Don't want to cook today? Let's eat out
What is a pub? Ask a dozen people this question and you'll hear a dozen different answers. To some, pubs are the disreputable buildings placed strategically on street corners to prop up the houses in between. They smell of stale beer and pickled eggs, and are frequented by rough men who spend all evening supping, smoking and swearing.
To others, a pub is the welcome light on the lonely moor, offering a cosy snug with a log fire and a cheerful landlord serving locally brewed ale.
Between the holders of these two extreme points of view are an increasing number of customers who see a pub as somewhere to grab a quick meal, washed down not by beer, but by wine or something soft.
According to research company Marketpower, up to 20,000 pubs will become restaurants over the next five years. At first glance, this looks like a serious threat to independent restaurants. But not necessarily.
Historically, European drinking establishments have always flirted with food. In the days before Dickens, when improved roads allowed the population to start travelling further and more frequently, traditional ale houses on major thoroughfares turned to food as a way of attracting more customers. It was the heyday of the coaching inn.
Likewise, in France and Germany at the turn of the last century, beer houses, or "brasseries", began to meet a growing demand for cheap food by serving sauerkraut and sausages or oysters (luckily, this salty fare also encouraged the greater consumption of alcohol).
The latest moves by the pub industry are nothing new. They are simply the next stage in an evolution that has never ceased.
The development has been brought about by rising levels of disposable income, which allow more people to eat out; by tougher drink/drive laws which have forced out-of-town hostelries to offer something more than a log fire; and by the increasing "busyness" of anyone who has a job, which forces many working couples, even those with children, to say, "Let's eat out tonight".
But restaurateurs should not be disheartened. Quite the reverse. What they should do (being, traditionally, the innovators of catering) is to recognise a changing, expanding, market and act accordingly. There will always be a requirement for high-end, formal restaurants with their fine wines and expensive menus; and for the middle-ground establishment providing a decent, well-served meal and table for the evening; but what many customers - sometimes the same customers - want as well, is a casual, drop-in, relaxed venue where they can eat good food quickly and cheaply.
Pubs provide it; so can restaurants. As one prominent member of the Restaurateurs Association of Great Britain said recently: "People want to eat in a pub… so I've built a bar in my restaurant." The market is out there, it's simply a question of meeting its demands.
Forbes Mutch
Editor
Caterer & Hotelkeeper
