The Traiteur - January…..

First Blog of the year and we are already back in the thick of things!  Feels like 2008 is now a distant memory!!!

Well with January nearly coming to an end we are back at all our local & farmers markets, with our loyal customers welcoming our return.  Already to our surprise in the ‘current climate’ we have been occupied  with a variety of function quotes….some on a budget but none the less keeping myself, Dad and the team busy scheduling this year’s diary!

Trying to move forward, to bigger and better things in 2009,  we are in the process of starting some new ventures to which I can hopefully share the progress with you throughout the year.  We have prepared ourselves for a challenge ahead but feel that there will be some fantastic rewards at the end of the tunnel.

My observations so far this year just at our markets, is that when it comes to food, the public out there are still not willing to sacrifice good quality, fresh, seasonal foods and we are right there to hopefully accommodate that need. 

So although you may still all have holiday blues, we need to get out there and start making ourselves known now!!

Tags: Food Bloggers, British Food, Drink, Wild Game, Restaurant Blog, Recipes, Pub Blog, Italian Food Blog, Inn Keeper, Tea Blog

The Inn Keeper - Pubcos and Brewers – The False Profits

Pubcos and Brewers – The False Profits

It now seems that the pubs owned by pubcos are going to feel the pinch over the next two years – well actually it is their leaseholders who will fee it first. There is the knock on effect, their lessees will not take as much stock from the pubcos so their income reduces. Rents are too high so some pubs will be going for good - 39 a week so we are told.

The pubcos run their pubs for the board of directors’ bonuses and shareholders – certainly not for the people who use them – the pub customers. Pubcos treat their lessees not as customers but as prisoners. Now a recession is on us the pubcos have a huge debt to service to our faltering and nervous banks as they get less income from their lessees and they are in danger having their debt called in by the banks on their debt. Their debt grew as they bought up more pub properties on the value of their existing stock. The brilliantly stupid idea from our interfering government in the early 1990’s was to release pubs from the brewers tie, instead they created giant pubcos. These pubcos took profits from their pubs and did not reinvest to keep them up to a decent standard. So people stopped the habit of using pubs. To get customers back into pubs there appeared the American style family pub/restaurants run by corporate pub chains selling cheap food and drink. These chains tend to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I am glad that the recession will be an opportunity for the debt-ridden pubcos to release some of their pubs to us Freehouse owners to make a good job of it. The pub chains do not have any reserves of cash to buy the pubco pubs that are coming on the market.

Cheap value pub operator Wetherspoons are offering customers the 99p pint of Green King IPA this is good news for pub goers. Personally, I’ve tried twice to buy a pint there but they have run out when I’ve made a visit to their pubs.

However some of the poor sods who are tied to Green King cannot buy their beer for this price. This does open up questions on the way beer is priced in this country, it is over priced. Consequently it makes the beer drinking pub customers to vote with their feet and buy instead from a supermarket because their pubs are too expensive. Pubcos on the whole push people out of the pub into the home through lack of investment in the pub fabric and squeezing their lessees who make do rather than invest.

The price of a pint in a pub must be a mystery for customers across the country. The government charges 38p duty tax per pint. 15p VAT on every £1 so in a Wetherpoon’s pub (when its available) they get 47p from the customer at 99p a pint - are they buying their beer for 35p a pint? – They will not tell you nor will Green King as it is a huge trade secret. So they make 10-12p profit on a pint. Good for Wetherspoon customers but not good for Green King tenants or lessees. For myself in the free trade I pay more than double around 83-87p a pint – Why can’t I buy a better price to sustain my profits to re-invest and make my beer cheaper for customers. Brewers have Byzantine price scales that are stitching up independent pubs and of course their customers. I have to pay double for my beer and so it costs my drinking customer £1 more to buy. I was told by a rep that Wetherspoons gets the big discount as it pays for the breweries operation by taking a guaranteed amount of beer every month. This of course logically means the free trade subsidises the chain pub profits.

Cheap beer means more consumption means busier pubs means you do not lose them but you can still use them.

Matthew O’Keeffe

The Royal Standard of England

www.rsoe.co.uk

Tags: Tea Blog, Italian Food Blog, Drink, Restaurant Blog, Inn Keeper, Kitchen Blog, Food Blog, Coffee Blog, , Recipes

The Coffee Connoisseur - Sorry

First an apology, I’ve been rubbish at updating my posts here, and for this I am truly sorry. I’m my defence its been a crazy time for with an upgrade to my online store, and a trip to Guatemala to visit some farms we buy from.

Guatemala is a beautiful country with some wonderful coffees. The diversity and range of coffees from one country is amazing. You can have an acidic bright Antigua and then find a sweet big bodied Amitilan. This year’s crop looks like it might be a little lighter (a lot like the rest of the world) but the signs of quality look good.

The new crop sample should start arriving very soon and I’m looking forward to this. It’s the start of the central season and this always brings some nice surprises.

steve

www.hasbean.co.uk

Tags: , Wild Game, Food Blog, Tea Blog, Recipes, Inn Keeper, British Food, Food Bloggers, Coffee Blog, Drink

The Inn Keeper - Government & Health Lobbyists Cause Drink Driving

Puritan Government Cause Drink Driving

A Press headline in December 2008 –

ALCOHOL CONCERN URGES PUBS TO UP THEIR GAME AGAINST DRINK DRIVING THIS SEASON - CHARITY RECOMMENDS SLASHING SOFT DRINK PRICES FOR DESIGNATED DRIVER

Alcohol Concern’s own research shows as their web site states -

The price of soft drinks in UK pubs is often near the price of alcoholic ones, despite soft drinks being much cheaper for pubs to buy and produce. The average price of a pint of beer is £2.76, with prices for soft drinks ranging from £1.60 to £3.40 per pint.

Don Shenker, Chief Executive of Alcohol Concern, said-

”High prices for soft drinks discourage drivers from remaining alcohol free. Moreover, it’s grossly unfair that drivers and other non drinkers should have to pay as much for soft drinks as for alcoholic ones when they’re simply trying to have a responsible night out. Pubs, clubs and bars make huge profits on the sale of soft drinks, often marking them up by 80%. They can afford to offer them at a fairer price, especially at a time when so many people are socialising outside their homes and public transport is often lacking.”

I see it this way the Government is subsidising or encouraging drink driving by placing high duty tax on alcohol.  We as publicans make up the loss of profit by adding it onto the cost of soft drinks to customers. It is natural that people think alcohol has more value than soft drinks.

Fact - We sell an organic range that is limited by the harvest of elderflowers and berries etc so is more expensive to produce and buy than booze.

This public funded Chief Executive wants pub landlords to give away free soft drinks. Easy to say!

Don Shenker’s comment shows a gross lack of understanding of business and human nature. Firstly, why is his press release mentioning the price of a pint. Do drink drivers only drink beer? And I do not like the way he links drink driving with only pubs – it happens all over the country in many circumstances. His statement says a more about the failure of our public transport more than pub responsibility. Why the fuck cannot we get good transport in this country after all this time since 1945? Where does our tax money go? Secondly his advice and the other public funded committees such as the Alcohol Health Alliance have advised the government to whack up the tax duty on booze.

Consequently, we add the cost to the customer. Even on the soft drinks.

Any one who has worked in a business will know how it works -buy low sell high – that is trade. Action – reaction - The government places 38 pence tax on a pint of beer so publicans naturally increase the price of a pint to the customer or spread the loss of profit onto another drink. Publicans view beer sales as the backbone of the pub trade and since we make less money on beer due to tax, we recover the loss of profit through soft drink pricing. We mark up soft drinks more than alcohol because soft drinks are not taxed by duty. The Government is subsidising drinking without thinking of the knock on effect of soft drink prices as landlords try to make a living. This is the effect of tax on beer. The puritan government wants you to drink less beer so they tax it , publicans want you to visit a pub and drink more regularly so they charge more for soft drinks. This is the effect of the Alcohol Health Alliance lobbyists not thinking through their advice.

What about the other darling piece advice given by MPs via the Health lobby which Parliament will want to make another law the 125ml wine measure.

Why can’t we sell booze in any vessel we like and as customers want. Why does a succession of Governments treat us like babies? Let market forces work and let the customer choose. I could cut the cost of my glassware in half if I could buy any size without current regulations.

Personally I would like to drink a freshly opened wine bottle rather than an oxidised one. This will have an effect some publicans selling less wines by the glass and choice if their turnover is slow. Quality will fall just like some pub food operations with low turnover they drop quality for convenience – freezer to table means its fresh but crap. This is another reason why the pubs do not get used by the nation.

The Health lobbyists interference is causing damage to the local pub. Pubs are becoming gentrified and too expensive for ordinary people - especially to those of us not on a fat salary paid from public funds.

Yes, as the Government socially engineers a café society our alcohol consumption rises because there are more units in wine than beer. This is why the lobbyists are now targeting the wine the Middle Class drink of choice.  The Government and Alcohol Health Alliance lobbyists have created more problems by dabbling with our pubs’ beer culture with more legislation and tax on beer. They have created an increase in wine drinking as a consequence of making beer expensive (but low in alcohol by volume).  Lobby that! We taxpayers will pay again for more poor advice no doubt.

How about a little support for the homeland British brewers over trade deficit causing imported wine? 

The higher tax cost of drinking socially drives people into the supermarkets from there to streets and parks, creating a yob society. Pubs are/have been the glue that holds British society and culture together for over 1000 years. The lobbyists should concentrate on the people who cannot drink responsibly not to the cost to those who can.

Education not Taxation.

Matthew O’Keeffe

The Royal Standard of England

www.rsoe.co.uk

Tags: Food Blog, Recipes, Inn Keeper, Food Bloggers, Coffee Blog, Italian Food Blog, Kitchen Blog, Wild Game, How to Cook, Pub Blog

The Game Chef - Recycling misconception as fact…

…eventually misconception becomes fact. The greatest problem that I am faced with in trying to get game cooking, shooting and my lifestyle anywhere is changing the opinion of the masses. This problem of trying to bring about change is not just difficult with those who have no interest in game or are apathetic about it. The major problem comes from those who are in the business or life style who can’t change their small minds in light of the facts.

To structure my point I wish to bring you a few clear examples of this kind of stupidity. My first example was when two years ago I went to the CLA (country landowners association) and I wanted to put a restaurant in to their game fair. They claim that the CLA game fair is the biggest and the best, they would. I had a commercial sponsor for this venture, all the paper work and was prepared to work round any problem.

At the first meeting we had to discuss this venture I was a bit surprised to hear that the CLA could not take up my offer as “it would compete with the catering contract.” I can’t express how disappointed I am that people selling burgers come before this type of forward thinking multi beneficial idea. Further to this I resent any organisation that claims to represent the countryside, which also has this kind of pathetic lack of foresight.

Of all the branches of cooking I don’t think that any is as poorly understood as game. I have a daily battle to explain to people that what think they know about game is not right. The reality is for too many people think that something that works nine times out of ten is good enough. If it works nine times out of ten then you cannot possibly understand the process you are subjecting your meat to, by virtue of the fact you have errors in your cooking process.

What is even more difficult to change, is the endemic culture of people who have done some thing badly for a long time believe that their way is best. Personally I see forty years of doing something badly is not in fact a case for competence, it is however a fantastic bank of evidence to demonstrate the contrary.

At the root of this problem I can see the worst trait of all, a lack of ability to change. It is this lack of ability to change, coupled with a culture of premature congratulation that is so wide spread in country side organisations that has got game cooking, shooting and the countryside in the state it is in.

Personally I relish change, some of the greatest steps forward that my cooking has taken has been by realise that my methods are not 100% effective and the rules need to be changed. It is change that motivates me, and in the face of the challenge of trying to ring some reason in to game cooking I consider what is evidently a great challenge, to be a great opportunity.

Tags: How to Cook, Food Blog, Wild Game, Food Bloggers, Drink, Restaurant Blog, Recipes, , Tea Blog, Kitchen Blog

The Inn Keeper - Pubs to be phased out as Britain becomes more Puritan?

Pubs to be phased out as Britain becomes more Puritan?

I have written blackboards promoting Catholic-made beers. I’m making any thoughtless judgement on religion, it just makes me feel better that I’m doing something. This is one of the means I can protest about the puritanical policies that are killing off drinking in pubs through the Government’s tax on alcohol.

I have come to believe there is a deliberate and calculated Presbyterian plot begun in Scotland years ago to rid Britain of its pubs, which still continues today through offices of The Prime Minister and Chancellor, both posts held by Scottish puritans with high moral drives.

Ever since a Presbyterian Scottish King came on the English throne in 1603 there has been an anti alehouse policy. In 1642 the first tax on beer drinking in alehouses was imposed by the puritans in Oliver Cromwell’s government and remained on the statute books at King Charles II’s Restoration. Publicans thought they might get a reprieve from the Catholic James II, but instead William III a gin a drinking Dutchman was invited to become King in his place - aka The Glorious Revolution. The Jacobites could only protest in secret toasts with beautifully etched drinking glasses.

After getting rid of James II the new Dutch King’s British Government allowed the national drink of Holland - gin to be distilled in England in 1689. Thereby it causes social problems of cheap gin drinking within the working population.

Perhaps the new Hanoverian Government (German beer drinkers?) realised the effects of gin on the masses and in 1751 passed a law making gin distillation illegal, this did not work as it sent it underground.

With a Presbyterian Minister’s son as Prime Minister and a Scottish bred Chancellor we have had large increases of duty on beer and whisky. Alistair Darling did retract earlier duty increase announcements on whisky. Is there some Scottish guilt remaining from the rebellion of 1745? Or is it that this is one of the few remaining industries left making export money and the fact that Scottish jobs are put at risk when the Act of Union is under pressure. Are whisky distillers nouveaux-Jacobites and their lobbying has worked?

Can it be our beloved independent local pubs - all different (vive le difference) - are being phased out by two Scottish puritan chancellors who did not see what positive social harmony they bring to the country. I know the Scots Celts really like to drink, I saw this when I was based there in the Royal Navy. But there were also the absolute drink haters who saw this as the cause of Scotland’s ills. Scottish pubs for drinking and English pubs for eating & drinking - was how I saw the trade when I first started out over 20 years ago.

What made me think of the spread of Puritanism was a radio interview I heard last week on the Today programme (30^th Dec) with Gordon Brown son of a Presbyterian minister and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor on how morality fitted in with the world. .

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7804000/7804101.stm

Here the penny dropped for me on the Government’s lack of understanding of the consequences of its actions or they are doing it deliberately.

Gordon Brown our Prime Minister said when he was growing up in Kirkcaldy -

“Everybody did seem to recognise that there were ways to help the community, all these local institutions that cemented the communities together , although we have lost some of that. Partly because people are more mobile, partly because they have different ways of communicating with each other, than going to meetings or going out in the evening to a particular function – they can do it on the internet.

I still think, the more people are in contact with each other the more the people find they have things in common, and the more people are prepared to help each other.”

And that spirit, I think is an important part of what being a citizen of Britain is.”

Prime Minister is that he said people do not meet any more – they do it online. This shows he moves in different spheres from real life and is insight into the otherworldliness of the being PM. As I‘ve said before MPs don’t use pubs they go to restaurants and functions. It is free that way – on expenses.

Gordon Brown realises that “local institutions cemented communities together” – then why oh why is he and fellow Scot squeezing the duty in our pubs. They make them too expensive so people buy cheap booze and stay at home communicating one on one at home. This is why we get social outcasts who only go out to shop and sign on. Of course there is no spirit anymore, the Government has and is taxing and thereby socially engineering the pubs disappearance.

The PM says he still thinks the more people have in contact with each other the better things will be. Well, where do we meet if there is no local pub, nor post office or local shop – in the Supermarket car park? The pub was always uniquely British and I feel there is a policy to abolish the institution of the pub. The pub represents cohesive society in our culture, and being British it is up for abolition as we know them. Puritan policies are doing the opposite the breaking up British cultural institutions. What do they have in mind to replace them/? Is political correctness taking us towards pub destruction – will we get one day a tee-total Muslim Chancellor to finish off our long and fine tradition of a place where adults socialise, talk about the community and the big wide world in a merry atmosphere, there is nothing morally wrong in drinking in pubs.

Here is a contrasting view from Prince Charles

“Rural communities, and this country’s rural way of life, are facing unprecedented challenges … the country pub, which has been at the heart of village life for centuries, is disappearing in many areas.

“Since I started the Pub is the Hub initiative four years ago, I have been overwhelmed by the determination of so many villages to keep their pub at the centre of their communities, despite all the pressures.

The moral policies of the two Scots chancellors adding duty on beer is making it costly to go to the pub anymore so they are forced to close or become gastro euro café bars chains, like in the US, it is a feeding stop where you are not allowed to socialise with other customers as you only come in to eat at a table.

Why oh why do they tax pubs? The Prince of Wales s takes the long view and the historical lesson learnt whereas Parliament is all about the short term and selfish gain, in favour of big corporate chains and their lobbyists.

We have a Monarchy sometimes portrayed as out of touch who are actually in touch? It really looks like we have Government out of touch with real life? I think Guy Fawkes may have been proved to have case when considering a Scottish led Parliament was not good for the nation.

My Jacobites’ toast …God save the Queen! And may she dissolve Parliament! … She still has this power.

Matthew O’Keeffe

www.rsoe.co.uk

Tags: Coffee Blog, Inn Keeper, Recipes, How to Cook, Tea Blog, Restaurant Blog, Kitchen Blog, Pub Blog, British Food, Food Blog