Focus Outdoors: Time for an upgrade
Easter weekend traditionally marks the beginning of the outdoor season for pubs when licensees dust down their garden furniture and tidy up the flower beds in hopeful anticipation of some spring sunshine.
This year is different for two reasons, though. First, Easter is unusually early this year and second, most of Britain has entered the first full year of the smoking ban.
While you can't do much about the weather except swear at it (which can be therapeutic) the ban is likely to mean that you spent some money on your outdoors last year. By now you will have some idea whether it was money well spent - and it could be that you are already thinking again about your 'smoking solution'.
Understandably many pubs plumped for a cheap option that would see them through the winter. Umbrellas and patio heaters sprung up outside pubs all over the country - and some of them even survived the wind and rain and stayed up.
But as Steve Ransom, director of Tensaura, which specialises in weather-proof 'tensile membrane' outdoor structures, says: "Few have successfully managed to take the look, feel and ambience of their pub and move it outside to give customers the same fantastic experience.
"The plethora of large umbrellas that now greet high street drinkers often provide nothing more than basic sun and rain cover - and that's only if it's not too windy.
"An outside area should not be viewed just as a smoking solution - there are fantastic opportunities to be had by making them attractive to all those who you are trying to attract into your pub. "By working on an individual offer and making best use of your available space there really is a way of making the outside a successful trading area - one that will add impact and real value to your business."
As you might expect, the past 12 months have been a boom time for suppliers of outdoor equipment. Shropshire-based Shading By Design was one of the smaller players - but is not quite so small now, having grown three-fold and moved into larger premises.
By aiming to provide a complete outdoor solution from umbrellas to heating to landscaping it continues to win work from pub giants Punch, Enterprise and Marston's as well as smaller chains such as South Wales' Dragon Inns.
"Umbrellas are not a panacea and we are seeing pub operators going for more permanent structures," says managing director Tony Reynolds. "There has been a lot of confusion about what is legal under the smoking ban that has meant licensees have been reluctant to make a big investment. But where they have gone for something of better quality they've done well, and it's demonstrated its value.
"The important thing now is for licensees to make sure maintenance is included in the contract."
Another consideration when it comes to upgrading your outdoors is what it could add to your trade - and therefore the value of your business on the market.
According to Simon Hall at licensed property agent Fleurets' Leeds office, it's hard to put hard numbers on what an attractive outdoors might contribute - "but it will all feed into the trading figures on which the price is based".
Since the smoking ban, a pub's al fresco area has been top-of-mind for people looking to buy a business, he adds, "especially those looking for a lifestyle business - it's the appeal to the eye that counts."But the main thing to think about is what it can bring to your trading, that's what buyers are taking a hard look at."
