The #GreatBritishPubcoScam under cover of Covid-19 "Open arms: Why pubs are key in the fight against loneliness"

"Open arms: Why pubs are key in the fight against loneliness"

"A new report has confirmed just how important the Great British pub is in the fight against loneliness, as brewery Heineken takes to calling vulnerable people to relieve solitude in place of sharing a pint."

"To launch this year’s annual Brewing Good Cheer campaign, Heineken has teamed up with The Campaign to End Loneliness and Loughborough University to release the Open Arms report. This report reveals the important and positive role pubs play in communities up and down the country – providing people from all walks of life with a space to come together for social interaction and connection."

This is interesting - and ironic because the same company showing the compassion here - Heineken - is, to put it bluntly, forcing tenants out of business and into forfeiting their leases for non payment of rent by demanding full rent through the whole of pandemic.

Some of these rents are £100K+ a year. Even with lower rents, imagine how many publicans have cash reserves of £30-£50K hanging around in case of emergency that closes their business for a year without insurance cover. That's right; That is none. These licensees have no business, no income, no profit and no means of paying rent without getting themselves into enormous debt, Heineken knows this and is blatanly trying to break good tenants of high performing pubs so Heinelen can get *their* pubs back free, vacant possession once their tenants have gone bust; The pubco get *their* pubs back free of encumbrances like irritating publicans Heineken thinks are making too much money out of *their* pubs. 

When you know what companies like Heineken get up to in areas of their activities they don't want the public to know about, where no one's looking, like at the way they treat their tenants, you can have nothing but contempt for them. They are basest bullying most crude rigid soulless talentless corporate behemoths. These blinkered corporate sociopaths grind anything and everything of individuality, character and creativity out of existence with their bullshit asset sweating 'business model'.

When you know they especially single out, deliberately target those who've had the temerity to take up their legal rights to implement The Pubs Code - their legal right, enshrined in law, supervised by 'the independent' Pubs Code Adjudicator - to go free of tie. Anyone whose had the temerity to go free of tie they are blatantly punishing. These licensees - I'm not sure anyone, except Heineken and maybe the Pubs Code Adjudicator, knows how many tenants this is happening to but these licensees are being treated abominably by Heineken's rump Star Pubs & Bars

WE have to put a stop to all this callous corporate disaster capitalism chaos the pub sector is bound up in because of these hedge funds trampling around our unique and precious social assets. They are killing everything that Great Britain REALLY IS...

Great 'business partners' Heineken. Heineken Schmeineken

WE HAVE TO PUT A STOP TO ALL THIS BECAUSE IT'S OBVIOUS ABSOLUTELY NO ONE ELSE IS GOING TO. 

"

A helpful article from one of the prop forwards of the Tied Pub Sector

Why breaking the beer tie will be dire for our Great British pubs 

Senior pubco employee outpouring of rubbish in the Telegraph.  It’s obvious that a senior employee of a company whose financial foundations are determined on extracting as much profit as possible from its customers is going to advocate for keeping the status quo.

David Forde’s enormous salary and bonuses are paid for out of the sweat of the
tenants who generate all the profit the company he works for declares. A company whose  reputation in the backwoods of the murky tied pub sector is for hiding in the shadows behind the larger Punch Taverns and Enterprise Inns while having some of the most toxic relations with tenants anywhere.

The fact that he has time to write the article is telling in itself, it's what he's paid to do. Like all pubco’ tenants, Heineken’s lessees no doubt work so hard and for so little reward they don't have the luxury of having time to write for a national newspaper about anything let alone in favour of legislative change, MRO and a fairer, freer order of business relationship that will enable them to keep some of the profit which abuse of the spirit of the supply contract takes from them.

Publicans don't have time to pontificate with analogies of well meaning enthusiastic nineteenth century surgeons amputating limbs to heal a cut. Tied publicans are too busy fire fighting against their business reality which is that all the tied pubco's, Forde’s company included, charge over-market rent and up to double the price that tied tenants could buy the same beer for from their local wholesaler if they were free to do so. In essence the analogy would be better if applied to Forde's employer's business model, be described as as a cancer with secondaries that must be operated on to remove it from a terminally Ill pub tied sector before it dies altogether. 

The basic facts of the unsustainable business relationship between pubco’s and
their tenants were clearly identified more than ten years ago during the government’s 2004 Select Committee hearings looking at Pubco’s and the way they treat their tenants. Nothing has changed materially in the behaviour of the pubco’s other than they have fewer tenants to rip off now, because something like another 20,000 pubs have closed, largely flogged off for alternate use ‘being no longer viable’ as pubs - by white collar people like Forde.

Forde's mention of his Yorkshire tenant is interesting. He starts by stating the publican was overseeing £155 a week income, which wouldn't pay rates let alone rent or cover a weekly beer invoice. This tenant now apparently, after Heineken's inspired investment of £100K, running a £780K a year turnover business which employs 25 people. The figures don't stack up. Come forward with the figures of that Yorkshire pub for a closer analysis of the business. How does the tenant pay VAT, PAYE and NI out of that turnover given the payroll, conservatively, must be well over 30% of turnover. Add in rent, rates, light and heat, other random overheads such as,er, beer and food and fixtures and fittings maintenance and toilet rolls what have you got? At a glance that looks very much like a business that is trading whilst insolvent. While, no doubt, Heineken extracts a decent margin all round for their modest investment in their tenants' industry.
If David Forde’s perception of the business he presides over is accurate Heineken will have lots of happy tenants pleased to come forward and promote the same types of lease and tied contracts they operate their businesses under… serving them, the pubco, their pub and the people they pull the pints for well all round and it won’t take much for Forde to invite a few, say three or four, Heineken tenants forward to bring some of company's tenants and get them to advocate for the status quo so eloquently as does he...

Perhaps a journalist from the Telegraph might like to take this up? If not, I'd be happy to oblige.

My declaration of interests here is that I was a tenant of this company before David was around... They cannot have changed much in three years without sacking everyone and starting again. And I'm pretty sure they didn't do that.

Toby’s plight highlights wider problems around failing pubs

From Brighton and Hove News 04.09.2014

The Bevvy, also in Brighton, offers an ideal alternative to the social train wreck that’s happening at the Toby. This pub has been run into the ground by poor management over thirty years and needs substantial investment to make it relevant for contemporary purpose. A hostel is not enough for buildings like this one that are positioned in the heart of communities all over the UK. They need reinvention that comes out of joined up thinking to make them work for people now.

http://www.brightonandhovenews.org/2014/09/02/tobys-plight-highlights-wider-problems-around-failing-pubs/34337/comment-page-1#comment-137205

JD Wetherspoon's

JDW are unimpeachable compared with most other pubco's. As Ben suggests, they set the benchmarking for good value and no other pubco comes close. Wetherspoon's fill the vacuum between truly independent pubs, the carbon copy 'brand concept' market niche specialists that Mitchells and Butlers so ably exemplify at their anodyne best no matter which niche they're targeting, and the majority of pubs, - supposedly independent but tied to the asset stripping  #GreatBritishPubcoScam pubco's like Enterprise Inns and Heineken et al whose prices are over the top because of the sky high rent and beer supply prices their usurious, asset stripping pubco freeholders charge tenants.

Wetherspoon's are a strong market response to a highly dysfunctional British pub sector.

They don't have to be brilliant because the general corporate competition in the pub sector is so utterly banal and bad value.

Their steak dinners are a total bargain. Boring, but a bargain.

The Great British Pubco Scam

The Old White Bear being carved up for private use

What more obvious case can there be for triggering severe regulation of the tied pub sector to prevent Britain's meddling pubco's from destroying ancient traditions and our very Sense of Place for the sake of a quick buck than current reports of Punch Taverns, major custodians of our national pub heritage, flogging off The Old White Bear in Hampstead and The Star in St John's Wood for cash to pay off debts? They recently sold both these pubs to property developers with 'no intention of change of use at point of sale'... Hardly needs thinking about does it? Tied Pubco's are devious, lying cheating corporations out to steal value out of 'their' estates. This is blatant asset stripping and HAS to stop!

There's no doubt - even from the distant viewpoint of south east London - it's obvious that both these pubs could easily be fantastic vibrant relevant contemporary social hubs and the focal point of their local communities... for generations to come.  Serving great ales and no nonsense fresh food to eagerly appreciative audiences of loving locals.  But no. To the pubco and the developer (sounds like the title of a Lewis Carroll satire doesn't it) these pubs are just more boozers with no possible life ahead in a world that's moved on to wanting Tesco Locals, Paddy Powers and ill conceived and converted speculative housing developments that blight the neighbourhoods for generations rather than having great pubs on the doorstep. I wonder what the lessees of these pubs think of this nonsense? What do they have to say?

Only the deadly money grabbing combination of a dysfunctional pubco and a cash rich property developer could contrive to assert with fat tongue in cheek that a pub with fantastic potential like the Old White Bear has no future viability except as a home.

Shocking how the greedy, grossly indebted pubco's, Punch Taverns here, discard thousands of viable pubs, destroying Britain's rich cultural tradition, our unique social heritage and depriving communities all over the UK of the extraordinary diverse assets that are their pubs, while professing loudly to be in the business of pubs, people, Partnership and Beer.

It is a massive lie. The Great British Pubco Scam has been decimating our towns, villages and urban centres for two decades. Once vibrant communities now have nowhere to go. Not because of cheap supermarket booze and beer duty but due to the pubco's running down their huge estates in a historically unprecedented profligate act of asset stripping vandalism in full public view.

These statements from Punch Taverns' website say one thing:

"Our business model is based on offering the enterprising individuals who run our pubs – our Partners – a flexible split on their pub rental and the beer they purchase from us."

"The Punch Taverns business model is based on our aim to deliver the best standards of service to our Partners, working closely with them to earn their trust and to help them build quality pub businesses."

Sounds fair doesn't it? But Punch's actions prove the Lie.

Punch and other pubco's like them, are in it purely for the money, for the Boards of Directors raking in huge bonuses as reward for destroying Britain's cultural bedrock as they pay only the interest on gargantuan bondholder loans the Directors raised to buy pubs at wildly inflated prices; loans they haven't a hope in hell of ever repaying.

Enterprise Inns' outgoing CEO Ted Tuppen, the 'Dark Lord' of the pub sector as he likes to characterise himself, is famous for describing MPs who don't like his shoddy business practices as 'Moronic'.  Tuppen usually steps up to the tarnished pubco plate to take the biscuit award for Most Mealy Mouthed Twister of Truth in the pub business but recently he's been overshadowed by Punch Taverns' marketing mob who have been close to being open, honest and transparent about their business model with some truly tasty porkers fit for public consumption...

Take this excellent quotable quote Punch's representative made in a recent ACV hearing over one of their pubs:

Pubs do not "further the social wellbeing or social interests of the local community"

- "Says who?" Asks Pete Brown, beer writer of the Year 2012, author of the marvellous Shakespeare's Local and Man Walks Into Pub among other great beer and cider writing.

There's no doubt the Great British pubco's deserve a public flogging for the permanent scars they've cut into the British landscape, and across generations of people, as they've slashed and burned their way destroying pubs in the name of creating plummeting shareholder value.

These companies are dull unimaginative emblems of the worst in crony capitalism that's been so ably headed up by our highly skilled and specialist morally bankrupt Bankers.  Pubco's are run down by bean counters who understand the price of everything, the value of nothing, and believe what's theirs is theirs and what is everyone else's is theirs too.

They have no shame.

This parlous state of affairs has to change and it can; together people can create great change!  While there are people out there doing sterling work to bring change about in the pub sector - lobbying and campaigning hard has proved that government is sluggish, leaden and incapable of rapid enough action. The Fair Deal For Your Local Campaign, chaired by Stalwart Pub Champion Greg Mulholland has done much to expose the rot, deceit and reality underlying the Great British Pubco Scam but something hard, tangible and effective that can act without legislation is urgently needed to help stem the tide of tied pub closures. A market based solution conceived for the benefit of pubs, publicans and their punters is what is needed.  And it IS coming:

The People's Pub Partnership currently is a group of professional people who understand pubs and what motivates people to be passionate about preserving and improving them, for now and for future generations, who have come together to create an ethical, crowd funded pub company that has the power to change the pub sector for Good...

In Spring 2014 PPP will launch, and from there on people all over the UK will be able to take a stake in their pubs, give them the investment they need to bring them into the 21st century, and get them back under the guidance of caring publicans with the accountants put firmly but gently at the back office desk where, as they have proved so capably, they've always belonged.

If you're interested - follow PPP on Twitter and Facebook and sign up to the maillist here

If you want to get involved, have skills, legal, accounting, vision, great ideas about pubs, or would be interested in working with PPP as a supplier or behind the bar, in management of on building projects, do get in touch through the BLOG HERE

Petty Developers Dabbling in Our Landscape

Re the £10K increase I've seen irrational price rises like that around pubs quite a lot. I think the market is confused around their values. That pub in Berwick I mentioned, the one that went for under £100K, I got in touch with the new owner shortly after he got it, he's an estate agent based mid Northumberland, and as I was talking on the phone to one of his staff, who confirmed it was avaliable, offered £150K, could hear him laughing in the background saying 'tell him I wouldn't accept twice what he's offering'. That was two years ago, it's still empty, an eyesore in the middle of Berwick, a listed building that could easily be trading and making Berwick a better place... To continue the ramble

From the little I've observed of small time developers there seems to be a significant proportion who are basically useless at development but have somehow through the vagaries of the universe come into a wedge of capital they play with in the property market and it affords them a comfortable living, dabbling around whimsical or ill conceive projects which, even if they come into completion making practical no sense to anyone and leaving permanent scars that blight the urban landscape, give a return on investment that keeps the developer fat and slack and believing, against all evidence to the contrary, they are creating a legacy that will be admired by bank accounts to come.

When this type of developer makes a really bad decision on a property, one that leads them to shelling out more than they anticipated or which becomes clear won't return the investment, they try to back out gracefully by putting it on the market for more than they paid for it, reasoning that they shouldn't be penalised financially when it was circumstances rather than their own bad decisions that led to the potential loss making situation... And they should at least, if there is any natural justice in their privileged world, be able to pass the losses they made onto the next purchaser who will be buying a property that's worth a lot more anyway, just because it's been landbanked while in the fallow period it's been subjected to in the dead hands of the thoughtful and visionary dull witted developer