Moon Over Water

Orwell's Moon Over Water is a fictional perfect pub.

S&I have been musing a lot over the pub we'd have if we owned one.  Now, we're not actually thinking of throwing in our current lives and buying a pub.  We both know the reality of the life of a publican: busy, relatively little reward, hostage to government policies on alchol control and, all too often, dependence or abuse of your product.

We've been thinking about it because of the three pubs we have been involved in try to save from being turned into something else.  If the campaigns on any of them were to be successful, we'd want to be in the forefront of the people putting their money where their mouth is.

Whilst understanding that the context of the pub is important in deciding how you run it, we'd want it to be a place that we really wanted to go to.

Our Moon Over Water would, obviously, serve Real Ale.  Now, one reason I would never want to be involved in a pub with a beer tie is that I'm learning how stupidly expensive and restrictive that is. When your beer supplier can not only restrict what you sell to a list of things that you have to buy from them and/or charge you over the odd for it, then the ability to give your punters something new or exciting pretty much evaporates.  As a result, the consumer's price for their beer goes up.  A lot.  that means you're either pricing some customers out entirely or the rest of your offering has to be even better to make up for the expensive beer.  What a stupid choice that is when we have a so-say free market economy.

So, I'm talking about us having a freehold pub, with no beer tie, thanks very much.

Yesterday we mused over lagers (the big brands you see on every bar) and nitro-stout.  Is it essential to have Fosters, Peroni, Heineken and Kronenburg 1664? (or any similar range?). First off, we both said "no" because they all taste the same, right?  And lager drinkers will actually drink any of them.  Then we had to review that because we could both put those lagers in the order in which we would actually drink them so probably lager drinkers can tell them apart...so, OK, maybe a choice of a couple of lagers.  But I can't help wonder if we could put in craft lagers alongside the mass produced stuff and price it more competitively just to see whether there's price sensitivity to it.  Giving people the option to try something more lovingly made.

A good wine list and a mix of spirits are a must - and since they're a lot less time-restricted for sale (unlike real ale) there's not really any excuse for not buying good quality.

Ah, then soft drinks.  Not important, you say?  Oh they so are.  If you don't drink, chances are the pub may not be your favourite venue - but since all your friends drink you'll end up in the pub sometimes.  What you need is to be able to choose from some pleasant, grown up, soft drinks or beverages.  So - not just manky coke served from a gun...but some decent high quality soft drinks that you don't charge the earth for.  Yeah, maybe gun-dispense soda drinks are available too since it should make them very cheap, and useful from time to time.

Now food.  First, it has to be available all day (even if not all the menu is).  There are strange people like S and I who are about half-a-mealtime out from the rest of the world.  It's no good if you stop serving lunch at 2pm and don't serve dinner until 6.30pm.  We quite often need to eat at around 3 or 4pm. food doesn't have to be stupidly fancy to be attractive.  A good burger (beef, lamb, chicken and veggie) with a nice salad (dressing optional) and chips makes a fine meal.  Do a short menu, with style options and do it well.  Oh - and not all children only eat McNuggets - so let's have proper meals for children whilst we're at it.

And in a neat segue...children in the pub.
Hmmmm
As an adult drinker - I'd generally rather not be surrounded by other people's children.  It's absolutely fine when they're quiet, part of the adult group and they're not generally heard above the general chatter...sadly you can't legislate for that and so I think our pub would need a place for just adults to be.
And while we're at it - I don't hate dogs at all...but I don't want one sniffing my crotch/licking my hands/barking at another dog/eyeing my lunch whilst I'm out for a pleasant drink, thanks.  Personally, I think if you can't keep your dog (or child) under control you shouldn't have one...and you certainly shouldn't have one in the pub.
So there would also need to be some four-leg/two-leg segregation.

Actually, thinking about it - rather than pushing the people we don't want out of the main bar...maybe we have a special bar (grumpy old man's room, or similar) for the rest of us, instead.

I think it's all doable...question is would anyone want to come to our pub once we've done it...