Will micropubs be the next big thing?
CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, says that Britain’s pub closure rate has increased to 18 per week, with over 450 pubs across the country having been lost since March 2012. This is an increase from 12 per week for the September 2011 to March 2012 period.
But there is hope: there has been a lot of talk recently about a burgeoning micropub movement in the UK. Among the four pubs, which have been shortlisted in CAMRA's 2012 pub of the year competition, there is one micropub, the Conqueror Alehouse in Ramsgate, Kent.
As the name suggests, micropubs are small, sometimes as small as 4 metres x 4 metres, like the Butcher's Arms in the Kentish town of Herne, which was opened by Martyn Hillier in 2005 and today is credited with having been the first micropub. It is really tiny because in its previous life it used to be the village butcher's shop. Other micropubs have taken over former hairdressers or drycleaners. With about ten punters inside, they feel absolutely crowded - to give you an idea.
Mr Hillier's business concept, if you want to call it that grand, was to take away all drinks except real ale, as well as all the food, the music, the TV, the gaming machines and the bar. What you get at his place are some barrels of ale, a few tables and chairs and a toilet. Oh, yes and very idiosyncratic opening hours.
Micropubs benefit from a change in legislation by the Blair government which has made it far easier and cheaper to get a licence. Before 2005, it would have cost you perhaps GBP 12,000 to GBP 15,000 (USD 19,000 to 24,000) in legal fees to apply for a licence and you still wouldn't have had the guarantee of obtaining one.
Nowadays this kind of money is all it takes to kit out a micropub especially if you serve real ales at ambient temperatures (no refrigeration) which are poured by gravity (no handpumps). Customers will invariably complain that the beer is too warm or too cold, but customer complaint has been part of real ales' allure forever.
However, from counting the numbers on the micropubs' association website, there seems to be a grand total of only twelve today, so it can’t exactly be said that micropubs are a movement that is sweeping the country.
As one blogger wondered: "at a time when the traditional small, wet-led, adults-only, drink and chat pub has been in headlong retreat for a couple of decades, is that really going to be a model for success and expansion, nice as the thought might be?"
Why CAMRA likes to push the concept is clear: they sell real ales. But critics have pointed out that there also seems to be a strong streak of living in the past about the whole thing. Refusing to serve lager harks back to the blinkered attitudes of the 1970s.
That may be well and true. Yet, if you look at Britain's beer drinking culture, which has become highly fragmented in recent decades, there is definitely a niche in which these types of retro pubs can thrive. Moreover, as a genuine grass-roots phenomenon, they might catch on with villages which no longer have their own pub.
The micropub's emergence comes at a very interesting time for the British brewing industry. Another of the last government's actions was the introduction of small brewers' relief, whereby those brewers who produced less than a certain amount paid less tax. The impact has been dramatic: there are now about 1,000 breweries operating in the UK. Most of them are ale breweries, producing cask-conditioned ales which means they all seeking on-premise sales.
In an interview with UK media, Mr Hillier said that the microbreweries' products are a natural fit for a micropub. He thinks that for every microbrewery, there should be 10 micropubs.
One day there may be, perhaps.
The winner of CAMRA's 2012 pub of the year award will be announced in February 2013.
