Falling out of Like with Wetherspoons?

The Wetherspoons 'Beer Festival' which is currently running has a lot going for it.

There's a reasonable mix of beers from all over the country (including the usual 'International' offerings which are all actually what the Yanks call 'domestic' but we'll gloss over that) and a fair range of styles from which to choose.

Having sourced both Vienna- and Märzen-style lagers on cask would seem particularly daring for Spoons, and indeed both are worth seeking out (more on why that may be less easy than it sounds in a bit!)

 

30 of the best-ish

Other highlights for me so far have included Leeds brewery Eva, a 5.5% ABV West Coast IPA that brings together sweetshop, florist and greengrocer rather elegantly.

Then there's Black Sheep Blossom, a Cherry Oatmeal stout at 6% from a brewery that I don't normally rate, but this is big and roasty with bags of fruit.

Some beers

Of the faux-International beers, the Hook Norton-Land & Sea collaboration Estuary has been my favourite - a pleasant, hoppy golden ale, though I'd be lying if I said it tasted of Vancouver. Not that I know what Vancouver tastes of, but it's probably not Oxfordshire!

Anyway, all 30 beers are either completely new, or so uncommon that they'll be new to almost everyone. I've heard a couple of people in the beer ticking community mention that they 'only' needed 29 out of 30, but they ere the exception!

And it's Wetherspoons, so pints cost about half what they would in other pubs in the same area.

(Incidentally, they're making a feature of the fact that every beer this time has been devised and/or brewed by women brewers. Personally I think the greatest testament to the strides towards equality made in the brewing industry is that if you hadn't been told this, there's no way you'd ever know; It's 30 largely non-gimmicky beers, covering a range of styles, that will stand or fall on their own merits regardless of who made them.)

All good, no? Well...

 

So why the fuck am I in a bad mood?

I've been doing the bulk of my drinking in various Spoons pubs over the past week, and while I've been enjoying the festival ales and, to some extent, the search for them, I've noticed something profoundly dispiriting:

Almost no other cunt gives a fuck about it.

Remove the pile of leaflets, the modest bunting and the festival branding on the pumpclips and there would be no indication that any kind of 'festival' is taking place. Look around. People-watch. What do you see? Just ordinary Wethercustomers, drinking their usual mainstream keg lagers or cocktail pitchers or unlimited coffee refills, almost oblivious to the fact that an event is even supposed to be taking place.

I noticed a very large group come into a branch last night. Making a special visit for the festival brews? Nope, just soft drinks and bad food.

You see, for most customers - and indeed staff - it's largely irrelevant.  It's not their thing. And this is, of course, why Spoons Bingo isn't a proper beer festival, and feels less like one every time.

Back in the day...

Go to a real beerfest and virtually everybody is there for the beer - sure, you might see a few hangers-on having a soft drink because they have to drive their spouse home, there'll always be cider drinkers, and some saps might avail themselves of a Gin or Prosecco bar when such options are available. But the vast majority of attendees are going to be beer enthusiasts who want to sample a good range of unusual brews.

This is true when it's a local CAMRA branch festival in a village hall, or something in a marquee out the back of a pub. But it's not the case in most Spoons branches, some of which appear to be barely participating. They've put out a few leaflets and the guest beers come from a different range, and that's it. 

This wasn't the case 30+ years ago, when the Wetherspoons customer base was closer to their original target market and the chain was confined to the London area. Back then every festival was an event. Customers talked about the beers excitedly - or at least, as excitedly as a Spoons customer can talk about anything - and the staff went around offering tasters, in fancy dress to fit the theme of the festival (Halloween, Ye Olde England or whatever). There was special food on offer and promotional t-shirts, glasses and cigarette lighters. It was 'a thing'.

Even relatively recently there was a period when the festivals offered 50 ales, because bigger is better and, crucially, enough punters were still interested. And even after the reduction to 30 many pubs would set up dedicated stillage and offer all the beers at once - but I guess there needs to be the demand to do this, which is why it no longer happens, at least not in any of the pubs I've been to recently.

When the chain celebrated its 40th birthday in 2019, I made the point that Wetherspoons was a mix of the good, the bad and the indifferent, but on the whole a force for good. Now I feel that this balance may be slowly shifting, that customers like me matter less and less to the company, and that the heyday probably isn't coming back any time soon, if ever.  

The beer festival has been reduced to a sideshow for enthusiasts, and if they were cancelled altogether I don't imagine they'd affect Spoons bottom line particularly. It was set up for people like me, but nowadays I suspect the beer-ticking caskophile is an inconvenient outlier amongst customers.

 

Shut the fuck down

Another major concern is the lack of pubs. No, really. 

It takes an absolute minimum of 40 minutes for me to get to my nearest Spoons (technically others are nearer as the crow flies but would take longer to reach) and from there it's another 25 minutes or so to reach another one.

Not a Spoons any more

Eight of the ten nearest branches to where I live have closed, meaning that it takes a lot more time and planning to do multiple visits, not to mention the associated travel expenses. When there were four Spoons in the centre of Croydon, the chances of picking up lots of beers on foot were far greater than they are now with just one pub in the area. 

Whereas most 'beer communicators' tend to be fairly disparaging about the company, I've always been relatively pro-Spoons in comparison. To the extent that I consider the loss of a branch a bad thing, and the loss of so many local-ish branches is genuinely upsetting.

OK, I know they're still not exactly short on the ground, but the days of clusters of Spoons within walking distance of one another are gone, apart from in the biggest city centres. 

To get a certain festival beer sometimes requires a bit of effort. Which would be all well and good if they made it easy. However...

 

The pursuit of Appiness

Finally I need to talk about the Wetherspoons App, which I feel really lets them down. 

Using it to order stuff to your table is mostly OK - though be wary when ordering two or more different ales, as the person who brings it to your table may not know which is which! - but if there are any issues you can settle them in person because you are already on the premises. 

No, the real problem is this:

When a pub permanently closes, it disappears immediately from the App. Fine. When mushy peas are off the menu, they appear greyed out. Fine. 

So why oh why oh why, when a pub is temporarily closed, due to a refurbishment or an emergency does the App show it to be open for business as usual?!?

Surely it's just a simple flag, no? A single bit that can be switched from 1 to 0 when a pub isn't currently open that lets the user know it won't be worth their while attempting to visit? But, no. Apparently not. 

This isn't an excusable one-off. It's happened to me six fucking times in the time the App has been a thing. That's literally six times I've gone to a pub, either to tick the pub off, or in search of a specific advertised beer, only to find the doors closed. And me being me, I might have journeyed many miles to be met with this disappointment.

A couple of years ago it happened in Mold, North Wales, and because it was the last pub on the itinerary before returning home, I had to arrange a further trip back to same area just to get the bastard job done! (The other places where this has happened were Shrewsbury, Kings Lynn, Penge, Streatham and Wallington - yesterday!)

What happens far more frequently is that I make a trip to a specific pub, that, according to the app, has a specific ale that I want. And when I get there, I find that this is not the case. 

I know. Boo hoo. Poor me. First world problems, tiny violin and so on. But the truth is that a £1.79 pint isn't so cheap if it necessitates a £7.90 train journey to get it, and it's even worse if that pint isn't still available when you get there. 

By far the worst offender in the app department has been the London and South Western, a relatively new branch in Clapham Junction. 

I have visited this pub exactly four times. Firstly a couple of days after it opened, to tick the place off and subsequently when attempting to complete various Wetherfestivals. On every one of these occasions, the beer advertised on the app was unavailable in real life. Chalk it up to bad luck? Really? Three times in a fucking row?

I get that one could argue that any app must logically be an improvement on the 'nothing' that went before, but that just isn’t true. In the absence of reliable information, one wouldn't typically make a 90 minute round trip at a cost of 8-10 quid on the off-chance that there might be a winning beer. But having been informed by the app that it might be worth ones while, one might.

You can go back to the mesolithic era and phone up everywhere before visiting, but then why have an app in the first place? So the gormless humanoid who answers the phone can say 'Umm, I don't know. Have you tried the app?!?'

Anyway, that's probably enough of me ranting about Spoons. I still need six beers out of the 30, following a few disappointing excursions, so I'd better start checking the app to see if I can track them down...

 

 

Wetherspoons Spring 2025 'beer festival' runs until Sunday March 16 (though in reality most beers are likely to be around for several days longer)