Whats it like? Was it worth it? I think I’d love to quit the day job and do something like this. I imagine its very hard work however and the money isn’t great.

Tell me everything.

I used to work for a national brewers. I don’t think I’d fancy getting into it unless I was very sure that I had a great location, drinkers on tap ( 🙂 ) and confidence that I could buck the general trend of the (non-chain) pub business.

I think I’d love to quit the day job and do something like this.

Quit the day job and get yourself 3 other full time jobs instead, that pay less than one !!

The hours can be ridiculous, my brother used to own a pub in Leeds and end up doing 7 X 18 pretty much all the time.

The money isn’t great either.

Don’t know what your “day job” is, but unless it’s really bad, I would stick at it 😉

My Dad ran a few (managed, not owned) and they pretty much bankrupted him. My step-aunt and uncle had a very successful pub in the 80s, made a packet but ending up splitting up partly down to the hours/stress I think (incidentally I think the days of freehouses making a packet are largely gone). Some good friends quit the city in 2007/2008 to live the dream, had a great time, worked really hard, but ultimately lost a fair bit of money and got really bored so sold up.

You need to be of a certain disposition to be a good landlord and make any money IMO, it’s fine line between professionalism and spending too much time propping up your own bar. You need to be everyones friend but you can’t sit and drink with everyone all day.

Our mates took over a pub. As well as whats already been mentioned about the hard work and ridiculous hours, the whole brewery system and tied houses business is a right scam. In fact I’d say modern capitalism has yet to devise a more effective way of ****ing people over. The brewery will gleefully shaft you at every opportunity. And there will be many.

Unless you’re a free house, I wouldn’t even contemplate it

I worked in pubs/clubs for nearly 15 years starting as a glass collector all the way to running my own.

It’s not a job, its a lifestyle, if you think of it as work you will not last long! I remember adding the hours up and on average it was 70+ hours a week, I got one evening off a month if things were running smoothly.

It’s a stressful job, staff, hours, targets, probably even worse now most pubs seem to still be closing.

I think I’d love to quit the day job and do something like this.

Yes I’ve heard that a lot, the punters who did then decide to give it a go doing a few evenings soon quit. The people who did stick with it only lasted a few years before moving on to something completely different. You can burn out very quickly in this industry.

I quit just before receiving another promotion and its the best thing I did! I’m now “working in IT” doing CAD and some other IT stuff. 😉

Unless you’re a free house, I wouldn’t even contemplate it

This 100%.

Until recently there were 4 pubs in and around our village. All owned by the same company – Enterprise Inns.

In the last 4 years, every one of them has closed at some point. Now only 2 remain open (both seemingly doing very well), another is boarded up and up for sale (it’s 1 mile outside the village on an A-road with no houses nearby), the other closed and is to be knocked down and turned in to a house.

If you are not freehold, you have to buy from certain suppliers who have artificially high prices and poor choice. Not only are you nobbled by the price but also you can’t offer what the customer actually wants.

If you do actually make a success of it, the leasing company will get greedy and bump your rent up thus making it impossible to make any money so you close anyway.

This happened to a very successful pub a few miles away. People would travel for miles to eat there and it was a storming success. The Pub leasing company decided to cash in and doubled the rent so the landlord had no option but to close. The Pub company then found that they could not find a new landlord. A local who loved eating there was gutted his favourite pub had gone so he bought the freehold and now leases it to the original landlord for a very much more reasonable rent. Happy days.

Maybe doing it abroad might be easier? You look at the shite that passes for beer in France and Spain and there has to be opportunity there. A real ale pub in a Northern Spanish city, say.