The Pub Decline

When you travel around the German countryside....you tend to notice pubs and bars in every single German village.  Folks don't drive to some adjoining village to enjoy a beer or two....mostly over the fear of some alcohol check by the cops and the possible loss of a license.

If you live in a village of forty houses.....you likely have a pub.  A village of two hundred houses?  You might have two or three pubs or restaurants with a bar.

The German newspaper....Der Western....put up an interesting article today over the decline of pubs.  In particular.....in the Oberhausen area (up north, near the Dutch border).  Around thirty-five pubs have shut down this year (2013).

The decline is blamed on three issues.

First, Sky TV....the satellite service that brings soccer games into pubs.....went up in cost.  If you ran a pub of any degree.....you typically had to have a big-screen TV in some corner, and ensure soccer was on during the evening hours.  If you simply did marginal business with a dozen guys on an average evening.....it just won't pay to open the bar, pay the satellite cost, and make this a living.

Second, the smoking ban has irritated a lot of folks.  Once you get forced into walking outside and smoking there.....you ask yourself why stay for a second drink.  So you go on home after only one drink.  Bar owners have commented on this and noted that once a guy steps outside.....he's just not likely to come back.  The guy who used to drink three or four beers?  Gone, for the most part.

Third, taxes and operational cost make pubs a marginal business.  You just won't get rich off the business like you would have in the 1960s or 1970s.  It's mostly a break-even type atmosphere today....enough income to keep the place afloat, bill the utility bills, and maybe take a weekend trip once a year off the profits.  Why bother running a business when you can't get ahead?

In my village, there's basically two restaurants left running that operate a small bar area.  We used to have one full-up pub.....but things declined over the years and a couple of years ago, they shut down the operation.  In a village of four hundred homes.....there just isn't that much interest in pubs.  Guys got their satellite TV fixed up.....put up a big-screen TV in the basement room, tossed in a refrigerator, and have their own mini-pub set up for friends and neighbors to come over.

Things are changing.....sadly.