There’s been much local interest in the imminent arrival at The Triangle of ‘micro pub’ The Butcher’s Hook. In fact, this new breed of pub is something of a national trend. David Etheridge charts their development, in this piece originally published in The Hop Press – the magazine of the Campaign for Real Ale’s South Hampshire Branch.

A revolution has started in the licensed trade, a new type of pub has started to appear: the Micropub. These are very small pubs usually in a leased shop unit, they can normally hold between twenty and thirty people and sell two to three real ales/ciders and a range of bottled beers. The concept is very much ‘to keep it simple,’ so most have no gaming machines/pool tables (which would take up valuable customer space), no music, no TV or video and the food choice is between a packet of crisps or peanuts. The idea of the concept is that the ‘pub’ can be run entirely by one or two people.

It is accepted that the first Micropub was the Butcher’s Arms at Herne, in Kent which was opened in 2005 in an off licence which had originally been a butcher’s shop. Things got off to a slow start with the next one, the Rat Race Alehouse in Hartlepool opening in 2009, then three more were reported as opening during 2010 but it was not until 2012 that things really started to take off with a number of Micropubs opening mainly in Kent and The Midlands.

 

I believe the slow start was due to difficulty in persuading the licensing authorities to issue licences to a small independent public house, although changes in the 2003 licensing act which came into effect in 2005 made this easier. Also existing retailers and local residents can put up strong campaigns against these new outlets, although most operators of Micropubs seem to wish to work with their local communities.

 

In June 2012 the Micropub Association was set up and by the end of the year over forty were up and running. Their website at: www.micropubassociation.co.uk lists them all and shows many more opening in 2013 especially again in Kent, London and The Midlands.

 

So what are the advantages of a Micropub? If you wanted to take on an existing public house you could buy one if you can manage to find a single pub up for sale, and then expect to spend between £250,000 and £1,000,000 to buy a pub and get it up and running, also you would have to beat the pub companies to it if it is in a good position. Or you could take on a lease from a pub company which would require buying a lease lasting up to twenty years from the company or the remains of one from an existing lessee, this will cost between a few thousand pounds and fifty thousand pounds. You would also have to pay rent to the pub company and buy your beer from where they say at their price, be responsible for the building and have a long list of rules to follow (some leases apparently include a clause on opening hours 11-11 seven days a week – 84 hours a week!) hardly giving you the freedom to run the business the way you want. Also, even if you sell the lease on and a future holder goes bankrupt you can still be responsible for some of the losses.

With a Micropub you can lease the shop unit which is possible for periods from six months with agreements on future renewal, the structure of the building is usually the responsibility of the owner (you would need to agree any changes you wanted to make to the building), buy your beer direct from local brewers or suppliers and run the business in any way that suits you. Many Micropubs open restricted hours with at least one day a week closed so one or two people can run their own pub working reasonable hours without the need to find reliable staff. If the business does not work out you can shut it down or move your equipment (movable cool rooms are commonly used) to an alternative site with better prospects.    

Critics of Micropubs say they are too small and you are unable to make a living from them, but I have sat in many existing pubs with just a handful of customers (or just me!) and I can tell you there is no atmosphere in these large empty barns. There are reports of Micropubs making an annual profit of £20,000 to £25,000 (an average wage) while a recent report said the average income of a pub lease holder was £14,000 (although some earn a lot more and some a lot less!). They also say these inexperienced people running pubs will lead to an increase in binge drinking, but this has not been the case with existing Micropubs as the type of pub they are attract responsible customers and the owner is able to monitor customers as they have served them and can easily monitor the whole bar.

The first Micropub in the South Hampshire Branch area is planned for Bitterne Park in Southampton, this is due to be called the Butcher’s Hook and will hopefully open late 2013 or early 2014. It will be located in the former Tiger Lily florists shop at Bitterne Triangle (once a butchers, hence the pub name) and will be run by two local men, Anthony Nicholls and Dan Richardson. It will have draught beer from local brewers gravity fed straight from the cask, along with a range of bottled beers from the UK, US and Belgium together with the owners’ favourite ciders and wines and topped off with traditional soft drinks. We hope to bring a full review of the Butchers Hook in the next issue of Hop Press.

Micropubs could take pub ownership back almost two centuries to the passing of the 1830 Beerhouse Act which created tens of thousands of new pubs in people’s front rooms: these were true free houses, in fact many brewed their own beer. Over the years these were replaced by larger pubs run by local brewers which, merging, built larger breweries with bigger tied estates to become regional, national and then international pub groups. Catastrophically, under the ‘1989 Beer Orders,’ these later separated their pubs and breweries forming the current pub groups. There will still be larger pubs, the better locals, large food-led pubs, country inns and town centre disco pubs but hopefully the Micropub will bring back the true local to areas that have lost them. Whether the more successful Micropubs expand into larger units in the future, bringing about the concept of the ‘Midipub,’ is something to ponder. Cheers.

David Etheridge

First photo and article published with kind permission of the author and The Hop Press – the magazine of the Campaign for Real Ale’s South Hampshire Branch, available in various pubs serving real ale throughout the area.