…well, it’s a pub with a village shop in it, so it’s probably a ‘pop’…like this one in Somerset, or this one in Tacolneston, not far from where I live in Norfolk. OK; the second one’s actually a beer shop…but you get the point.
That makes a lot of sense, of course. If the pub and the shop are both struggling to be profitable in the face of supermarkets’ killer booze/food offer, why not combine them and get rid of one set of overheads (premises and staff cost)? In the 1990’s large ‘vertical drinking establishments’ in towns and cities realized they were only ‘working their overhead’ for a very limited time-slot in the day, and many re-invented themselves as ‘chameleon bars’, serving breakfast/morning coffee, then lunches, then accommodating quieter after-work drinkers before morphing into nightclubs in the evening.
There’s a lot of support out there for potential ‘community publicans’ though in this context it’s certainly more than a little ironic that the Coalition Governments spending cuts have already put paid to one programme specifically aimed at supporting them. The Plunkett Foundation tells the story here
Here’s to the Plunkett Foundation. Cheers!