Desperate Enterprise?

My mother called to let me know a leaflet had been delivered to her house which she thought must be for me because it was about pubs.

I asked her to scrutinise it – no it bore no name or address, it was just junk-mail accompanied by takeaway menus and handyman leaflets.

Yes it was about pubs – Enterprise Inns.

It seems Enterprise has taken to door-to-door leaflet drops to try to sell their poisoned leases to retired professionals!

Here's some blurb:

"Enterprise Inns is coming to your area in the next few weeks, to answer all your questions about running a pub business and to tell you how they could turn your dream into reality [read: 'redundancy money etc into thin air']."

"At these forthcoming information days you will meet our Regional Managers, who have many years of experience in the pub trade. They will talk to you about what it takes to run a successful pub business and will tell you about all the training and support offered by enterprise Inns that will help you get started. They'll also show you full details of all the available pubs in your area."

Funnily enough, I advised my mother (second hip replacement next week) to resist Enterprise's tempting offer.

I feel an urge to sign up for one of their brainwashing days armed with the BEC Report in the pubcos – with all the nasty details highlighted. I feel I have a duty to protect the innocent.

PubCo Scorched-Earth Policy

We know all too well that a whole set of factors is contributing to the decline in the pub trade: smoking ban, beer duty, the tie etc.

What really deeply and profoundly angers me is pubcos (including the regional and "family" brewers )selling underperforming  pubs with covenants prohibiting their future use as pubs. It's a bully-boy spoilsport activity whereby the pubco aims to reduce future competition for its remaining pubs.

If I own a car and decide to sell it, can I insist that the new owner never drives on a motorway? If I sell a guitar can I insist the new owner never plays a minor chord? 

No I bloody well can't. Just how are pubcos allowed to get away with this hateful behaviour?

This practise is destroying buildings we know and love as pubs that may be perfectly viable in different hands.

I know they're not the only ones, but here are Enterprise with a scorched-earth policy.

Enterprise, backed into a corner, lashes out at tenants

Enterprise are continuing their "poor old us: look how badly we are treated by our nasty tenants " approach trying to distract attention from their brutal exploitation of unfair competitive advantage (the tie system).

Link here    and here     and here

Not falling for the sob story, "Big" Nick Bish of the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers continues to give them a bashing.

Link here.

Lovely cuddly-wuddly pubcos in whose safe hands we trust our pubs.

News story here.

As if life isn't tough enough already for the people whose humble livelihoods are the hands-on running of pubs - Enterprise is to "get tough" on tie breakers.

"Buying out of the tie is nothing more than stealing", says Enterprise boss. If that's the case then the exorbitant prices for stock relative to the open market they charge are what - extortion, demanding money with menaces, fraud?

Remember folks, the tie system is illegal under the Treaty of Rome as anti-competitive - a clause for which Britain stupidly has an exemption.

The Fair Pint Campaign is doing stirling work opposing the biggest difficulty faced by the pub trade; but where's CAMRA when their alleged campaigning power is needed? Oh yes, I remember: they support the tie system and in doing so implicitly support the crippling dominance of Enterprise and its chums. Crackers. Bloody crackers.

Background stories:

here, here, here, here, here, here and here