The agent
Chris Whirledge, Pub Innsite
What is meant by the term "hard barrels"? I'm sure you'll be thinking that it bears some relation to health and safety red tape, involving some kind of risk assessment on the crunching of staff toes. Not exactly. Hard barrels relate to the style of trade found in traditional community boozers in a certain type of town centre, and pubs found in terraced suburbs close to where heavy industry used to exist.
So why have they been burdened — or some might say honoured — with the label? Is it because:
l You have to be a hard licensee to keep some kind of order in a "challenging" area?
l Pub companies find it hard to find a tenant who will fulfil the expectation of the locals in a certain type of community pub?
l It's hard to keep regulars because they're dying off from heavy industry-related illness, smoking and alcohol abuse?
l Its hard patrons are price sensitive and smoke orientated, in an alcohol-taxed, smoke-free United Kingdom?
Leaseholders are exposed to the same risks as managed-house operators and pub companies and tenants are going to find it hard to assign in the future. Pub companies won't be in the business of letting a "good" operator in a hard-barrel pub slip through their fingers, because they know how quickly they could get burned should a less-than-capable operator take over the helm.
It's crucial to get good operators as the slipping of standards will seriously impact on, or completely obliterate, profits for both tenant and pub company involved. The current amount of hard-barrel sites means that pubcos will consider "reasonably withholding their consent" to an assignment when they feel that the suitability of a tenant is questionable.
So it would seem quite sensible for pub companies not to want "hard barrels", but "easy barrels" are so much harder to come by. In my view, Pub Innsite would say that barrelage and AWP (ie, fruit machines) income are seriously profitable revenue streams to a pubco (as any tied tenant will testify), and anyone who can "do it" has a fantastic opportunity, but don't forget it's hard.
