We can WE do?

Enjoyable night out yesterday around London’s Shepherd’s Market (between Hyde Pk Corner & Green Pk tubes) with my pal, Richard.  He works for a pub operator, being area manager for a few (usually trendy) juicers.  He got to talking about his day, moaning he’d actually been required to do some work for a change and visited a couple of “dull” performing pubs near Muswell Hill.

His aim was to somehow invigorate the owners, by all accounts verging on clapped-out, to pull in more business.  He started off with one by trying to involve him, saying “any ideas for pulling in more trade?”.  And the answers were uselss; quiz night, race night, karaoke.

So Rich changed tack.  He explained putting his hand in pocket for cash to help was an option, if decent ideas were forthcoming, so “what can WE do to get more sales?”.  And he continued to emphasise the “we”.

It was then suggested ‘ask the bar staff?’.  Although notoriously dis-interested in anything other than their knocking-off time, one of them mentioned she was a singer in a band, and she’d always considered the bar a potentially decent venue.

Latching on to this, knowledgeable of the resurgent live music scene in London, Rich wondered what the others thought. They all liked the idea.  One snag though, he explained, we’d need to spruce the place up a bit.  Rich knew this was always near-impossible to get a bar’s staff to do, as the spec required was a trauma of an unpopular job.  But what do you know?  They willingly volunteered to get involved and so a pub will hopefully soon get a new lease of life.

Amazing what you can ‘sell’ when involving people….