Another comment on another closed forever pub article

The Ridge and Furrow pub has been forced to close after Morrisons entered plans for a petrol station on the land

Good article, well informed. 

Pubs like this are being asset stripped all over the UK by 'tied model' pub companies who lease them out to publicans at high rents while supplying them with beer at up to double open market prices. This makes takes any profit the publicans might earn and puts it into the pockets of the pubco's, the publicans cannot invest in their businesses, the pubs become run down, customers abandon the pub for better appointed, better value places, the publican's business fails, often the pubco manages to get another lessee to invest more in the pub, but never enough to get the property, or the business, out of the doldrums. Eventually no one is optimistic enough to believe the pub will ever work again without comprehensive refurbishment at which point the pubco sells the freehold to a developer 'suitable for alternative use' the developer has a history of the pub which suggests 'it is no longer financially viable' as a pub and the rest is what everyone is becoming familiar with all over the British Isles as we see the rich traditions that surround pub culture, the heritage and very particular sense of place that pubs bring to our society, slowly, deliberately asset stripped from our lives in plain sight as a few pubco's and family brewers abuse the beer tie, fleece thousands of publican lessees and the communities they serve into the bargain, and profiteer all the way to their bondholders and banks. Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy and people like joner63 laugh at the situation saying 'you should have used it' when, really, people didn't use it because these run into the ground pubs can't possibly meet the standards demanded by contemporary customer expectations.