61are built on small, incremental changes. Martin pulled out his
phone to show me a series of captioned photos from his spot
checks, noting peeling paint, untended flower baskets, and a
front door that had been pinned back too far, letting in cold air.
Even the most assiduous management, however, may not
be enough to surmount the challenges the industry faces. The
pub might be among the most potent symbols of British, and
particularly English, life, but that doesn’t make it invulnerable
to shifting consumer tastes. Already before the coronavirus,
more than 1,000 pubs were closing annually in Britain, victims
of high tax rates, extractive ownership models, competition
from scale operators such as Wetherspoons and supermarkets,
and a steady reduction in alcohol consumption.
The pandemic has compounded these factors, creating a
storm for operators large and small. Wetherspoons estimates
it will lose £14 million every month its pubs are closed. In
November the British Beer & Pub Association warned that,
without support, as many as 12,000 pubs could be forced to
shut permanently. “I don’t think we’ll do as well if there aren’t
independents around,” Martin said. “There has been quite
a lot of clusters of restaurants and bars which have opened
near us, and we always seem to do better when they’re there.
I don’t think we’re looking for a monoculture. ... That would
be a rather sad country.”
He didn’t intend to let the changing landscape compromise
his focus, however. Keeping up the basics, he maintained,
would help bring customers back. At one point during our inter-
view, he unfolded his gangly frame from the table and went to
the bar to complain that his tea had been served without the
bag. “You always get tea with the tea bag left in and a spoon.”
A waitress arrived a few minutes later with a fresh cup, this
time forgetting to bring a saucer. Martin sent her back again. It
came across as rather precious, if not mildly tyrannical, until I
remembered my own annoyance, 10 minutes earlier, at having
nowhere to place my tea bag. The details do matter.
W
hether Wetherspoons’ business model abides in
the post-Covid, post-Brexit age remains to be seen.
Even before the virus struck, the company was
being criticized for its role as a pioneer of precarious, mini-
mally compensated work arrangements. Just a couple of years
ago, in 2018, it saw its first strike, by a group from a Brighton
Wetherspoons, who wrote that they were “forced to work as
fast as we can for long shifts with barely any breaks, even when
we’re sick or injured. We’ve seen the people we work with
struggling to make ends meet, sofa surfing and scraping by.”
Britain’s Labour Party, which has been neck and neck in opin-
ion polls with the ruling Conservatives, has pledged to take
aim at “structural flaws” in the economy, such as low pay and
insecurity, that are rife across the hospitality sector—changes
that could chip away at Wetherspoons’ model of cheap beer
served by poorly compensated workers. Meanwhile, Britain’s
exit from the EU makes it less likely those workers will be
found outside the U.K.’s borders. Martin may be in favor of
immigration, but he’s a lone voice among his fellow Brexiteers,
for whom Brexit and tight border controls are synonymous.
Even when business is good, life behind a Wetherspoons
bar can be difficult. One day last fall, I met Michael Chessum,
a former employee who’d become an anti-Brexit activist, in
a Wetherspoons near Tower Bridge. Despite the grandeur of
the setting, the pub wasn’t one of the chain’s finest, with a
low ceiling, garish lighting, and an awkward layout combin-
ing to create an oppressive, claustrophobic feel. Yet even with
the recent rise in Covid cases across the capital, the place was
packed. Apart from the absence of a line at the bar—only table
service was permitted, to prevent crowds forming—it felt strik-
ingly similar to earlier times.
Chessum and I found the only spot left to sit, on high stools
by the dead zone around the bar. He was skeptical of my
order, a steak and ale pie. “I don’t know what they’ve cooked
your pie in,” he said. (A Mealstream combi oven, accord-
ing to the company.) Chessum had been hired as a kitchen
hand in 2015. He recalled the pay being poor—just above min-
imum wage, with tiny increments between different job titles.
(Wetherspoons says it supplements its wages with bonuses and
share distributions.) Visits from Martin were a source of con-
siderable anxiety for managers, who were “visibly scared of
him.” Chessum left after six months, unable to make a living.
Low wages were part of a kind of unvirtuous circle,
helping to make Wetherspoons one of the only affordable
places left for other poorly paid workers to go out for drinks.
This dynamic spoke to why Chessum had fond memories of
his time there, despite his experience as an employee. His
pub had been small and uncharacteristically intimate, a last
redoubt of working-class drinkers in Stroud Green, a fast-
gentrifying part of London. He and his colleagues took pride
in getting to know the regulars. There was Toothless Sue, a vul-
nerable pensioner whom staff would occasionally help look for
when she went missing. Busta Crime, who was fond of skirting
the law. A man known as Where There’s Muck There’s Money,
his catchphrase—“because he’d made his fortune dealing with
animal filth or something.” A dissolute academic who’d sit with
a bottle of beer, a double Glenmorangie, and an iPad—“usually
nature documentaries.” A clique of intellectuals who included
a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-
Leninist), “an absolutely insane organization who think North
Korea is paradise.” It was, in other words, a normal British
pub, acting as an unofficial site for social services, a refuge
for eccentrics, a place for anybody to belong.
Wetherspoons sold Chessum’s location in 2016 to a
company that converted it into an upmarket gastropub
serving “nourishment bowls” with “delicio pumpkin,” “panko
halloumi,” and craft beers. People in the neighborhood were
left with a 2-mile walk to the nearest affordable pub. As far as
he knew, the regulars, without somewhere to go every day,
simply scattered. The local Wetherspoons may have been run
by a pitiless corporation, but it was still their neighborhood
pub. “It felt very much like a single community. We were part
of each other’s world,” Chessum said. “I wonder where the
f--- Toothless Sue is now.” <BW>“Losing“Losing a a hundred million, th hundred million, thee novelty novelty
ofof th thatat will wear off quite will wear off quite fast”fast”