Yes. And the restaurant owners.
Well, as a responsible pub owner perhaps I can educate you. When we were told to shut, we did. No takeaways. We poured beer away as instructed. We intended to continue paying our staff but fortunately the furlough scheme helped. We spent a shed load of money buying the place for our community, we spent a shed load of money doing up the outside and we have just spent another shedload of money refurbishing the whole of the inside. The pub lost a small amount of money in our first year, but money was never the issue, keeping a pub in the village was the reason.
We have no intention of opening if the medical advice is 2m because simply the pub couldn’t work with that distancing if the weather is bad. It would be unfair on our staff and we would make an even bigger loss and then ultimately have to sack people. Now we have no interest in making a profit, however we cannot just keep going with making a loss. I have no problem with closing the pub for another six months, it will actually save me money, but that’s not really the point. It employs half a dozen locals and provides a facility for the whole village, so we need it to open and break even.
Not every pub owner is grasping or money obsessed. Many pubs are like ours, not in the cities obviously, but many village communities rely upon their pubs for a variety of reasons, not just drinking.
I appreciate your generalisations, but it’s honestly not the same for everyone......
