I want to be entertained

Restaurants can be one of the most difficult businesses to run. Not only are they heavily reliant on the economy and peoples willingness to spend their disposable income, they usually have razor thin profit margins and are often run by those who are great chefs, but lack the business knowledge needed to run and manage such a competitive industry.

So there are a few things that can be done to promote a restaurant that cost a little less than expensive Banners, Flagpoles and newspaper adverts:

Host a Charity Event: This one is pretty easy. You just have to offer up a few finger foods to guests so they can nibble. Coverage from the local paper and the fact you are doing something for Charity will help bring in the business.

Deals, Coupons and Samples: By offering samples and coupons you are going to increase the amount of people trying your food. It is therefore important that the food is really nice.. Spend more effort on the samples than you would on the normal food you sell.. You are trying to woo the customers in remember.

Teach: By holding lessons either in a local college or in the restaurant itself (on a slow night) you can boost you reputation for little extra cost or effort. It can also be fun.

There is always going to be a large part of word-of-mouth promotion, so make sure you keep the customers happy enough for them to recomend your food to friends. It doesn’t especially matter if your food is gormet or a greasy spoon.. as long as it is a good greasy spoon people will keep coming back.

Its a question I have often wondered. Have a think about it, in the average pub there is usually at least couple of big flat screen TVs worth £500(ish) each. They are rarely secured with anything more substantial than a few screws so would be relatively easy to rip off the wall mounts.

Plus its not like many of them have burglar alarms or any sort of access control security systems in place. Neighbors are used to noise and a commotion late at night so would be unlikely to report anything to the police.

Pubs, clubs and bars often have projectors, many TV’s, expensive lighting (disco lights, lasers and such) and DJ equipment left unlocked. Not to mention the thousands of pounds worth of alcohol in various different types stored in the back.

Its not like I want anything to be stolen or anything. It just surprises me that it doesn’t happen a whole lot more often.. With people beginning to struggle more and more with the recession combined with a disgruntled customer who got chucked out late one night.

If I were a landlord I would be busy installing some serious security systems and putting bars on the windows.

I really think its about time that every part of the catering industry offered free tap water on request. I should make it extra clear that this is just tap water. We don’t want to be forcing struggling pubs to go out and buy expensive looking water coolers with fancy Britta filters or expensive bottles of water and giving that out free to customers. They don’t even have to put ice in it. It would cost them next to nothing, but almost all of the bars and clubs that I’ve ever been in all make you pay a premium price for a tiny bottle of water.. That’s no where neer enough to sober up you drunken mate who’s decided to sleep in the corner of the club.

It would just be nice if at the end of the night, when you are out of money and possibly feeling a little worse for wear bars and clubs especially should offer a pint of water if asked. It would go a long way to reducing the amount of hangovers in the morning and may even help to keep the nightlife from getting a little too roudy.

I’m not alone in thinking so neither.The government-funded Consumer Council for Water and Thames Water to encourage the hospitality industry to serve free tap water to customers.

Well, now that my local Wetherspoons have finally got around to taking down the bunting, party balloons and posters from this years beer festival, the results have been counted from the worlds best ale competition that they held over the (nearly 3 week) festival.

The joint winners with an average rating of 4.4 (out of 5) were Yukon Lead Dog Ale (Canada), Oakham Hareflick (Cambridgeshire, UK) and Bend Brewing Wild Blue Yonder (Oregon, USA).

There is a good chance that this competition is the largest of its kind in the world, as most of real ale competitions are usually just tents filled with old men who really know their stuff. Its good to see that people who are slightly less than expert are getting to vote and have their say.

As much as I dislike Wetherspoons, I really enjoyed this years festival, they make a big effort in every Wetherspoons to make it special, putting up bunting, balloons and various other party paraphernalia along with all the posters advertising the event. If you missed it there is always next year to make sure you try the odd pint here and there. I highly recommend hunting down the winners this year.. They are likely to be really tasty

Pubs here in Britain are often filled with small artifacts and bits and bobs that are placed on mantle pieces and nailed to walls. The thing that often surprises me is that these little interesting bits and bobs are often worth a heck of a lot of money.They are often antiques in their own right and pub landlords often go to great lengths and expense to get hold of them.

Take this simple set of copper pint measures. These wouldn’t look out of place in any of the pubs in any town in Britain. This particular example comes with a “red lion” stamp on the side. No doubt the name of the pub that originally owned them.

These bad boys cost £300 at an auction.

Another example is this simple looking ale jug made of pewter. It holds 5 pints and has been sat in a pub for the past 20 years. It looks pretty average and you wouldn’t pay much attention to it if you saw it on a pub mantle piece or something. Maybe you would take a closer look if you saw that it was worth £600 at an auction.

I know after hearing this i will probably take a little more care when staggering through a bar or leaning on the really old looking cast iron radiators at my local.

So I got chatting to the owner of my local pub landlord a couple of nights ago and he mentioned he’d had a guy coming in complaining about having insufficient disabled access in the pub and claimed that it was illegal for any place of business not to have any disabled access.

This annoyed me so much I actually went home and looked up the laws around disabled access in places of business. It turns out that the pub is not doing anything wrong.. The law simply states that a business should offer and make reasonable adjustments to try and make it as easy as possible for disabled people to access.. What is “reasonable” is up for debate, and I’m sure that it depends a whole lot on the size of business. I can imagine places like a large Wetherspoons implementing platform lifts and such simply because its within their budget. But my local pub is struggling as it is. There is absolutely no need for him to waste his rather measly profit margins by lowering the bar and installing wheelchair ramps.

He is, however expected to make reasoneable changes, such as offering larger print menus or somewhere to put a walking stick. At the end of the day there is not disability right force that checks up of access, so its really up to each individual business to do the “right thing”.

So its getting towards the time of year where we British like to sit outside pubs, in beer gardens sipping alcohol after work. There are few things in life more satisfying after a hard days graft than finding a spare garden gazebo at you local pub and commandeering it with your friends for a full days sunning and drinking. It doesn’t matter if you are in out in the middle of nowhere or stuck in the middle of London, finding a good beer garden can make the British summer feel a whole lot more relaxing.

Whenever I’m in that sort of situation, I like to pick the perfect summers drink, which if you asked me a couple of years ago would definitely have been Bulmers Cider.

My friend introduced me to Kopperberg a year and a half ago.. Their pear cider instantly went straight to the top of my summer drinks list. If you haven’t tried it I would recommend it on a hot summers day. With ice. My mission this summer it to try their other ciders.. they do a summer fruits one which looks rather girly, but tasty non the less and a normal apple cider that looks pretty good too.

I have seen some really really bad ideas for bars while I have been blogging here. But this takes the biscuit. All the other quirky themed bars I have blogged about have all been foreign, so you cant help but think that there is probably some cultural misunderstanding, or something that doesn’t quite translate between 2 cultures.

There are plans afoot to create an office themed bar in Brighton, where you sit around on office chairs around desks, drink and try to have a good time. The place also has plans to implement cubicles, photocopiers and waiters dressed up as secretaries that will serve up drinks.

It sounds like a quirky idea until you think that 80% of the people who go to bars, go to get away from office life. I’m kind of shocked that there are people dumb enough to think that this is a good idea. Sure, they sell alcohol, but would you honestly think about spending the few precious hours we get away from our office job back sitting at your office desks, messing around with the photocopiers and staplers. It’s really not my cup of tea.

I really would love to see it succeed, but I fear the owners are just going to waste a whole lot of time and money.

New on the cool bars category is this entry from Bangkok. This bar sits atop the State tower at a rather dizzying 810 feet high. With views over the entire Bangkok area and summer heat baking down from above, I don’t think I would care too much about the quality of the food.

But for all you millionaires out there they are the worlds highest seafood restaurant, serving some of the deepest sea animals around. Its a pretty good selling point if you ask me. The venue itself covers 2 floors, with a wine cellar and Multiple different areas for meetings and vip areas. Sounds pretty exclusive to me.