Coffee shops squeezing out pubs on the high street

Twenty pubs have closed their doors in the first half of 2015 according to the research, but coffee shops opened at a rate of two per day for the past two years.

Bakeries were also amongst the businesses losing out, with 26 shutting up shop.

However, the picture is not all bad for high streets pubs. The trade has been repeatedly told of the opportunities coffee presents for pubs, with leading analysts arguing there is scope to get consumers out of coffee shops and into licensed premises during the day.

All day café/bar operator Loungers has been held up as business successfully stealing ground from coffee shops, and budget pub chain Wetherspoons sells 50 million coffees and teas each year.

Speaking at the Publican Morning Advertiser’s​ MA300 conference, M&C Allegra’s Simon Stenning urged pubs to reclaim the ‘third space’ –a place between work and home- back from coffee shops and added said the future was bright for pubs that embraced hybridisation.

August’s Greene King Leisure Tracker revealed that a quarter of adults thought pubs should provide this third space for Britain’s increasingly mobile workforce, who are often looking for places outside the office to work.

Paul Flatters, chief executive of the Trajectory Partnership which runs the Leisure Tracker with Greene King, said pubs should ‘fight back’ against coffee shops.

“Consumers want to be able to work from pubs using free Wi-Fi so this is a great chance for pubs to compete with coffee shops for the eating and drinking out pound. As some coffee shops move onto traditional pub turf by adding alcohol to their offer, so too the pub can fight back by attracting the Wi-Fi worker more stereotypically associated with the coffee shop.”

Concerned about coffee shops? Email Emily.Sutherland@wrbm.com