Regulars reopen favourite pub - by buying it (From Gazette)

Well done, these brave people. It is a good pub so let's hope that they succeed in buying it, and that they get a good manager to run it.

Well done!!! I was working almost two year as a waiter (from february 2008 to november 2009), i am really happy about this news. Unfourtunatelly, now I am living in Barcelona (Spain) but I wanto to help!

Good luck to them. It´s a tough time for pubs at the moment, and once they´re gone, they normally stay gone. By owning the freehold, they´re not tied to the extortionate prices which Punch will charge them and can buy beer on the open market. Also not shackled by the excessive rents which companies such as Punch, Enterprise etc charge pubs.

They need to get in a good manager who is an outsider. It needs somebody fairly diplomatic to, in effect, deal with 20 bosses, as there are likely to be different views on what is done to get new customers in. Do you go the food route? Live music route? Attracting the students? Real ale buffs?

I´ve been a regular at a couple of pubs where closure looked imminent, and in both we did seriously look at the procedure for doing a customer buy-out. In the end, both stayed open, but even the opening informal discussions did show it could be hard to run a pub by committee. That´s why they need to get in a good manager, and one who is strong enough to hear the 20 different viewpoints and work out the best way to go.

Done well, I think this is the way that more and more pubs will survive in the future.

If they produce decent food at a fair price they should be able to attract customers away from the nearby Rose and Crown, which has the waterside position and thus gets away with providing mediocre meals.