Diary

Budget batters JDW's fish & chips

No sooner has City Diary started to enjoy JD Wetherspoon's bargain £2.99 cod and chips afternoon offer (bread and butter and cup of tea included) than rampant inflation takes hold. The price has shot to £3.10 a little more than a few weeks after it was launched. Here's the reason being given at the Hove branch by barstaff: "We've added 10p to the price of all menu items and all drinks following the Budget." Except it's 11p on the cod and chips and it's got to the stage where every penny counts in the City Diary budget.

Money's too tight to mention

From the website of top-notch gastro-operators Brunning & Price comes this reminder of the way it is. "For each £1 a customer spends on a pint of beer, 15p (net) goes straight to Government as VAT; 28p goes to the suppliers; 25p goes on staff wages and bonuses; 8p goes towards the variable costs in the pub — electricity, laundry, phone; 16p goes on rent, rates and depreciation, and head office costs, which leaves 8p profit. And then there's the tax on the 8p, which means that by the time it all pans out we have to sell 20 pints of beer to make enough net profit to buy a pint of beer."

Running a pub is the new rock 'n' roll

The ranks of celebrity licensees and pub owners has been swollen by a newish Shepherd Neame arrival. Hamish Stuart, guitar player with Average White Band and sideman to top names such as Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Aretha Franklin, has taken over the Three Mariners in Oare with his wife, Claire. Hamish has written songs for Smokey Robinson, George Benson and Diana Ross over the years — and is on a 30-date tour with Ringo Starr in the summer. "We both love good food and good wine and, in a way, that's how we connected," says Hamish.

Ellis's words fall on deaf ears

City Diary's cloth ears strike again. Inventive Leisure boss Roy Ellis was patiently explaining that its flagship Leadenhall branch had escaped the imposition of surcharges. Were the surcharges going towards the cost of extra policing, City Diary enquired? No, explained Ellis, not surcharges. Airport-style search arches. It was an early-morning conversation.

Taybarns feeds obesity debate

Last week, a senior unnamed managed operator expressed concern that Whitbread's new eat-all-you-like venue, Taybarns, may run counter to anti-obesity concerns. The website www.eightlane.com runs a thread called: "What's your worst binge?" One poster, helpfully, nominates Taybarns after a recent nosh-fest there. He writes: "After a long Sunday run three of us went there. We had some salad, then some pasta and rice with chicken, then some pizza and pasta, then some Chinese, then a cooked dinner. At that point I was gone, as were my two mates, but 10 minutes later they tucked into a cheesecake, some profiteroles, and a bowl of ice cream. Places like this are why so many people are obese, but after an hour and a half run you can't go wrong."

City Diary's carvery nightmare

As readers know, City Diary likes a carvery. It seems that there is little worse, surely, than raising the prospect of a carvery offer and then snatching it away. Mitchells & Butlers closed its Captain Barnard pub near Winchester on 5 April — it's a former Whitbread site acquired in 2006. Its future is unclear as the firm has declined to reveal the new owner's identity, or plans for the pub, although it would appear to be an alternative-use venue. The pub faced closure in October 2007, with the firm placing it on the market. Last month it applied to Winchester City Council for permission to convert it into a carvery pub. Nobody minds now seeing pubs close, but the loss of potential carvery sites is much more serious.

Punch's scheme is up to scratch

Punch Taverns will use its existing recognition scheme to reward staff for environmentally-friendly acts with scratch cards that have prize values of between £25 and £1,500. Cash lump sums of up to £500 will also be given to pub managers who make outstanding contributions to reduce the firm's carbon footprint. Anthony York, head of reward at Punch Taverns, explained: "We are doing what we can to embed carbon management into the way we do business." What about all the paper being used in the scratch cards?

Cains schedule keeps Patton in pubs

The hard-working Dusanj family, which runs the Cains brewery, has moved board meetings to Saturdays. The board, which meets 12 times a year, now also visits two or three Cains pubs to stay plugged into the business. Cains chief executive Sudarghara Dusanj says: "If our culture is right that's half the battle of turning the business around. This gets us into quite a few of our pubs." The only worry is that Cains non-executive Francis Patton may not be seeing as much of Mrs Patton as might have been hoped in the wake of his departure from Punch Taverns.

Pern's stellar dishes in print

Michelin-starred pub chef Andrew Pern, who owns the Star Inn, is releasing his first book, Black Pudding and Foie Gras, shortly. There are more than 60 recipes, many of them Andrew's signature dishes, within the 400-page book. But why the name? Turns out black pudding and foie gras is easily the best-selling dish at the Star Inn, remaining on the menu for the whole of the last nine years. Well, the Star Inn is in Yorkshire after all.