Business

Last orders: Britain's pubs struggle to survive in an atomized, remote-work world

Published

11 months ago

February 3, 2024

Last orders: Britain's pubs struggle to survive in an atomized, remote-work world

LONDON —

Over the bar of a 200-year-old pub in southeast London hangs a sign: “For the people of East Greenwich, by the people of East Greenwich.”

What might sound like a pithy slogan is in fact the truth. The Star of Greenwich, which almost closed for good last year, has been saved by the local community after three residents — all of whom hold down full-time jobs — came to the rescue of their “local.”

“Once these things go, they never come back,” says James Gadsby Peet, who banded together with two friends to take over running the pub. It’s not the drinks that matter here, he says, but preserving “a community space for people to come together.”

Directors and co-founders of the Star of Greenwich community pub are Lisa Donohoe, left, James Gadsby Peet and Kirsty Dunlop.

(Joshua Bright / For The Times)

Had the trio not resolved to save the Star, it would have become one of the many taverns in the British capital that closed at a record pace last year. Hit by a stubborn cost-of-living crisis and post-pandemic economic woes, 383 London pubs called for last orders in the first six months of 2023, compared with 380 in all of 2022.

Earlier this month, four sister pubs in central London — including one believed to have been frequented by two of Jack the Ripper’s victims — were put up for sale, highlighting the struggles of an industry synonymous with British life.

The Star (formerly the Star and Garter, before the new team renamed it) has been serving up pints since the early 1800s, with the dark wooden beams inside believed to be from its original construction. But even its long history wasn’t enough to guarantee its future until the community rallied around it.

Pubs across Britain, not just in London, are suffering a worse fate. Government figures show that from 2000 to 2019, the last full year of business prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, 13,600 pubs around the country, or 22% of the total, shut their doors for good. Last week, the British Beer and Pub Assn. warned that, without economic support, a further 2,000 may be gone by the time this year is out, potentially leading to 25,000 jobs lost — and 288 million fewer pints poured.

Aside from financial pressures, pubs — long the social glue in British communities — are increasingly falling victim to shifting work and leisure patterns. “Old boozers,” as they are affectionately known, are struggling to compete in a world where people work from multiple locations at variable hours and have myriad entertainment options on their phones and computers.

1 People gather around several small tables with drinks

2 A dog on a bar stool

3 Signboard outside the Star of Greenwich pub

1. Musicians and patrons chat at the Star of Greenwich. James Gadsby Peet said he decided to help run the pub to preserve “a community space for people to come together.” 2. Rolo enjoys some beer at the Star of Greenwich. 3. The Star of Greenwich was on the verge of closing down before the community stepped in to save it. (Photographs by Joshua Bright / For The Times)

Charo Havermans, a historian at University College London who studies the role of pubs in public life, says that such establishments remain vital and inclusive gathering spots in an age when religion is in decline and communication is increasingly virtual.

“There’s a true sense of community that falls away when pubs disappear,” she says. “You lose a sense of history.”

Given the crucial role that pubs have played in local neighborhoods, it’s perhaps no surprise that some communities have stepped in themselves to keep the lights on.

When the Step pub in north London closed in 2020, there was an outcry as property developers tried to take it over, leading Dan Jones, a resident of four years, to consider a different solution: “Why don’t we try and buy it as a community?”

He began handing out fliers and, in a matter of weeks, “very quickly realized there was a large appetite” to enact his plan. Hundreds of people pledged to invest in a fundraising campaign, and within four weeks, the effort raised $357,000 — far in excess of the $319,000 goal — which was topped up by a government grant of $382,000.

“It took us by surprise, the speed at which we were able to raise the money and the fact that we got over target,” Jones says.

He puts this down to the Step being more than just a place to drink. “It was the hub of the area … so people really missed that when that was gone,” he says. “And that’s why there was this feeling to bring it back.”

A dog on its hind legs puts its front paws up on a person standing next to a bar

Another pub-saving initiative, CityStack, lets bar-hoppers pay $32 for a special beer mat that gives them $13 off tabs of $25 or more at participating establishments. The discount is good for up to 10 visits.

At the Star in East Greenwich, Gadsby Peet admits that financially, things are “really tight,” even though the community-run pub needs to pay only for behind-the-counter staff, with no management costs, and there is no pressure to turn a profit. Currently, the pub welcomes customers from Thursday through Sunday, as the team “can only open [at] the times we can afford to open.”

Strong business over Christmas has meant that “at the moment, it’s sustainable,” he says, though “you never quite know what’s going to happen.”

The crowd on a Saturday night is a mixture of friends, a smattering of solo drinkers and a young couple on a date, mulling whether to head to the jukebox or dartboard. The bar staff knows regulars by name and is primed for chitchat in a part of London best known for its role in maritime history and as the birthplace of notable Tudors, including Henry VIII.

The pub was open until 2021, when its license was suspended following a stabbing outside. After news circulated that the building was to be sold, Gadsby Peet and Kirsty Dunlop fell to chatting at the gates of their children’s school and resolved that, together with another friend, Lisa Donohoe, they would put together a proposal to save it.

A sign reads, "For the community, by the community"

2 A man throws a dart at a dart board

3 Two men face each other with a wooden T-shaped stand between them. One holds a string with a ring attached to it.

1. A sign above the bar at the Star of Greenwich pub. 2. Pete Ribers throws a dart at an old board still bearing the previous name of the Star of Greenwich. 3. Alan Campbell, left, and Rob Calnan play the ring and hook game. (Photographs by Joshua Bright / For The Times)

The building’s owners “bought into the vision,” Gadsby Peet recalls. “They saw this as a great way that they could use some of their assets for community good.”

The team still has to make sure that rent for the premises is paid each month. Gadsby Peet admits that juggling the Star, his job as director of a web design agency and his young family has been more challenging than he imagined.

“At the beginning you don’t realize how much [work] it’s going to be, so the first thing is just, ‘We’ll send a couple of emails,’” he says. “And before you know it, you’ve got a lot of people interested.”

His main measure of success comes at the end of the week, when in the Star he “see[s] people who are working on the railways … next to people who are working in Canary Wharf [a business district] … next to people who have been drinking here since the ’50s. That, for me, is where the really great stuff happens.”

Pat Murray, 86, has been a loyal customer since his early 20s. He recalls coming to the pub when he and his wife “were courting. I’ve since brought my children, grandchildren and now great-grandchildren into the pub. It’s a family tradition for us.”

Keeping prices low — a pint of beer costs from $6, compared with $9 at many London pubs — and offering the space for free to community groups and activities including kids’ clubs, Italian classes and local folk musicians has eased concerns about gentrification and fostered new connections, Gadsby Peet says.

He adds that throwing the Star’s doors open to a wider group has allowed locals “to meet people that they wouldn’t otherwise run into. We think the more that that happens, the more cohesive the community becomes, the nicer a place it is to live.”

A September report by Co-operatives UK, an organization that represents cooperative businesses, showed that they play “a significant role in community development” and that community-owned pubs have increased by 62.6% in the last five years.

But some pubs in London’s commercial centers have found it harder to weather the current storms. The rise of remote working, with many employees now going into the office only on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, has significantly slashed footfall in neighboring hospitality businesses. Late last year, figures showed that office occupancy in Central London had reached its highest level since the pandemic, at an average of 50.9% — but that is still 10% to 30% lower than before the coronavirus hit.

When the first national lockdown was announced in March 2020, “everybody thought it was just going to be a blip,” says Lorraine Crawford, who took over the Centre Page tavern near St. Paul’s Cathedral, in London’s historic financial district, in 2005. But her business “overnight just took a nosedive. … It never ever really gained momentum again.”

Crawford and her husband, who had by that stage been in the industry for four decades, “tried everything” to keep the place afloat, she says, but paying $127,000 per year in rent, along with $45,000 in business taxes, was “horrendous. We were getting in debt all the time.”

Street scene of a lighted-up pub with people walking by at night

Add the inflation on alcoholic drinks — which late last year reached 9.9%, the highest since the early ’90s — and the only thing left to do “was back out of it gracefully, which was so sad,” Crawford says. “We were more of a family because we were just a small business.”

The Centre Page closed more than a year ago.

“In our industry, nothing has gone back to being the same,” Crawford laments. “And I don’t think it ever will.”

Lytton is a special correspondent.

Business

4 Takeaways From the Arguments Before the Supreme Court in the TikTok Case

Published

2 hours ago

January 12, 2025

Press Room

4 Takeaways From the Arguments Before the Supreme Court in the TikTok Case

The Supreme Court on Friday grappled over a law that could determine the fate of TikTok, an enormously popular social media platform that has about 170 million users.

Congress enacted the law out of concern that the app, whose owner is based in China, is susceptible to the influence of the Chinese government and posed a national risk. The measure would effectively ban TikTok from operating in the United States unless its owner, ByteDance, sells it by Jan. 19.

Here are some key takeaways:

The court appeared likely to uphold the law.

While the justices across the ideological spectrum asked tough questions of both sides, the overall tone and thrust appeared to suggest greater skepticism toward the arguments by lawyers for TikTok and its users that the First Amendment barred Congress from enacting the law.

The questioning opened with two conservative members of the court, Justice Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., suggesting that it was not TikTok, an American company, but its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, that was directly affected by the law.

Another conservative, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, focused on the risk that the Chinese government could use information TikTok is gathering on tens of millions of American teenagers and twentysomethings to eventually “develop spies, turn people, blackmail people” when they grow older and go to work for national security agencies or the military.

Justice Elena Kagan, a liberal, asked why TikTok could not just create or buy another algorithm rather than using ByteDance’s.

And another liberal, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, said she believed the law was less about speech than about association. She suggested that barring TikTok from associating with a Chinese company was akin to barring Americans from associating with foreign terrorist groups for national security reasons. (The Supreme Court has upheld that as constitutional.)

Still, several justices were skeptical about a major part of the government’s justification for the law: the risk that China might “covertly” make TikTok manipulate the content shown to Americans or collect user data to achieve its geopolitical aims.

Both Justice Kagan and Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, a conservative, stressed that everybody now knows that China is behind TikTok. They appeared interested in whether the government’s interest in preventing “covert” leveraging of the platform by a foreign adversary could be achieved in a less heavy-handed manner, like appending a label warning users of that risk.

Lawyers for TikTok and for its users argued that the law is unconstitutional.

Two lawyers argued that the law violates the First Amendment: Noel Francisco, representing both TikTok and ByteDance, and Jeffrey Fisher, representing TikTok users. Both suggested that concerns about potential manipulation by the Chinese government of the information American users see on the platform were insufficient to justify the law.

Mr. Francisco contended that the government in a free country “has no valid interest in preventing foreign propaganda” and cannot constitutionally try to keep Americans from being “persuaded by Chinese misinformation.” That is targeting the content of speech, which the First Amendment does not permit, he said.

Mr. Fisher asserted that fears that China might use its control over the platform to promote posts sowing doubts about democracy or pushing pro-China and anti-American views were a weaker justification for interfering in free speech than concerns about foreign terrorism.

“The government just doesn’t get to say ‘national security’ and the case is over,” Mr. Fisher said, adding, “It’s not enough to say ‘national security’ — you have to say ‘what is the real harm?’”

The Biden administration defended Congress’s right to enact the law.

The solicitor general, Elizabeth B. Prelogar, argued that Congress had lawful authority to enact the statute and that it did not violate the First Amendment. She said it was important to recognize that the law leaves speech on TikTok unrestricted once the platform is freed from foreign control.

“All of the same speech that’s happening on TikTok could happen post-divestiture,” she said. “The act doesn’t regulate that at all. So it’s not saying you can’t have pro-China speech, you can’t have anti-American speech. It’s not regulating the algorithm.”

She added: “TikTok, if it were able to do so, could use precisely the same algorithm to display the same content by the same users. All the act is doing is trying to surgically remove the ability of a foreign adversary nation to get our data and to be able to exercise control over the platform.”

The court appears unlikely to wait for Trump.

President-elect Donald J. Trump has asked the Supreme Court to issue an injunction delaying the law from taking effect until after he assumes office on Jan. 20.

Mr. Trump once shared the view that Chinese control of TikTok was an intolerable national security risk, but reversed course around the time he met with a billionaire Republican donor with a stake in its parent company.

If the court does uphold the law, TikTok would effectively be banned in the United States on Jan. 19, Mr. Francisco said. He reiterated a request that the court temporarily pause the law from taking effect to push back that deadline, saying it would “simply buy everybody a little breathing space.” It might be a “different world” for TikTok after Jan. 20, he added.

But there was scant focus by the justices on that idea, suggesting that they did not take it seriously. Mr. Trump’s brief requesting that the court punt the issue past the end of President Biden’s term so he could handle it — signed by his pick to be the next solicitor general, D. John Sauer — was long on rhetoric extolling Mr. Trump, but short on substance.

Business

'We will not be closing.' Amid the fires, employers and employees walk a fine line between work and safety

Published

3 hours ago

January 12, 2025

Press Room

'We will not be closing.' Amid the fires, employers and employees walk a fine line between work and safety

When Brigitte Tran arrived Wednesday morning at the Rodeo Drive boutique where she works as a sales associate, she was on edge.

Smoke from multiple wildfires raging across Los Angeles County billowed overhead. The luxury shopping corridor usually bustling with tourists appeared a ghost town.

Tran’s co-worker texted their boss to let her know neighboring stores had closed, and described the acrid smoke in the air. But the woman, at home in Orange County, did not seem to grasp their concerns. “We will not be closing unless the mall instructs us to close,” she replied.

Tran, who, fearing professional repercussions, asked that her place of work not be named, grew more anxious as the hours ticked by. Around 3 p.m., she and the two other employees working that day mutinied. They packed up, told the security guard to head home, and locked the doors a few hours before closing time.

As the wildfires have raged across Los Angeles County, choking the air, closing schools and forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate, employers and employees alike have had to manage a difficult balancing act between work and well being. Some employers responded swiftly to the crisis, shutting down offices and shifting to remote work, providing outdoor workers with masks and other protective equipment, and offering support for employees forced to evacuate. Others have been less adept, clumsy in their communications or wholly unmoved by worker concerns — sparking anger among their ranks as a result.

The fires have underscored the need for companies to have a clear plan in place to respond to emergencies, said Jonathan Porter, a meteorologist at private weather forecaster AccuWeather. The obligation, he said, goes beyond monitoring whether an office is in an evacuation zone. For example, as the current devastation unfolds, businesses should be aware of the “copious amounts of dangerous smoke that’s wafting into the air” and be prepared to provide outdoor workers with quality respirators or move them away from polluted air.

Some employers gave employees flexibility. Snap, the Santa Monica-based creator of the photo messaging app Snapchat, for example, kept its offices open on Wednesday but encouraged employees to work remotely, said a company spokesperson.

Others changed course after fielding criticism.

An announcement by UCLA that the campus would remain open for classes and regular operations on Wednesday drew anger from some instructors and students on social media.

Victor Narro, project director for the UCLA Labor Center and a lecturer on campus, said in a post on X he would ignore UCLA’s mandate and hold an optional class online.

“Students have been up all night panicked about sleeping through evacuation orders, winds still high, branches falling all over Westwood, power outages across city, & our new chancellor (on his 2nd day) thought this should be his first bold call…” wrote Nour Joudah, an assistant professor in UCLA’s Asian American Studies Department, in another X post.

That evening, UCLA changed course as conditions worsened, announcing it would close campus.

On Saturday, UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk released a statement saying classes would be held remotely for at least another week and campus operations would be curtailed. “We ask for continued flexibility and understanding as we all work through these difficult times,” Frenk wrote.

But for many workers, the chaos of the last few dayshas left them feeling like they are fending for themselves.

Tim Hernandez, a driver with Amazon Flex, an on-demand Uber-like program in which people use their own cars to deliver packages, was assigned a route Tuesday along the Pacific Coast Highway toward Malibu, which was rife with closures.

When he questioned whether making the delivery was safe, he said dispatchers at a Amazon facility in Camarillo brushed him off, leaving him to choose between concerns for his safety and worries that his rating in the Flex app would be hurt if he refused to go. He decided to try to make the deliveries, battling gusts of wind that knocked him over at one point. He lost cell signal, however, and was forced to return to the warehouse without completing the vast majority.

And when he arrived for his shift Tuesday, Alfred Muñoz, 43, an Amazon delivery driver who works out of a warehouse in the City of Industry, said he was handed an N95 mask but given little other instruction.

“It was just kind of business as usual,” Muñoz said.

High package counts and the number of stops on his assigned routes this week have made work even more difficult. On Tuesday, with wind gusts whipping debris around making it difficult to see, he had about 180 stops and 290 packages to deliver. On Thursday, the air thick with smoke and ash, he had more than 300 packages.

He woke up Thursday morning with a bloody nose and a sooty black crust in the corners of his eyes.

In response to a request for comment, Montana MacLachlan, an Amazon spokesperson, said the company was “closely monitoring the wildfires across Southern California and adjusting our operations to keep our employees and those delivering for us safe.”

“If a driver arrives at a delivery location and the conditions are not safe to make a delivery, they are not expected to do so and the driver’s performance will not be impacted,” she said.

At the Brentwood location of popular Italian eatery Jon & Vinny’s, staff complained of headaches and sore throats in a text message group chat. An employee, who asked not to be named fearing retaliation at work, said that on Tuesday, staff huddled around an iPad with a fire map pulled up to keep an eye on the expanding evacuation zone. From the front of the restaurant, they could see the glow of the Palisades fire.

The employee said they were frustrated management kept the restaurant open when the perimeter of the mandatory evacuation zone was just two blocks away. On Wednesday, every server scheduled to work called in to say they were not coming, the employee said.

A spokesperson for Joint Venture Restaurant Group, which owns Jon & Vinny’s, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

During natural disasters and extreme weather, employers’ choices can sometimes mean life or death, said David Michaels, a professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health and a former assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

He pointed to recent floods from Hurricane Helene that killed several workers at a plastics manufacturer. The tragedy has drawn scrutiny from state investigators, and a wrongful death lawsuit accuses the company of requiring employees to stay on site amid flooding after they requested permission to leave.

“It’s incumbent on employers to ensure the safety of their workers,” Michaels said. “The safety of their employees must take precedence over business concerns.”

Yasha Timenovich, 48, a driver for rideshare app Lyft and food delivery platform DoorDash, is more worried about declining earnings than on-the-job safety. With many restaurants and other businesses closed and would-be customers fleeing the city, he said that rides and deliveries have been slow. Traffic patterns have been strange and unpredictable with families piling into vehicles to flee fires.

Timenovich, who faced an order to evacuate his Hollywood apartment with his fiance and 6-year-old daughter Wednesday night, said he planned to stay with relatives for a few days in San Luis Obispo, where he hopes business will be better.

“I’m going to get out of here because it’s too crazy with these fires,” Timenovich said.

Business

Scott Bessent, Trump’s Billionaire Treasury Pick, Will Shed Assets to Avoid Conflicts

Published

10 hours ago

January 11, 2025

Press Room

Scott Bessent, Trump’s Billionaire Treasury Pick, Will Shed Assets to Avoid Conflicts

Scott Bessent, the billionaire hedge fund manager whom President-elect Donald J. Trump picked to be his Treasury secretary, plans to divest from dozens of funds, trusts and investments in preparation to become the nation’s top economic policymaker.

Those plans were released on Saturday along with the publication of an ethics agreement and financial disclosures that Mr. Bessent submitted ahead of his Senate confirmation hearing next Thursday.

The documents show the extent of the wealth of Mr. Bessent, whose assets and investments appear to be worth in excess of $700 million. Mr. Bessent was formerly the top investor for the billionaire liberal philanthropist George Soros and has been a major Republican donor and adviser to Mr. Trump.

If confirmed as Treasury secretary, Mr. Bessent, 62, will steer Mr. Trump’s economic agenda of cutting taxes, rolling back regulations and imposing tariffs as he seeks to renegotiate trade deals. He will also play a central role in the Trump administration’s expected embrace of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

Although Mr. Trump won the election by appealing to working-class voters who have been dogged by high prices, he has turned to wealthy Wall Street investors such as Mr. Bessent and Howard Lutnick, a billionaire banker whom he tapped to be commerce secretary, to lead his economic team. Linda McMahon, another billionaire, has been picked as education secretary, and Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is leading an unofficial agency known as the Department of Government Efficiency.

In a letter to the Treasury Department’s ethics office, Mr. Bessent outlined the steps he would take to “avoid any actual or apparent conflict of interest in the event that I am confirmed for the position of secretary of the Department of Treasury.”

Mr. Bessent said he would shutter Key Square Capital Management, the investment firm that he founded, and resign from his Bessent-Freeman Family Foundation and from Rockefeller University, where he has been chairman of the investment committee.

The financial disclosure form, which provides ranges for the value of his assets, reveals that Mr. Bessent owns as much as $25 million of farmland in North Dakota, which earns an income from soybean and corn production. He also owns a property in the Bahamas that is worth as much as $25 million. Last November, Mr. Bessent put his historic pink mansion in Charleston, S.C., on the market for $22.5 million.

Mr. Bessent is selling several investments that could pose potential conflicts of interest including a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund; an account that trades the renminbi, China’s currency; and his stake in All Seasons, a conservative publisher. He also has a margin loan, or line of credit, with Goldman Sachs of more than $50 million.

As an investor, Mr. Bessent has long wagered on the rising strength of the dollar and has betted against, or “shorted,” the renminbi, according to a person familiar with Mr. Bessent’s strategy who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss his portfolio. Mr. Bessent gained notoriety in the 1990s by betting against the British pound and earning his firm, Soros Fund Management, $1 billion. He also made a high-profile bet against the Japanese yen.

Mr. Bessent, who will be overseeing the U.S. Treasury market, holds over $100 million in Treasury bills.

Cabinet officials are required to divest certain holdings and investments to avoid the potential for conflicts of interest. Although this can be an onerous process, it has some potential tax benefits.

The tax code contains a provision that allows securities to be sold and the capital gains tax on such sales deferred if the full proceeds are used to buy Treasury securities and certain money-market funds. The tax continues to be deferred until the securities or money-market funds are sold.

Even while adhering to the ethics guidelines, questions about conflicts of interest can still emerge.

Mr. Trump’s Treasury secretary during his first term, Steven Mnuchin, divested from his Hollywood film production company after joining the administration. However, as he was negotiating a trade deal in 2018 with China — an important market for the U.S. film industry — ethics watchdogs raised questions about whether Mr. Mnuchin had conflicts because he had sold his interest in the company to his wife.

Mr. Bessent was chosen for the Treasury after an internal tussle among Mr. Trump’s aides over the job. Mr. Lutnick, Mr. Trump’s transition team co-chair and the chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, made a late pitch to secure the Treasury secretary role for himself before Mr. Trump picked him to be Commerce secretary.

During that fight, which spilled into view, critics of Mr. Bessent circulated documents disparaging his performance as a hedge fund manager.

Mr. Bessent’s most recent hedge fund, Key Square Capital, launched to much fanfare in 2016, garnering $4.5 billion in investor money, including $2 billion from Mr. Soros, but manages much less now. A fund he ran in the early 2000s had a similarly unremarkable performance.