Really significant cost rises to your local pub btw, despite the silly ‘penny off a pint’ reduction in beer duty.

-the lowering of employers NI threshold to £5k huge-will include most part time staff now that do 1 shift a week. Plus rate increases to 15%.

-business rates discount lowered from 75% to 40% so big rise there.

-minimum wage rise in April is hefty too, and plans to apply it to 18+

Don’t see many rounds with my gf in Bristol being less than £12 these days and that’s only going to head upwards.

I’m just sad that Brexit and demographics doesn’t get a mention from the media.

Does anyone have any experience or advice regarding small business energy?

Local pub owner in Bath (Bath Pub co, 3 quality gastro type pubs) said on twitter his combined energy bills for all 3 were £80k usually but he’s been quoted £245k (!!) for his renewal. This will be a business killer surely for many.

I own a pub/hotel there and we’ve been quoted roughly double (so not as bad as him..) but our quote is for a fixed 4 years electric and a fixed 3 years gas.

Any thoughts on whether to bite on the fixed offers?

As the owner of a pub…

I’ve found a decline in young people (<40) drinking real ale. We’ve gone from 5 to 2 lines while increasing our craft lines. My guess is it’s younger drinkers who are drawn to flavour finding they’d rather have cold, fizzy craft products than room temperature, flat ales. Initially they went from generic mass produced tasteless lagers to real ales for flavour & local reasons. Now it’s ales to craft beers. Industry wide the decline in real ale sales is huge.

Some of it is self inflicted. There was a price war on cask years ago that led to many breweries producing the cheapest, blandest, real ales possible, brought on in part by older drinkers being horrified about paying anything for a pint of bitter. Young people tend to not mind paying £6/7 for a great craft beer, but older soaks tend to tut if it goes over £4.

Not sure where cask goes from here, as it really needs volume in a pub to work well as it’s not a sealed dispense system. Lots of sales equals fresh beer that is quickly sold, but ale hanging around in the beer lines is awful.

Specialist ale houses again perhaps? There’s some cracking craft real ales around.

The bigger issue now is the pub buildings though. They’re worth far far more as flats/residential property these days and the buildings owners usually know it. So every time one fails it’s gets converted. I would add them to the listing system, automatically adding most.

Ok, so you can’t be specific… lol

I’ll challenge you with FACTS then: almost all airbnbs in the UK will be eligible for small business rates relief so pay zero business rates. That’s why it’s a tax dodge to have 1 bed flats paying zero each rather than a hotel with lots of rooms that pay a huge amount. Both businesses, both selling the same thing, but only one pays no tax and deprives local people of housing.

You cannot ‘cross play’ booking sites against each other. Airbnb charges 3%, substantially less than hotels pay on their dedicated sites. Typically 15%+ on booking.com, Expedia etc. Happy for you to prove you can negotiate a lower one with evidence…

And yes, I am hotel owner who dislikes tax dodging, housing depriving, unfair competitors. As would anyone. We just want a level playing field.

I love that you think I’m a DM reading Bath Tory councillor. I am a guardian reading, green voting, hotel and pub owner in Bath, so you’re wrong on all counts sadly.

Seeing as you know the accommodation industry inside and out it seems could you point out exactly which statements of mine are factually incorrect?

I’m sure the airbnb website does allow you to charge VAT if you like, but virtually all airbnbs won’t hit the VAT threshold as most are owners of 1/2/3/4 flats etc and that won’t add up to the VAT threshold. Almost all hotels, pubs with rooms etc will trade over that amount so have to pay VAT on the letting income.

The Tuesday/Saturday club runs for Das rad club are no more, just a few ‘events’ type rides across the year

It’s better to have lot’s of hotels with, say 1000 total rooms, all paying VAT and business rates, than 500x 2 bed airbnbs instead, not paying a penny of VAT and no business rates.

The price they charge for their rooms won’t have VAT on either, unlike almost every hotel in the country

Booking.com and Expedia are 15% commission pretty much universally

Take Bath as an example:

Several thousand flats in the town have become AirBnBs. Most are run as businesses. They effectively don’t pay business rates, just council tax, so deprive the council of income from a business but put a burden on services similar to a business.

Local employers (mostly hospitality) can’t get staff as there is nowhere for them to live that they can afford as a result.

They compete against local hotels but because they don’t VAT (usually under the threshold), business rates, or hotel booking sites 15% commission, they are either more profitable or can undercut. Effectively they turn the residential housing stock of a town into one sprawling hotel.

In isolation they can be fine but the clusters that appear in anywhere with significant demand are deeply harmful to the village/town/city.

I really should have clarified: Post Brexit changes on 1/1/21 and into Europe.

Trying to work out how closely Ryanair staff at the gate check dates on your passport, and so my chances of winging it.

I agree with you Kelvin, but it’s awful to continue restrictions on pubs trading without financial support. I’d happily support them financially to stay shut.

Kelvin, table service in pubs makes most of them unprofitable owing to far higher staff costs. Just saying. If you need 5 staff on shift usually, it’s 8-10 with table service. And capacity is reduced. There will be lots of pub failures if table service continues.

That man truly is a grimey toad. I used to like evans (pinnacle mostly..) for convenience but I won’t be spending anything there now. Poor staff.

Aldi Oat milk foams really well on my sage barista. 75p per litre.

But it’s 1.5% charge to pay in cash at the bank. Hefty difference if you pay in £10k cash a week!

Typo, my bad, sorry: it’s 0.3% charge (actually it’s 0.27% on the lowest card but 0.3% is the average)

Even the big issue seller outside my front door takes contactless cards now too. I imagine there must be huge decline in cash given to beggars though surely? I used to give spare change years ago (or notes when drunk!) but since I don’t carry cash, ever, anymore I haven’t for about 5+ years.

Pub landlord here…. my view… (high turnover pub & hotel in a city for reference)

We considered stopping taking cash pre-covid but decided it wasn’t worth the constant arguments with punters who ‘didn’t see’ the signs, and claim not to have a debit card for a £5 drink. Since COVID we have not taken cash, and it’s been brilliant. Not going back to accepting cash when things all get back to normal.

Pro’s and cons:

pros:
-Card machine is cheaper (0.03 pence per transaction, plus small monthly fees)
-Most transactions are contactless so quicker to serve customers.
-No cost of buying change anymore. We typically bought £2k worth of change from bank per week at 1-1.5% withdrawal fee (£30 per week, or £1560 per year!)
-Our managers spend around 10 hours per week cashing up and doing banking. They cost about £20ph so that’s £10.4k per annum of labour cost saved.
-No money goes missing from theft.
-Not taking cash all acts as a ‘virtual bouncer’ in that the customers most likely to harass staff, shit themselves on the gents floor, linger at the bar hassling young barmaids etc now have no method of buying something so leave immediately without causing hassle…

Cons:
-We lose some sales. There is type of customer who pays in fifty pound notes as a status thing, and they walk out. The South Wales tourists seem to use cash a lot too.

Other thoughts: a lot of pubs/takeaways etc that only accept cash are obvs taking the piss and underdeclaring their income from it for tax purposes, very easy to do. First pub/club I worked in twenty years ago had a ‘card and cash till’ and ‘just cash till’ quite obviously so that they could not declare the cash till but still show income, easily hidden in poor GP%, excessive line cleaning that never happened etc.

My friend paid his builder £25k cash for an extension, I’m sure that never saw HMRC so I feel like I’m helping society stopping the tax-dodgers who don’t wan’t to chip in to society like I do. But at the very lowest level I do feel the government should create a bank (the post office??) for those in society the banks won’t allow to have even accounts & basic debit cards. Everyone should have access to a bank account and debit card as a right I feel.

Overall though we won’t be going back.