Seen Nothing Yet.


Like · · · 5 November at 02:15

  • Andrew Heyes Mark! It looks like a pump clip!
    Dark Star Brewery lol!
  • J Mark Dodds Google People's Pub Partnership and it should come up. Very basic holding page. This logo is part of the new site which won't be much more than a more detailed explanation of what the businesses will do that looks better and encourages more people to leave their details for more information to be sent.
  • J Mark Dodds Otherwise;

    www.peoplespubpartnership.org

    If Google search doesn't throw up PPP please tell me.


    www.peoplespubpartnership.org
    If you CARE about pubs and want to help save Britain's heritage and traditio...See more
  • J Mark Dodds You will of course note the old logo which I really like tbh but a lot of people react badly to because it's too redolent of violent revolution. Which is exactly what I like about it.
  • Kieran Henshall I'm glad you said that, now I can say I like the old one better. Sorry! I just feel the new one is cliche, takes the serious honesty off it? It's something that might come in a ready made .psd file, and more film festival/game achievment/action man/pu...See More
  • Linda Brookes Can I just make one comment about the web page. For anyone that suffers from being colour blind, red is a really difficult colour for them to read.
  • Dale Knight I must admit I like the new one, however I understand where Kieran Henshall is coming from. Either way I also can not wait for the new website. Keep up the good work.
  • J Mark Dodds Kieran Henshall - I agree with you. But in this instance

    The Revolution Will Be Televised.

    And those good observations you make are why it needs to be the star version that gets wide public exposure. The flag will be kept for satellite marketing for
    ...See More
  • Jackie Carter Know any Japanese bankers? like Nomura????? now let me see, who did they fund? oh yeah I remember now....................................... EI
  • J Mark Dodds Yes. Jackie Carter precisely.

    BrewDog raised £2.2million through 7000 small investors.

    If the People's Pub Partnership proposition is well enough told and it offers a modest return of say 6% over 5 years and it's broadcast wide enough it should be
    ...See More
  • J Mark Dodds I said I'd post a 250 word synopsis - I'm still working on it. Hope to finish it tomorrow.

    Bringing this together feels like what cleaning the Augean Stables must have been like. Which is as Jackie Carter will point out - rather an obtuse way of putti
    ...See More
  • Jackie Carter I had to google that!! Blimey you can be obtuse at times
  • J Mark Dodds hehehe. Off to bed. Thanks for googling X
  • Jacqui Baxter Hercules was fine.
  • Dale Sharp I woke up this morning thinking about the logo! It looks like a sheriff's badge. "At the heart of the community" - is that at odds with the role of a sheriff who is usually portrayed as working alone and shooting the bad guys? Goes a bit against people...See More
  • Kris Moore It looks abit like some kind of forces badge and very american
  • J Mark Dodds Thanks people. I am struggling finishing the 250 words because, frankly, a hangover got in the way. And i took the day off to look after my youngest, most favourite, son who is poorly. And not at school.
  • J Mark Dodds It's taken three weeks longer than I expected and it's more than 250 words - and it's still in need of more work but I think you'll get the gist:

    This is the People's Pub Partnership.

    The People's Pub Partnership is to be an Open Source Organisation.
    ...See More
  • J Mark Dodds The next step will be to expand to fifty pubs in two years.

    What makes PPP different from other pub companies?

    It's an asset-locked, Social Enterprise which will operate under a constitution like the John Lewis Partnership's. It will be controlled b
    ...See More


    www.antic-ltd.com
    Antic. Great Pubs, Great Service, Great Beer, Real Ale, wedding, budget wedding,...See more
  • Steve Wilson If I had any cash I would definitely get involved with this J Mark! Hope you manage to get it off the ground...
  • J Mark Dodds If you brew your own beer in modest quantities it costs about .75P including duty or so some calculations I saw recently suggest.

    If you brew a lot of very good beer and have a managed estate of say 100 pubs to sell it through - you have a business mo
    ...See More
  • J Mark Dodds Thanks Steve. If I get it off the ground I'll be asking you to get involved - and, I think, other people here too.

    There is strength in numbers.
  • Andrew Heyes Hi Mark. Very impressive. We talked about this and the possibility of me working for you! I hope it can still happen one day so I can be with my girl. Cheers.
  • Dale Knight J Mark Dodds That is a fantastic plan, To say I am impressed would not go fat enough. Keep up the good work.
  • Sheena Valentine At the end of October, the value if funds in the Members Investment Club was close to £12.5 million. Further shares were bought in Shepherd Neame. In my opinion PPP is exactly the sort of thing CAMRA could and should be investing in and supporting. The campaign for real ale has been well and truly won. Now it's time to ensure we all still have somewhere to drink the stuff.
  • Andrew Heyes Sheena! you think the same as me!
    Awesome!
  • J Mark Dodds Thank you very much for your positive comments.

    For it to have real success it has to be a collaboration. I'd appreciate people to join in and get involved. Serious request here people: I'd REALLY, really, appreciate it if you have any thoughts, ideas
    ...See More
  • Andrew Heyes Hi Mark.
    Fantastic. You made my day. But please dont make your pubs too new. We want original and genuine. We want fabulous beer and we want it to be joy when we come to you.
    Thrilled about the brewery bit. But concerned that it would be, just a brewer
    ...See More
  • Jackie Carter Location, Location,Location
  • Jackie Carter & Charlie Luxton!!!
  • Andrew Heyes No JACKIE! If it is a great pub, doesn't matter where it is!
  • Jackie Carter Wanna bet on that Andrew ??
  • J Mark Dodds Andrew Heyes, thanks for those points.

    Buildings: Each pub will be refurbished appropriately and sensitively to its own character and locality - this is essential for them to have 'authenticity'.

    Beer: You're right - it will take time to have the vol
    ...See More
  • Andrew Heyes Ok.
    Jackie. Been to a pub. Bradfords best as in atmosphere and quality of ale. Truly awesome pub go the middle of nowhere. There are some exceptions Jackie, thank God!
  • J Mark Dodds Jackie Carter - Agreed. I reckon that 20%, conservatively, of all pubs coming onto the market now could be really busy if they were treated right. The reasons they've come onto the market are many but one thing they have in common is looking like they were last refurbished in 1973 - people abandoned them for them being irrelevant to them as customers.

    What we do to pubs will be up to the mark, with it, high quality and good value, well served by people who know what they are doing.

    The task will be to choose the right pubs and not the dead ducks.
  • Andrew Heyes Mark. But there must be so many fab pubs that could be perceived as dead ducks. Up to up to find them and then save them. Otherwise, they are gone forever.
  • Sheena Valentine Our pub was a dead duck...indeed it was actually closed, now thriving so it can be done.
  • Jackie Carter good people running good pub = profit, good people running good pub +Pub co = RUIN!!
  • Sheena Valentine Nail on head Jackie!
  • J Mark Dodds Just watched this little film about the Rochdale Pioneers with my boys. "A true story of hope, determination and principles."

    http://www.therochdalepioneers.co.uk/trailer

  • Linda Brookes J Mark, who are you going to for the initial start up money and what is their line of business? I've read your proposal through a couple of times and on the whole it comes across really well. However I do have one criticism, and that is the "green, en...See More
  • J Mark Dodds Great observations Linda Brookes, thanks.

    I think there are several equally important strands to the project. I'll come back to this soon, thanks again.

    MORE please!
  • Kevin Bagshaw I agree with Linda on the green issue, particularly from a brewer's point of view, a brew plant likes it's electricity, your hlt stays on 24/7,through the night when solar isn't working. Larger breweries are dependant on gas, you just can't heat enough water fast enough using electricity. There's a lot of scope for using waste water in brewery, Skinners got a water reprocessing plant built next door, and the waste goes straight back in to the grid. You certainly would produce enough water for flushing toilets, without the need for using grey water. Farmers use spent grain for feedstuff, but larger breweries find it difficult to dispose of, without paying. Hops compost very well, and can be used for mulch in the "raw" form. I wouldn't worry about the brewery volume too much, it can sell out of PPP, having beer in other pubs will ultimately help get the name out there, and once the brewery name has been made, people will look for ppp pubs, because some of the range will only be available there ;-)

    My thoughts on the logo, it's technically good, but reminds me of a security firm.

    Have you sent any information to beer beauty? She and her husband work in tv.
  • Paul Salvadori hi Mark, I agree with Linda. Eco friendly/ efficient production of energy is almost a given these days. to emphasise it so strongly can appear to politicise this venture and come across as more of a crusade than a viable business. From an investors point of view you appear to be focussing on a group not renowned for huge spending in pubs, and setting very high set up/investment costs, which may frighten them off.
  • Paul Salvadori The investors will be looking for where your footfall will come from, and how you will tempt people back into pubs.
  • Jackie Carter Have to say the green angle could give you the sort of 60's hippy image, sorry x
  • Jackie Carter And the badge is a tadge reminiscent of Stalinist Russia. Maybe the photo at the top of this page, shaking hands, would be more representative of the image you are trying to achieve?
  • Jackie Carter I agree with the last few posts. The investors will only be interested in footfall, and a return on their investment. The punters couldnt care less where or how your electricity etc is produced. All they will be interested in is a comfortable warm safe...See More
  • J Mark Dodds Can't comment in depth on any of these excellent observations at the moment because I'm enjoying time with my boys making garlic Chicken Noodle soup. Later though. Brilliant stuff please keep it coming.

    Exciting!
  • Paul Salvadori a consistent image of self brewing and home made traditional food from local produce, encouraging the community to provide what they can of that produce ( thems Fred's carrots we're eating), and fair as opposed to cheap pricing would set a point of difference that McMarstons and the Harvesters couldn't touch


THERE'S a lot to respond to and I can't do individual justice to each point but I WILL certainly take note of all concerns and comments when revisiting this draft - and put it up here again for your further consideration.

Particularly appreciate the feedback regarding the green issues and agree there is a danger if it's not handled correctly in the final draft that it could leave the impression in potential investors' mind that this is more about wheat and sandals than bums on seats and financial surpluses.

And Kevin Bagshaw's observations about the beer.

While I agree the presentation has to be balanced not to put people off, the green thing IS a big deal because If The Future Ain't Green; There Ain't No Future. And the measures described in the plan go significantly beyond what happens to pubs during refurbishment as a matter of course. These pubs will generate electricity and use no gas. THAT is a massive deal - and it IS political because the government's in denial about climate change. The fact that this will work AND be cheaper than running conventional pubs, cleaner, safer and widly popular, giving PPP  commercial advantage over all its competition is a good thing. And if some people think it's holy rollin' or naive or not 'on the money' to think see business like this - they can put their money into new gas and oil exploration.BUT there are serious caveats about taking the green angle out, or softening its importance. This project is about dealing with several things, all of which are interrelated and of equal importance and none can happen sustainably without the others happening alongside.

1) Saving pubs / tradition / heritage / cultural fabric
2) Saving and creating new jobs and making the work of pubs more productive and rewarding in far broader ways than are considered necessary now.
3) Significant impacts must be made that are measurable directly in terms of social and environmental capital rather than in money lining the pockets of the already wealthy who don't need it
4) Reducing environmental impact, pollution and resource use, nurturing the environment and sustaining prosperity without instigating what we consider to be conventional growth 
5) Using the impacts, experiences and evidence of these actions to directly successfully influence behaviour change across millions of people's lives.

This sounds preposterously ambitious and maybe naive when it's put down like that (and it's certainly not as eloquent or comprehensive, or brief, as it has to be; yet) but it HAS to be said: If the Future Ain't Green; There Ain't No Future. And a setting up a new pubco like this offers a UNIQUE opportunity to do all those things above, and more, in one hit.

Take it as a given that pubs can be successfully be turned into thriving businesses that throw off a lot of cash - we ALL know of dead boozers that have been given the treatment and have become packed and bustling.

Take it as a given that doing this to pubs creates value, jobs, impacts positively on communities and wider society.

Then consider the depth of the disease the pub industry is afflicted with which is directly the result of the comprehensive 30 years of serial mismanagement of the tied sector affecting all of the other parts. The tie has directly sucked profit out of more than half the nation's pubs while providing massive alcoves let alone a niche for all the other sectors to take advantage of. That has led to an enormous proportion of our pub stock in a state of disrepair that has to be dealt with comprehensively.

All the pubs with potential will only come back into serious busy if they are comprehensively refurbished. They all need rewiring, plumbing insulating and bringing up to code, even the ones that don't need completely gutting.

This is the ideal opportunity to do the low carbon thing, and do it on a scale where pubs actually generate a significant amount of their own energy - it used to cost about 12% more (my detailed knowledge of this is out of date; I researched all of this intensively in 2002/3 when I was trying to make my pub the first carbon neutral pub in the world - and it's CERTAINLY a lot cheaper now than it was then) to make a typical pub building almost zero carbon impact. And the payback times have fallen, the kit is cheaper and more efficient; it would be a folly NOT to go the whole hog - what we want is an estate that's future proofed, cheap to run, cosy in winter and cool in summer. How many conventional pubs can that be said of without them having to burn F1 levels of fuel?

The green thing. This has to be said because far too few people are saying it, we are in denial because no one really knows how to change what's happening to our world. Setting up a business from scratch that has an ambition to make significant structural change happen in one area of activity is the ONLY pragmatic way of going about change.

1) Climate change mitigation measures are essential in ALL businesses if humans are to survive comfortably on this planet, and very few organisations are doing anything substantial to change their environmental impact. We are, literally, eating ourselves out of house and home and, unless we change this on a massive scale we are going to see dreadful things happen, most likely in our lifetimes.

And if some people think it's holy rollin' or naive or not 'on the money' to think about and see business like this - they can put their money into new gas and oil exploration. And watch it burn. This recession ain't gonna end you know, this is the beginning of the end of the world as we've come to know it.

And measures like these will be seen as basic in ten years time. At the moment they still sound revolutionary. Fact is we should have been doing this kind of thing ten years ago - when it was already too late - rather than starting on the home straight to climate disaster and ice caps melting.

  • Kris Moore Ok, I would be interested to see it when you have got the business plan to go along side it
  • J Mark Dodds Thanks Kris. Figures are in draft now and will be refined soon. These with the draft revised will be the seed fund application.

    £100K needs to be raised to take this to market -
  • Kris Moore Just thinking about the green part, I agree with you on the importance but would also echo that you may come across "60s hippy" perhaps there could be a way of breaking off about these plans by way of restructuring the draft with some kind of title or small paragraph referencing long term viability of energy sources and the related costs and then going into more detail (breaking off)
  • J Mark Dodds MANY people have said 'why not do it with one pub as a model to see if it works and then use the learning from that to take it further?'

    The problem with that is that at least £300K will need to be raised to start with one pub, and that's being conser
    ...See More
  • J Mark Dodds Kris Moore, agreed. I've got two other people working on editing - one's CEO of a national co who's used to dealing with institutional investors. Mind you the language here has to appeal to real people not twats who demand 35% REO - people like that are not welcome in this scenario.
  • J Mark Dodds The £100K includes £20K for talking head videos that explain it all in visuals and words to camera and an animation that backs up all the words like this:

    http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate/animate/rsa-animate-the-truth-about-dishonesty


    www.thersa.org
    In this RSA Animate, Dan Ariely explores the circumstances under which someone w...See more

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