You may or may not know this, but your favourite pub guide is a Google Partner and we were part of the Street View launch last year. Much of the hoo-hah surrounding Street View seems to have died down now that people are more used to it, however, there was another lower-key announcement from Google last week, which should make the rest of Britain happy/unhappy depending on their point of view.

Google Street View now covers almost all of the UK – 99% /238,000 miles – and we’re working hard to update fancyapint.com with these new views. We’ve already been down to the seaside and updated the Brighton pubs and we’re steadily working our way through the rest of the UK. It takes time as we’re checking each pub before we update it.

Now, with Street View you can view and explore 360 degree street-level imagery of places as far North as Shetland and as far South as Penzance; from Pembrokeshire in the West of Wales to Ipswich in the East of England or over the sea to Northern Ireland and many places in between.

By increasing availability to cover almost all of the country, the UK joins countries like Spain, France, Italy and the US, which already enjoy nationwide coverage in Street View. Street View has already proved both popular and useful across the UK, with more than a 30% increase in Google Maps usage since launch [source: Google Inc.].

It’s official. Pub chain J D Wetherspoon has had “a good recession’ according to the Financial Times, reporting the 750-pub company’s pre-tax profits are up 18% on sales up 4%. It was enough for JDW to reinstate a dividend to shareholders – which will net founder and chairman Tim Martin a cool £6.2m.
Now the group aims to extend its appeal further by opening its pubs at 7am to catch the early-riser breakfast crowd.

A peachy performance?
The country’s top 15 managed pub operators were back in growth in February, recording a 1.3% increase in like-for-likes over the same period last year, according to the Coffer Peach Business Tracker.
The weather is still playing a big part in pubs’ performance, though. Remember the snows of February 09?

More pubs on the market
Pub companies continue to shed poorly performing sites with tenanted pub group Admiral Taverns putting 200 pubs, 10% of its estate, on the market, and S&N Pub Company planning to sell 43.

One pint to put drivers over the limit?
Transport secretary Lord Adonis threatened to cut the drink-drive limit to 50mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood from the current 80mg, meaning a pint of beer will make most drivers illegal. The government is unlikely to be able to make the change before the election, though.

It’ll take a little time…
Paul Heaton, him out of The Beautiful South, is to embark on a 720-mile cycling tour to promote the British pub. He’s looking for 15 pub venues to play at around the North and Midlands – which will hopefully put him up for the night.

Closing time
The Cavendish Bar in Glasgow became the first pub to by shut down under the new Scottish licensing laws after a customer was found dead – and police discovered 29 weapons hidden on the premises including knives, swords, machetes, axes and baseball bats. Yeah, that would do it.

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In A Restaurant By Any Other Name Is Not a Gastropub, Drew Long from the food blog D.C. Foodies, based in Washington D.C., muses on the difference between a gastropub and a restaurant (with some input from our reviewers).

A Restaurant By Any Other Name Is Not a Gastropub

Gastropub: (British) A public house that serves high-quality food.

This Wiktionary definition is the best I could find for gastropub, but it’s illustrative enough. A gastropub is generally understood to be a public house (read: bar) that serves equally high-quality food and beer. In other words, a place you’re just as likely to go for a few great beers as a nice meal. The concept hasn’t been around all that long, but it has certainly found traction here in D.C.

Well the term has found traction, the establishment of actual gastropubs, not so much. Jamie Leeds (above) is the co-owner and executive chef of one of D.C.’s two gastropubs, Commonwealth. Granville Moore’s on H Street, is the other. I would be just as inclined to visit either for a few quality ales as I would their upscale dishes.

Yet, a Google search of the terms “gastropubs” and “D.C.” pulls up a number of restaurants that either refer to themselves as gastropubs, or are referred to as gastropubs. Againn is clearly a restaurant. So is Brasserie Beck. Both have good beer selections (Beck’s selection of Belgian beers is excellent, in fact), but the small bar areas, large dining rooms, showcase kitchens and raw bars (is that a new trend, too?) indicate that these places were designed to be restaurants, not drinking establishments. Rustico, which was named D.C.’s best gastropub in 2008 by the City Paper, could be a gastropub, but Beer Director Greg Engert and the management of the Neighborhood Restaurant Group, which owns Rustico, are very clear about the fact that it is very much a restaurant.

You can read the full article on D.C. Foodies

The big pubcos have been given yet another chance to put their public houses in order by the House of Commons Business, Innovation & Skills Committee (BISC). They have another 15 months to address concerns about the balance of power between landlord and tenant.
In its ‘follow-up’ to a report last May, which prompted pub industry leaders to issue a new code of conduct aimed at ensuring transparency in dealings, the BISC says there is still a “serious imbalance of power between pub companies and lessees” that remains “a matter of deep concern”.
A referral to the Competition Commission is threatened, and the Office of Fair Trading still has to have its second go at responding to Camra’s super complaint.
This one could drag on a bit…

End of an era
Tetley’s cask ale is to leave its historic roots in Leeds and will, from next year, be brewed by Marston’s in Wolverhampton, brewer Carlsberg UK announced. The keg version,Tetley’s Smoothflow, will move to the Molson Coors (formerly Bass) brewery at Tadcaster.
Beer lovers mourned the decision – not to mention the 170 people in Leeds who will lose their jobs as a result.

The high cost of smoking
Nick Hogan of the Swan with Two Necks and the Barrister in Bolton became the first publican to be jailed for flouting the smoking ban. He got six months for refusing to pay a £3,000 fine plus £7,000 costs.

Supreme chocaholic
Triple Chocaholic, a 4.8% ABV stout, was named Supreme Champion Beer 2010 at the Society of Independent Brewers’ National Beer Competition, seeing off 55 other finalists.
It was a triple, too, for its brewer, West Yorkshire’s Saltaire, as Chocaholic took gold in the speciality beer category and its Cascade Pale Ale took top spot among premium bitters.
Picture: Tim Croxson of sponsors Croxsons presents the trophy to Tony Gartland, owner and head brewer at Saltaire Brewery.

“Oh, I thought you said meet at the pub…”
Newly-appointed pubs minister John Healey, who has just two months to turn around the fortunes of the industry before the election, has got off to a shaky start. After getting various parties together for a summit meeting, he failed to show up himself.
We can only hope he had a good excuse. Like being unable to get out of the pub.

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The Politics of Drinking… and more

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We moved servers over the New Year and, in doing so, got a few wires crossed and not everything worked quite how it should. Fancyapint.com’s quite a big site nowadays and we keep finding and sorting problems even two months on. And, one of the things we missed until now, was a malfunctioning comments system.

We’d thought things had gone strangely quiet over the last few weeks. We’d seen the odd comment here and there, but there wasn’t anywhere near the amount of dialogue we were used to. We thought maybe you’d all stayed at home because of the snow/recession/swine flu.

It turned out it was our fault. A broken link to a mail server meant we weren’t getting any notifications and you weren’t getting your registration emails. If you’d previously registered and had comments approved, any new comments would still have appeared, as this process is automatic, it was newcomers to FAP that we were serving badly.

We’ve  fixed the problems now and made a couple of tweaks in the process – the latest comments now automatically appear on the home page (as well as in the relevant review).

We’re very sorry we let you down and we promise to try very hard not to let it happen again.

Humbly, the Fancyapint? team

Damn! We nearly forgot it was British Pie Week, until the 6th of March. So, you’ve still got time to get to a decent pub and have a pie and a pint just to celebrate this great British institution.

So, once we realised we’d almost missed it, we came up with a few favourites where we’ve had pretty good pies, lately, and this is what it looks like.

Betsey Trotswood (Clerkenwell)
Camel (Bethnal Green)
Guinea (Mayfair)
Hardys (Greenwich)
Kenton (Homerton)
Newman Arms (Fitzrovia)
Royal Oak (Borough)
Windmill (Soho)

And finally, as a tip of the (probably slightly morbid) hat to Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, you could always go to the Old Bank of England for a pie – meat, of course.

We’ve probably missed some, but as it’s so late in the week, don’t send us your suggestions, please. Too many pies, too little time.

Enjoy your pie – we know we will!

Many people in the UK aren’t aware of it, but there’s a bill threading its way though parliament right now that could mean the end of free WiFi (or any Wifi, for that matter) down the pub.

The Digital Economy Bill designed, amongst other things, to protect the works of such luminaries as Robbie Williams and Michael Bay from the deeds of the dastardly download pirates, means that whilst open WiFi won’t exactly be illegal, the burden placed on providers to monitor and control usage will be so great that it will no longer be economically viable for most small businesses.

We’re great fans of surfing and supping and are grateful to the many pubs that offer this for free, especially when we’re out and about gathering reviews for your favourite pub guide. We need to get together to ensure this excellent service is not curtailed – come on Mandy, listen to what the rest of the business community (and most importantly, consumers) have to say. And don’t bow to pressure from a bunch of greedy, outdated groups that seemingly want us to pay as frequently as possible to hear and see the stuff we’ve already bought.

More info and commentary here:
techdirt, CrunchGear, FutureTense

Small brewers are continuing to buck the market, according to the latest report from the Society of Independent Brewers.

Volumes for microbrewers were up by nearly 4% last year, against an overall decline in UK beer of 4%. And despite all the closures, you’ll also find more locally brewed ales in pubs.

“Our success through the past few exceptionally tough years demonstrates that local ales are no passing fad, but a permanent asset that can offer a much-needed boost to the nation’s troubled pub trade,” said SIBA’s chief executive Julian Grocock.

Find the full report here.

Duty freeze call to save pubs and jobs

With the Budget coming up, the British Beer & Pub Association called for “a tax policy to boost beer”. A duty freeze could save 7,500 industry jobs over the next year, the BBPA calculates. Problem is that the Treasury is planning to increase it by 2% above the rate of inflation, adding to the 20% hike beer has suffered over the past two years.

Camra lobbies MPs to promote pubs

Camra was also on the backs of the politicians, launching a Beer Drinkers and Pub Goers Charter and calling on supporters to lobby their MP to champion well-run community pubs, rebalance alcohol taxation and reform the beer tie.

Adding a touch of glass

What’s in a glass? Quite a lot according to research from Carlsberg, which found that pubs that pour beer into branded glasses can expect a 14% increase in sales. More than a third of customers also said they’d be willing to pay more for a beer in the right glass.

www.philmellows.com

The Politics of Drinking… and more

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Going out for a night on the town and worried you might not be able to get home? We’ve all done it – “one for the road” inadvertently becomes  ”six for the road” and before you know it, the closing bell has rung, the chairs are on the tables, the station master is padlocking the station gates, you’re out of cash and you’ve missed the last bus.

Well, we might have the answer: Laterooms.com

Instead of risking the last train/bus/tram home why not plan to stay in town? You can forget about dodgy taxis,  and suspicious seat stains – find and book a hotel room before you set out. Every fancyapint.com pub review now has an accompanying search box, that enables you quickly and easily to search for a place to put your head down for the night (or longer if necessary). The search is already filled in with the postcode of the area you’re looking at – so all you have to do is fill in how many people, how many nights and when you’d like to stay. It couldn’t be simpler.

Not only is the search fast and comprehensive, it also comes up with some pretty keen prices. So, even if you’re on a budget, you should be able to find a bed for the night.

Give it a go – get some peace of mind  and save yourself a bundle into the bargain.

Yet another thing we’ve been meaning to do for  a good while now, is to provide all you Tweeters and Facebookers with easy ways to tell your friends about the pubs and bars described and defined by our esteemed and erudite reviewers on your favourite pub web site.

Well finally, we’ve gone and done it.

We’ve changed the menu bar the runs across the reviews to include Facebook and Twitter buttons. We’ve upgraded the menu bar at the top of every review – we’ve moved the print button, got rid of the “Let’s meet here” button (for now, we’re working on LMH MK II) and we’ve updated the bookmarking service.
So now, when someone says you should have told them you were going to the pub, you really do have no excuse