Pubs have reopened, but problems remain. BEER + BURGER owner Jonathan Perritt says government and operators must innovate

In the end, it wasn’t so bad. Despite predictions, the re-opening of pubs on July 4 didn’t prove to be the prelude to a national carnival of drunken buffoonery. There have been a handful of incidents, it’s true; a ‘furious beer garden brawl’ in Glasgow, an electric fence around the bar in Cornwall, a few arrests in Nottinghamshire.  The fact, though, that an image of a busy Old Compton Street on that first Saturday night drew much of the social media ire suggests things in general were calmer than expected.

After the phoney war, though, comes a real battle. For operators who have struggled through months of lockdown sustained by grants, furloughed staff and, in some cases, cancelled rent, now is the moment of truth. Pubs are open again and the expectation is that they’ll make money, despite the restrictions in place to prevent transmission of Covid-19.

A report in today’s Guardian suggests that profitability might prove unattainable until distancing restrictions are no longer necessary; pubs that opened in the first week showed a 39 percent drop in sales. Despite that, there is no lack of enthusiasm in the pub trade: the article, based on data supplied by consultancy CGA, also suggests that pubs have been much keener to reopen than bars or restaurants, with 70 percent now open compared to 17 percent of restaurants.

Jonathan Perritt’s business takes in both pubs and restaurants. He runs BEER + BURGER, which has four restaurants across London, and London Pubs Ltd, which has two sites (The Mall Tavern in Notting Hill and The Stag in Belsize Park), alongside his brother Andy. How does he think the first few weeks have gone? Has it been a success?

“It depends what definition of success you’re using!” he says. “It was good to see those customers that wanted to come in, but not everybody was gagging to get into their local pub or restaurant. There is some natural hesitation in some areas of society, and less so in others. 

“We tend not to take bookings at BEER + BURGER, but our pub business is much more reservation-oriented, and it was quite overwhelming how many booking requests we had in the buildup to the fourth. That’s continued. BEER + BURGER is still more casual; people are embracing that, albeit in lower numbers.”

Only two of the BEER + BURGER sites, Willesden and King’s Cross,  are currently open for people to eat- and drink-in; Dalston, with just 20 seats, is too small for the current social distancing regulations (although it is doing takeaway and delivery), and the entire O2 remains closed. Willesden and King’s Cross are running at “sub 50 percent” of capacity, says Perritt, with plenty of anti-transmission measures in place.

“We’ve set about maybe over-egging it a bit,” Perritt, 46, adds. “We have lots of sanitizing. We have restricted capacities. We've increased spacing between tables. We’ve reconfigured table spacing where we could. We've put screens up where we need to. 

“All that seems to have been effective in terms of making people feel confident … but we're only a week and a bit in, aren't we? All of the things that we've done are really visible, really friendly, really safe, and accessible. We’re being a bit school teacher, I suppose, but in a nice way.”

During lockdown, three of the BEER + BURGER sites (excluding the O2) operated as takeaways, he says. Some of the 100+ staff employed across the different sites were furloughed (“We kept that to a minimum”), and the group benefited from government grants. There was a mixed response from landlords when it came to rent discussions: “I think we had just about every possible response from our landlords within that small group. It put an awful lot of pressure on the financial side of our business.”

They’ve been helped, Perritt says, by a good relationship with suppliers, a group which includes plenty of small breweries: King’s Cross, for example, has 20 beers on tap and over 300 bottles or cans in a bank of fridges. “We had some really good, sort of bonding discussions with them about how together we can navigate through and make sure that they got paid in a way that was viable for everybody,” he adds. “And then we delivered on that. 

“We had to make some decisions so that we would come out of lockdown in a robust way. That means still standing with our teams and with our leases, and with our sites. And we've been able to do that, up to and including today, anyway.”

So what’s next? “I think what's most important for every aspect of the economy is that there's a controlled, measured, confidence-building return to people feeling good [about coming back to pubs and restaurants]. 

“I think things like the voucher system, which will hit us in August, is an example of something relatively innovative from the government. I hope that leads to people going, ‘You know what? Yeah, that was a really great experience. I'm going to do that again with or without the voucher.’ That's the journey that we need to go on.”

The key issue remains distancing, he says: “Ultimately, it's about distancing. The whole thing is about distancing. If there's no distancing requirements in place, because the science suggests that, then smaller operations like our Dalston store will be able to operate.”

So is there optimism? “The hospitality sector has demonstrated over the last five to 10 years what an innovative bunch it is, right?” he says. “I think that we’re going to need more of that, but there's no reason we can't respond and won't respond to a changing landscape. Things change all the time, anyway. Those that can be innovative will find that there is some opportunity and some optimism to be had, I would say.”