Tony Jennings: Make a play for the singletons

18-Aug-2013 - Last updated on 19-Aug-2013 at 16:02 GMT

Jennings: "Hosts should make pubs into a place of the most enormous psychological importance for the singleton"

Single-person households are becoming an increasingly important feature of our society. This represents a great opportunity for pubs, says Budvar UK chief executive Tony Jennings.

The latest Census data shows that there are now almost as many one-person households as conventional family homes. From one million in 2001, there were 7.1m in 2011.

The majority of the individuals involved are not misanthropes or mad old hermits but often well-heeled professional people who simply like to close their front door on the rest of humanity when they finally get home at night.

It occurred to me that there is a great role for the local pub here in filling the space between work and that front door. It’s the sort of marketing task that social networking was made for.

The pub should offer something as intimate as the traditional living room where these single householders can relax and chat with friends for an hour or so before calling time.

Savvy host

People of a certain age may remember the TV series Cheers — the bar “where everybody knows your name”. Allowing for a slight overstatement, that’s what we should be aiming for. Hosts should make this space into a place of the most enormous psychological importance for the singleton, presenting an opportunity to turn him or her into a real regular.

We don’t need research to inform us how much pub-going has declined over recent years, and a development such as this could offer at least one way of helping to turn this round.

I don’t think a savvy host would have to do much more than recognise this trend, understand what is needed and get the bar team, especially the evening one, to be as regular-friendly as possible.

That means getting to know names, personal preferences, what people do, where they live and so on, and generally build up a bit of an informal data bank about established and budding regulars. If you have any interest in people at all, it’s the stuff you pick up anyway. If you haven’t, you shouldn’t be in this business.

Potentially there is another interesting demographic shift under way, although I don’t think it has gained significant momentum yet. That’s the one where, due to a combination of not being able to get on the housing ladder at one end and retirees downsizing at the other, we are seeing three generations in one household.

Being involved in that kind of ménage must make regular evenings down the pub extremely attractive.