Time for 'honest soul searching' over bottomless brunch hypocrisy

People saying one thing and doing another really gets on my wick. Back in the day, Johnny Rotten – the angry Sex Pistols frontman – snarled: “I am an anti-Christ I am an anarchist.” He then succumbed to the lure of filthy lucre, appeared on I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here​, and worse still, made an advert extolling the virtues of Country Life butter.

Clearly Emma Thompson was unfamiliar with the words of Stephen Covey who said: “What you do has a far greater impact than what you say.” She flew 5,400 miles to speak at the Extinction Rebellion protest.

Theresa May’s classic line “There isn’t a magic money tree that we can shake” said days before she found one, shook it, and bingo the DUP had everything the DUP wanted. And, don’t get me started on Diane Abbott. She criticised fellow socialist Harriet Harman over her choice of school only to send her own kid to a ten-grand-a-term school! You can’t make this stuff up.

Hypocrisy is everywhere and, unfortunately, it is very much alive in our own sector. Alive and kicking.

We are very good at advocating responsible drinking. No corporate social responsibility statement worth its salt will neglect making reference to how seriously it is taken. Yet, at the same time there are swathes of us promoting bottomless brunches. Let’s not beat around the bush, bottomless brunches are aimed at Millennials, offering them unlimited cheap booze in a time-bound period. They are just dressed up to look responsible by adding some sour dough toast, smashed avocados and an egg.

I get it that bottomless brunches are hugely popular, profitable and unlock an otherwise dead time but we really do need to do a little honest soul searching. We can bleat on as much as we want about how responsible we are, but doing so at the same time we are promoting all the booze that can be drunk in a given time-frame? This is just hypocrisy.

I have witnessed the aftermath of bottomless brunches at ‘bottomless brunch chucking out time’ i.e. early afternoon in a district where Remarkable Pubs responsibly operate two businesses. The area gets flooded with inebriated young people who have drunk too much, too quickly, too early. They are then out in packs looking for more. It gets messy. Messy and tricky.

Merging of the words ‘breakfast’ and ‘lunch’ gives you the word ‘brunch’. Merging the words of the aforementioned Johnny Rotten and Stephen Covey, you get my view on responsible retailing and bottomless brunches: “Never mind the b******s, what you do has a far greater impact than what you say”.

I would urge some in our industry to take a long hard look at the way they operate and stop chasing the bottom line with the bottomless brunch.