Working out a plan to keep the punters happy

You may have a huge interest in real ale and all things associated with it but have no interest in wine, so it would be rather foolish to try to run a wine-orientated pub.

You may be a city lover with a great interest in football, so a country pub full of shooting types may not be the right outlet for you. The successful matching of licensee to pub is part of the role a brewery area manager used to, and probably still does, fulfil.

In the general business of pubs suitable for you, it begs the question: are you a conviction landlord or a focus-group landlord?

Are you going to set out your stall and try to attract customers to your offering, or ask existing customers and people in the vicinity of your pub what they want and then try to give it to them?

I think this comes down to the difference between a pub run by an often quirky person with a very individual style and way of doing things usually associated with the brewery tenancy and freehouse of old, and the outlet approach based on market research and demographics, with uniformity of style, product and, usually, a large company ethos.

A friend of mine who has just sold his pub put it to me as the difference between going somewhere where he knows the people, and consequently has a great time almost regardless of product, and his children — in their early 20s — who want to go somewhere where the product is to their taste and in their price bracket but do not care who runs it.

I was quite shocked by this latter comment and it has made me question my own assertion that in the modern world of the internet, facebook etc, one of the USPs of a pub is that it is a personal, face-to-face place. Drinking and eating cannot occur in the virtual world of cyberspace.

One thing is for certain, if you can manage to match your skills and interests to the pub you are running while personalising the methods of the ‘outlet’ approach of the larger companies, you will provide a better experience for both you and your customers and may expect to reap a higher personal reward.