Meet you in the pub?
One day the Government will announce that pubs and restaurants can reopen.
Meet you in the pub? Maybe it will be more complicated.
Andrew Dunkin has run The Old Volunteer in Carlton for the last 6 years. Now he’s trying to work out how he’ll be able to open the pub safely.
At the moment there are no Government guidelines on how pubs will be able to reopen. Local Authorities are no wiser. This makes it difficult to plan ahead.
One thing that is certain is that social distancing will need to be observed, so entry will need to be restricted,as will queues at the bar. Customers just arriving and queueing outside is likely to be impractical as waiting times could be long. So customers might need to pre-book.
Wetherspoons are looking at developing an app that might cover booking time in the pub as well as ordering drinks after they have arrived. It’s something that Andrew doesn’t want to do for cost reasons. It is even possible that customers might place orders to the bar by text!
Pubs allocating customers time slots of (say) 2 hours might be something we might have to live with which could cause problems asking customers to leave because the next customers for their table have arrived, and in any case their table needs to be cleaned before they can take their place.
Andew doesn’t want to erect perspex shields at the bar so that customers would queue there, with social distancing. So in addition to someone at the bar, there may need to be someone taking drinks to tables, someone else at the door restricting entrance and a fourth person regulating access to the toilets. This means that he could be employing four people instead of a more normal one at a time when the number of customers would be less than half of what it would have been previously.
Restocking of pubs might take some time. One casualty of reduced sales might be guest beers. These are changed regularly and stock of a particular guest beer might run out during the course of an evening, meaning that customers may not know what was available. Updating menus on a daily or even hourly basis is seen as impractical.
The Old Volunteer is a brewery tap (it has its own brewery) and guest beers are brought in through “swap” arrangements. This system may break down after re-opening.
One possible way of regaining sales might be to use the car park for sales. However it is the pub, not the car park, which are licenced premises, so that might not be legal. Gedling Borough Council, the licencing authority, are still waiting for guidelines.
In the meantime The Old Volunteer is operating a collection service from 2 – 6pm from the beer garden every Friday. Customers pre order (See the Flipside Brewing facebook page and order from Maggie.dunkin@flipsidebrewing.co.ok or text Maggie on 07958 752334 ).
With warm and dry weather the beer garden awaits. Perhaps the rain is also waiting until it’s open again. Cheers!
