Wetherspoons Profits Down As Its Forced To Write Down Value Of Property

[pipllman]

Not exactly great wages even if you are a manager (the local manager here seems to be there about 80 hours a week!)

http://www.wetherspoonjobs.co.uk/home/pay/pub-manager

£22750...aldi manager by comparison gets 42.5k plus car.

even less if you are a kitchen or shift manager

http://www.wetherspoonjobs.co.uk/home/pay/manager

the up to 50% bonus, up to £9k live out allowance, free shares and other bits and pieces could work out to be quite valuable

spoons doesn't seem to have much trouble attracting and retaining decent staff as far as I can see

remember the sports direct scheme that paid out up to £18k each to some 2000 workers (IIRC it was announced in the summer)?

[Democorruptcy]

I don't know if it's local or national policy but they have cut staff hours down at my local recently. I was stood at the bar Friday morning in a queue of 6 with nobody serving. Is this preparation for slightly higher wages? Cut hours and make remaining staff work harder.

Re prices I was told that when they open a new pub, they look at the competition and undercut the cheapest one. That's why their prices aren't the same nationally.

Sam Smith pubs sell cheap drinks because they brew their own.

[thombleached]

I can vouch for that.

Not only to the other managed groups sell sh1t beer, which I dislike.

They try and charge ~1.50p more for it than spoons.

The only positive thing to say about the managed pubs are they are better than than the PubCos outlets, which I actively avoid now.

Not just due to the distaste of what Punch And Enterpise Inns have done to the pub business and the naive LLs who signedup, but because they sell p1ss poor beer. You cannot have a business when your core product is p1ss.

I've seen the trade show signup days various pub cos have where they shark people just made redundant to sink that money into a pub (usually having no experience of the trade) being sold a very romantic view of running a pub, when the reality finally dawns that it's actually incredibly difficult to run your own pub the pubco's nowhere to be seen! Rinse and repeat.

Edit: potentially libellous comments removed!

Edited September 12, 2015 by thombleached

[Bootsox]

Wetherspoons is a great business offering fantastic VFM.

They may be a little bit vulnerable however to a downturn in income from many of their, Labour voting, benefits scrounging, customers.

[thombleached]

I have never seen that before, especially on this forum.

Neither have I, I think it's like Esperanto; good idea but never cut through.

[billybong]

I was stood at the bar Friday morning in a queue of 6 with nobody serving.

That's even more discouraging to customers than higher prices.

[winkie]

I `go out` once every 2 or 3 weeks to wetherspoons . Otherwise I don`t go out.

Does that say anything to anybody?

Says something to me........alternative is to create your own local wetherspoons by doing it yourself and sharing together at alternative homes/sheds.

[crashmonitor]

The whiplash has clearly affected your powers of reasoning and sense of humour too. It was the post I replied to that referred to "workers' expectations".

I thought it was pretty clear by the use of the rolleyes emoji that my post was sarcastic/ironic - describing the rank and file wetherspoons worker, bar staff, as fat cats is clearly not true.

And clearly you waded in too quickly too because the ''expectations'' were referring to final salary expectations and mostly protected rights that had already accrued. If that wasn't made clear enough, sorry, I gave the example of the the six FTSE companies that were now technically bankrupt because pension deficits were twice market cap and therefore possibly destroying employment for future generations. Which. of course, is what the public sector has already achieved with its own two trillion deficit.

Indeed i expect the Wetherspoons young workforce to have to slave out their years in a mega productive way, probably without final salary schemes, to provide for those who were over compensated in the past simply because it was never envisaged that investment returns would be negligible and longevity would be extended decades in some cases with the fall in heart disease etc.

Indeed this very topic is running today on another thread and that was the thrust of my argument.

Edited September 14, 2015 by crashmonitor

[Assume The Opposite]

Why do companies value their property portfolio? On a side note it looks like Lidl and Wilkinson's have dropped prices. Is this trend happening in other areas?

[Austin Allegro]

One thing I've noticed about 'Spoons is that the staff are always polite and helpful. One barman even spent a long time discussing beers with me and offering me samples etc when he had absolutely no need to. By contrast a lot of high-end wine bar type places in London seem to specialise in lackadaisical, offhand staff. Is it because the Spoons staff like their jobs, or do they have a lot of secret shoppers? I know Mr Wetherspoon goes round his pubs checking on them quite often.