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That's disgusting! It's a form of shoplifting. You could maybe overlook a case of a kid on a zero hours contract picking up an empty cup from a table and bumming a coffee, as long as it's only one and he's not sitting there all day, but this disabled man will have his Disability Living Allowance (DLA), his Personal Independence Payment (PIP), his Attendance Allowance (AA), probably his rent and rates paying, one cost of living payment after another, in other words can afford his first cup of JDW coffee, before he hits the free ones following. The manager should have got the laws in and had the man and the carer's bags turned out, and they might have found bottles of sauce, vinegar, handfuls of sugar, teabags, all the stuff that JDW's have lying about. It's not cheap brand stuff, either. Only the best.
Don't get me on about not being able to get a table for ameal at dinnertime in a fairly small JDW, because of all the tables being hogged by tea and coffee bandits.
I get about a bit, and think the problem is pretty widespread, so I wouldn't like to stigmatise an entire county or region. Some Wetherspoons are so big and have so many odd corners they are impossible to supervise. And as for the type of customer, one could always mention the expensive cars and SUV's parked around the street corners from PDSA clinics and food banks.
What do you pay for a cup of coffee now in a cafe or coffee shop? In the local JDW now closed, it was £1.04 and as many mugs as you wanted till it was comng out of your ears. My answer is token tea and coffee machines, one token, or two if you've bought a meal.
One of my local Wetherspoons has just closed, and it always seemed full over the day. However, a lot of customers weren't eating meals or drinking beer, they were drinking tea and coffee. And really Wetherspoons should install token-operated tea and coffee machines, and just give one or maybe two tokens for the cash. I have had it on the good authority of a coffee burglar that people take the mug home in their pocket and come back repeatedly for free drinks. Others hand the mug to somebody else before they go. I've seen this myself. Others sit in groups, and then it's "your turn for the mug now". It is Wetherspoons that is the mug in these cases. The staff could try putting the mugs out at the beginning of the day, and see how many have come back at the end of the day. It's all right to say "it's only a pound or £1.50 a mug", multiply that by a thousand, and anyway it's the principle. Other pubs don't act as a shelter for bums in cold weather.
PS. The going rate for a pint of real ale in JDW's in my area is around £2.26. I got told of a JDW in North London charging £4.50, while the nearby competition was £6.50 a pint. I'd find something else to do at those rates.
The price advantage varies. In the big town six miles from me, in the North, real ale drinkers won't find a cheaper pint than the one in the JDW, but your John Smith's type of drinker (and there are many) can get a pint as cheap in about five pubs within 300 yards.
The breakfast might be fine in the JDW, but I can get one as good in a market cafe nearby, for £3 less. Sometimes I walk 6 miles over a moor in the early morning to a posher town, and I couldn't get a better, cheaper breakfast than the one in the JDW, but later in the day there are plenty of pubs doing meals. And there is no pub in that town to approach the JDW for the price of beer, but they all have plenty of customers, even at £4.50 a pint. This hasn't changed, even with the cost of living crisis.
I go to the surviving JDW in Putney, the beer is cheap for the area, and they get plenty of diners, but so do other establishments. So there's no guarantee that customers will be flocking in thinking about nothing but price.
I don't spend all my time in JDW's, but I must say that in one or two of the town ones, a lot of potential customers would be put off by some of the other customers. The staff seem to be generally young, and I think that some JDW's would benefit from older managers with a track record for managing rougher pubs.
Just my thoughts. DYOR on the pubs.
What lets this firm down is that you can go in (no shareholder discount,by the way) and you'll see a queue at he bar, and one or maybe two members of staff trying to serve drinks, take orders for meals, go to the kitchens to collect meals, take meals to tables, clear the tables and take plates etc to the hatch, clean the tables, sweep the floor, attend to the tea and coffee machine when it runs out , collect the empties and wash them, etc etc. Mean while the queue diminishes, because people are leaving and going to the dearer pub next door. If this share ever reaches the dizzy heights of once before, I'll be very (and pleasantly ) surprised.
Top of the fallers league at this moment in time is ITS, down 75%. PANR has improved to be down in the middle of the league.
I am wondering what persuaded me not sell my stake in PANR yesterday for what I could get, and invest
the proceeds in ITS. Maybe somebody is watching over me after all.
If the the ageing clapped-out beardies can have thirty pounds worth of 50p vouchers out of JDW profits, why can't shareholders? I don't mean every shareholder, but PI's who have held their shares for an agreed time?