Hello readers,
am a bit late with this as always but I am sad to announce that once again the Three Tuns on Silver Street Head in Sheffield has closed down, awaiting a new manager to be driven nearly to madness and financial ruin by pushing the boulder of pub management up the hill of unavoidable failure.
I heard about this from my friend Reason who said he had witnessed Ed's resignation speech, in which he *may have claimed that Star and Heineken still made profit from the failing pub through tax rebates and write offs and other details I have since forgotten, whilst managers struggled under the yoke of pubco imperialism.
Am so sorry for Ed, and his staff, who took on the unworkable task of running this pub out of love and devotion to regulars only to see the exercise for the unwieldy deception that it is. I genuinely thought that through his and his staff's hard wok the Tuns may return to its glory days under Reet Ale Pubs but alas that is very unlikely to happen ever again. Pubco's don't want to run pubs, except for the absolute star performers. The others are just flat or house conversions waiting to happen.
I had an interesting chat, possibly with Reason, but maybe with another human with a name, about how one could succeed running a pub or bar or venue for a pubco. The replying orator confirmed that they had chatted to a long term pub manager who advised that the best way to succeed was to not. As demonstrated by the Dog and Partridge under the stewardship of the Flynns, for whom I understand running a successful pubco pub was rewarded only with an increase in rent or other liabilities. The trick, my friend was told, is to run the pub at about even or at a minor loss, keeping you under the pubco radar so that no increases in payments are generated. In effect, assuming that is true, its actually impossible to make a good living running a pubco house. Does that not strike anyone as madness?
Of course its much less like madness if one remembers the Star Inns how to theme a pub guide which I found online when researching the Church House in 2012. Unattributable stereotypical nonsense dreamed up in a tower in la-la land by robots who have never visited earth, or met real people. Am fairly sure the link is no longer active but searching Star Inns & Bars Three Tuns Sheffield brings up a link to their page about the pub and their "Is it for me" PDf guide to running a pub with them. Well worth a look, if you can forgive there being no mention of the costs of buying all drinks through them (Ed once told me he could buy Blue Bee beers through the pubco, but only at twice the price he could from the brewery, which he was not allowed to do).
I sincerely hope somebody does take on the Three Tuns and reopens it once again as a quality boozer, so that I have somewhere to go before the Shakespeares and Bar Stewards, Dougie has somewhere permanent to do his quiz, I have somewhere I can meet A-ray, Paul-Ray, Mr Bancroft and the Professor, and so that drinkers once more have a traditional centre of town boozer to relax in and socialise.
In reality however, given its four or five closures since I started drinking there, am expecting to be writing something similar in 6 to 12 months time.
Como siempre.
Beeficus the black
*am not certain of the details of the speech. My memories tell me this was said, so you can imagine how much verisimilitude that holds.....
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