JP Wetherspoons (The Vale)

[Earl Aelfheah]

ED has a nice collection of independents. The incursion of sh*testuff, Nero's and now a large and prominent Wetherspoons erodes some of the character of the place in my opinion. Some people may like these places - fair enough. But personally I don't.

[stereforth]

My oh my, what a change in attitudes to JDW over the years. In the mid eighties, the then small company applied for a license for premises in the centre of Croydon. Most local pubs (there were hardly any "bars" in those days) lodged objections to the court. However, JD's boss claimed there was an air of menace in many central pubs. As a regular drinker in that area in those days, I can confirm that (though less violent than today). He also stated that his pubs were cheaper, served food all day and had no music, TV, or gambling machines, unlike any other pub arround.

After a refit in excess of ?200.000 (at 1985 prices!) it was probably the best appointed pub in Croydon and the cheapest.

Since then the whole industry has changed dramatically.

Compared to other domestic commodities beer prices seem to have inflated above and beyond, even if it is less than inflation.

This is not down to greedy publicans.

20 years ago I reseached the industry and the normal gross profit recommended by accountants was 33%. Today it is at least 50%.

This is a straight doubling of the wholesale price.

Wholesale prices are set by pub companies, so if you are not a true free-house you pay far more than big set-ups like JDW.

When I left the trade last year my accountant advised me to charge ?3.60 per pint of Stella or similar.

Such prices seem affordable to younger drinkers who have probably never entered a traditional pub. If they tried it they may be surprised to find such a thing as a carpet on the floor. Most modern "pubs" are minimalist in decor with no soft furnishings and the consequent foul accoustics. Have you tried having a conversation in, say, the EDT on a crowded night?

You can hear the kiddie music and people 30 feet away but not someone two feet away.

Yes, JDW attracts people looking for more abv. units per pound but also those looking for a quiet corner. Most of their pubs are so large you can escape the rough looking lot who are usually getting on in years and not inclined to agression, and anyway, they always seem to be near the entrance.(Peckham branch excluded. Do NOT judge JDW by that place).

So, horses for courses? Yes. Personally I found the Vale overpriced, noisy, with no atmosphere and a long way from being a pub. Like many new bars it's as though they put certain parameters into a computer and it punched out "design no.93274 KL"

or some such. the best pubs are those that have evolved and not just been taken out of the box and assembled.

What do you do when the bar becomes out of date as the small minded move to the next new experience up the road?

In the case of the Vale JDW come along and spend mega bucks again. How much did it cost for it's current design? A bloody load, I bet. And how long did it last?

Weatherspoon pubs have little or no social inter-action acroos the bar, true. Just like so many "modern" pubs. They are not my preferred hostelry but its damned hard to find somewhere without piped music and loud TV's.

JDW are like a parallel evolution of pubs: stripped to the bone in the EDT or Gowlett or spacious comfort in such as the George and remarkable Skylark in Croydon.

It looks like the new generation of drinkers do their socialising electronically and use the pub for getting plastered whenever possible and not for conversation or discussion.

When I was an apprentice drinker we used to put it away quite effectively but to be obviously drunk in public was looked down upon as either greed or an innability to "hold your beer". Throwing up was a disgrace.

Times change. I am so very grateful that I shall be dead in about 20 years or so. All the youthful dreams of mankind's

ability to correct all the world's injustices have been destroyed. The social world that was the pub has little time left and is in fact dead in most parts of Britain.

Stuff this misery. I'm off to one of the few remaining local community pubs left: The Earl Ferrers in Streatham.

[stingray]

Whenever I read about people knowing how to run the perfect pub, I always think of the line:

"Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth."

People should really try and make more Baz Lurman produced, spoken word, pondering, chart pleasing, thought provoking tunes if you ask me. (Played on a jukebox in a proper old pub).

[Earl Aelfheah]

.... I agree that the current incarnation of the Vale is pretty poor. But a Wetherspoons?

Stereforth - Don't muddle up JDW with an old skool boozer. They are about the blandest of the corporate chain pubs around (which you seem to rightly IMO, disaprove of).

[*Bob*]

stereforth Wrote:

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I am so very grateful that I shall

> be dead in about 20 years or so. All the youthful

> dreams of mankind's

> ability to correct all the world's injustices have

> been destroyed.

Cheery stuff.

Good to know that some of the old traditions are still being kept alive, just as I remember them as a child: old men, slowly getting pissed all day, spilling beer on stinking carpets whilst wallowing in their own their own misery. Takes me right back.

[DJKillaQueen]

But what denotes bland? When I go to a pub I go with friends and the atmosphere I enjoy is the one created with and by my friends. I pay very little notice to anything else bar, is the music too loud (or do I like it)?, is the beer overpriced (definitely true in half the pubs in ED - ?4.80 for a bottle of cider? .....c'mon really).

I might notice other things like decor (if it's exceptionally pretty or dire) or whether I can sit outside, but too much is being made of this mythincal idea of a pub intself being bland or otherwise. From what I can see, many (not all though) of the objections to Weatherspoons are nothing more than typical ED snobbery (just like the Waitrose vs Iceland debates that have raged on here sometimes).

Many people with lower and average incomes live in ED too and there should be something that they can afford. Weatherspoons do I think, a good job of serving that market.

[stingray]

Whilst I agree ?4.80 is pricey. If you buy a premium cider, (in a half a litre bottle, which the government recently increased duty on, in a market with high demand, probably organic, when tied to a high purchase price) then the premises in question is probably going to be making much less money from it than they would be on a pint of mass produced draught fosters.

[louisiana]

showboat Wrote:

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> Why is it that people really object to a large

> compsny like Wetherspoons coming to the area?

>

> I've been in the hospitality industry for 11 years

> now - and currently work for Fullers - so I have a

> lot of sympathy with those small independants who

> get squeezed hard by the big boys. This is a

> fickle and capricious business where, as someone

> once said, you can do everything right and stiil

> fail. Wetherspoons have been around since 1984,

> and on the stock market since 1992. Has it occured

> to it's enemies that it might actually be

> providing a service that quite a lot of folk seem

> to want?

>

> I don't defend Wetherspoons on the ground of cost.

> I defend it because it's still in business. People

> have this rose-tinted view of what a local pub

> should be - but actually it's a massive amount of

> work. Just ask Scott from the Bishop, I'm sure

> he'll tell you. Wetherspoons - let me say again -

> is STILL IN BUSINESS, when many others aren't. And

> small tenants can blame the pubcos all they want,

> but they knew what they were getting into. The

> price of the beer from the brewery is rarely the

> sole reason that a place fails. Too often vanity

> on the owners part, or a misjudgement of the local

> market is a more central flaw.

I can point to one pub in this area that was shut down without notice to anyone owing to factors that had nothing to do with the pub or its management at all. Thankfully, the other parties saw sense after a few days, and it's now open again.

And another pub, not in this area, where a developer had swung conversion into flats with the local planning authority. During the property boom, there was no way not to make more money out of development of a property in this way than running any kind of business, pub or otherwise (a different story now maybe?).

So examples of how decisions about the future of a pub may *sometimes* have not much to do with the pub and how it is run. It is not always a straightforward story.

The pubs situation is not helped by the 'everyone thinks they can run a pub' factor, so lots of eedjuts sign away their lives to pubco's on loopy contracts, and then find themselves facing ludicrous charges under an enforced monopoly (or even lose the pub when the pubco finds they are buying in beer from non-pubco firm at two-thirds of the price).

>

> I may not have made my points very well - it's

> late and I need to sleep! I don't tend to drink in

> Wetherspoons myself, because I feel they lack

> atmosphere. But many others do go there. Are they

> ALL wrong?

They are not wrong at all.

But they are helping to prop up a system which is severely dysfunctional.

There are some lovely pubs, but for me the lovliest tend to have strange governance, such as being owned by a local community trust that appoints the managers etc. There are also not-good independently-owned pubs. But there are in my experience no lovely pubs run/owned by the large firms.

[DJKillaQueen]

No this isn't any kind of special cider. And the duty increase was 10p...not ?1.20 which is the difference of what I can pay for the same bottle in another average pub.

And to say the only reason I had to buy a bottle is because those pubs are only selling one type of cloudy flat cider on tap (when most cider drinkers prefer clear filtered types).

[JohnL]

Some Wetherspoons across the country are OK - but you always get the old men in a traditional spoons and the youngsters in a Lloyds.

I've popped into that one in Brockley sometimes - its OK when waiting for the 484.

I'd visit :)

[showboat]

I don't think i made clear points at one o'clock this morning...I should know better!

">

> I may not have made my points very well - it's

> late and I need to sleep! I don't tend to drink in

> Wetherspoons myself, because I feel they lack

> atmosphere. But many others do go there. Are they

> ALL wrong?

They are not wrong at all.

But they are helping to prop up a system which is severely dysfunctional."

I agree - the system is messed up. But this is what you get when some people make it real big in an industry. Look at the supermarkets. People do indeed go to Tesco because it's cheapest - can't argue with that. And it doesn't help the small retailer. I totally agree. It's a bad system. But how do we change it? I honestly can't see a way, and would love to hear from anyone who has a constructive suggestion.

Until that time, this is the biggest problem in my opinion...

"The pubs situation is not helped by the 'everyone thinks they can run a pub' factor, so lots of eedjuts sign away their lives to pubco's on loopy contracts, and then find themselves facing ludicrous charges under an enforced monopoly (or even lose the pub when the pubco finds they are buying in beer from non-pubco firm at two-thirds of the price)."

Why oh why do people get a bit of cash together and think they can run a pub (or bar or restaurant)! They think it's easy, and simply add to the statistic of pubs closing each week. It drives me mad, and as I said, they often go under not because (or not just because) of the beer prices, but because they were totally unsuited to this business in the first place.

I'd be intrigued to know why The Vale has sold up (has anyone in this thread mentioned it?). What happened there?

The best pubs are indeed the idiosyncratic ones with bags of charm and great service. But they're few and far between. Until there are more like that the JDW's of this world will carry on.

[DJKillaQueen]

There's a very simple reason why the Tesco's and Weatherspoons of this country do well.....the vast majority of people are living on a below average income. The cost of living in many respects exceeds people's wages and until we change that......buy in bulk and sell cheap companies will continue to thrive (expecially in economic down turns).

[binary_star]

For me going down the pub is an experience, which is why every now and then I like to go out for a drink rather than sit at home. I would rather go down the Clock, the Rye, the EDT, The Bishop, or The Actress (when it opens) and have one pint (or three) than go to Wetherspoons and have two (or six). For me, places like Wetherspoon are about the (cheapness of the) drink because there's no other attraction.

[Zebedee Tring]

One of the good things about Wetherspoons pubs is that they don't have all that bloody loud music drowning out attempts to engage in conversation. The beer prices are very reasonable as are the coffee prices (about half the price of places like Starf**kers). And while the food is not exactly cordon bleu, a meal for two works out very cheap.

I hope that they come to E Dulwich.

[Mick Mac]

I did not use the Vale and I don't expect I'll use JDW above the other pubs that exist already.

I'd have preferred Pizza Express, at least its something we don't have already,

[Jah Lush]

Well, there is one in the Village Mac. Not that far to travel. Wetherspoons is still fecking shite though and I most certainly won't be using it.

[Alex K]

@Horsebox, who asks if I've ever been in Franklin's -- yes, but only once, and that three and a half years ago. You'd be right to demur that I didn't give it a fair chance and that my impressions are out-of-date. Apologies. That single visit indeed left me with the impression "poncey", but I'd have done better not to air it.

[sillysue]

DJKillaQueen Wrote:

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> There's a very simple reason why the Tesco's and

> Weatherspoons of this country do well.....the vast

> majority of people are living on a below average

> income.

I'd have thought that about 50% of people in the country live on a below average income.

If people want a JD Wetherspoons 'experience' then they should just head down to Peckham.

I for one hope that JDW and the kind of people it attracts stay in SE15.

[PeckhamRose]

"the kind of people it attracts"

You Effing SNOB!

Are you related to louisa?!

Wetherspoon pubs are in all sorts of areas in the country; even in London.

They are a microcosm of society - lawyers go to the Penderells Oak in Holborn (ok point made) and city workers are often to be seen at the Tower Bridge one and the Goodmans Field one.

I wonder what sort of pub attracs YOUR sort of people. Please tell me, I'll stay away.

I think you passed by the one at Peckham and stupidly decided all the people you saw in the doorway (some working class people? Or what SORT did you mean?) represent all the people who go to any sort of Wetherspoon pub?

Fool.

As for the really ignorant comment that you think it's only 50%, well you are living a nice comfortable sheltered life and you don't get out much, do you.

[sillysue]

Resorting to name calling and at hinting at being racist when someone disagrees with you, seems a bit much for just offering my own opinion?

I think you'll find that the 'city workers' around Tower Bridge et al. are only there because JDW typically offers a large amount of space, a quality that is sadly lacking from most drinking establishments in the 'city' portion of London.

With the number of muggings etc in these parts of late, at least a JDW will give the police a good place to initiate their inquiries from.

[dita-on-tees]

whose that trip trapping over my bridge...

The average wage stats tends to be skewed by a very small proportion of people at the top end who earn silly amounts. Depending on the way the data is cut the average income is between 20 and 30k. A lot of people earn a lot less than that. Only 10% of people earn over approximately 50k and there is something like 1% earning over 100k, but the over 100k range of income is vast. Figures are also skewed by the calculations of part time work.

[cate]

What's with all this argy-bargy about a pub? Don't go there if you don't like Wetherspoons. There are plenty of indie pubs in ED and Peckham you can visit.

[DJKillaQueen]

Sillysue, I think you are making assumptions and THAT is what PR is asking. What are your assumptions based on?

How can you sepak for anyone that goes into a Weathersppons when you don't go in them?

Like any pub.....Weatherspoons will reflect the local clientele. They will in some areas be a clientele priced out of other pubs (which will be partly the case in ED)....in other places they will be local workers, or students (if near to a university) or whatever.

The Fox on the Hill for example is often filled with families, many of them middle-class so all this nonsense about stereotypes and Weatherspoons is indeed nonsense and as others have pointed out, Weatherspoons pubs differ in size, decor and all sorts of other things between themselves.

I hope it's roaring success in ED.

I'd have thought that about 50% of people in the country live on a below average income.

Statistics proveded by the DWP say that 68% of those in employemnt earn below average wage. Add to that the unemployed and disabled (all 7 million of them) and those in reciept of pensions, I think you get the point.

[huncamunca]

Loving your work here sillysue

One of the best comedy characters I've seen on this board for a long while

[katie1997]

Jah Lush Wrote:

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> Well, there is one in the Village Mac. Not that

> far to travel. Wetherspoons is still fecking shite

> though and I most certainly won't be using it.

Same here.

But I don't object to one opening in place of the Vale, there will always be some people who welcome the arrival of a JD Wetherspoons and there will equally be those who don't. Horses for courses. Agree with others, there's no need to make it into a 'class' issue either.