LOCKDOWN LOCK IN
LIVING IN A PUB DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC
ON the evening of January 4, England’s third lockdown began with the sound of last orders being called around the country.
Landlords and ladies everywhere escorted their regular punters out of the door and locked up behind them, uncertain when they will be able to reopen again.
For pubs in Hull and the East Riding, November 5 was the last time a pint was pulled due to the Government’s tier system preventing them from reopening after the November lockdown.
“It’s heartbreaking,” said Jasmin Minns, 25, who runs the Kings Head pub in Hedon with her partner Tom Croft, 41 . Without its atmosphere and routine, he said, a pub can be an “eerie” place to live.
“At the start, we were sort of pulling along and it was quiet and eerie,” said Jasmin. “It’s weird. We walk downstairs to go out of the pub to go for a walk and it just feels like you’re in a weird dream.
“I miss the customers. Ours is an oldworld type pub, so we don’t get the young ones in.
“You miss the regulars who come in every day, the older guys and the proper gents. It’s the banter and the social side of things, the laugh with the staff I miss.
“I’m used to walking down the stairs and saying ‘hi, are you alright?’ and having a laugh. It’s just not there. The atmosphere has gone. It’s horrible. It’s heartbreaking.”
As well as missing her punters, Jasmin is looking forward to working with her seven staff members again.
The team have managed to keep in touch over lockdown through social media group chats and reminiscing about working in the pub. But these are tough times for those on furlough and one member of staff has had to get another job to make ends meet.
“We’ve got a group chat we all keep on top off and it has been nice,” said Jasmin.
“Everybody has been reminiscing saying ‘I miss a customer saying this’ and ‘do you remember when this happened’ to keep the spirits high.
“They are all missing the pub and I feel sorry for them the most because it is tough for them.
“One has had to get a cleaning job because she is not getting enough. She was doing 30 hours a week to getting paid £58 a week.”
The Government has made efforts to help pubs during the coronavirus pandemic with grants to pay for rent and bills.
However, Jasmin admits that if she had not saved money from when the pub was open she would not still be running the place today.
“It has and it hasn’t helped,” said Jasmin. “The first lockdown it helped a lot to pay the bills.
“But come January we’ve got personal tax and other things to pay and if I didn’t save money from when we were open, I wouldn’t be here now.” To keep their minds occupied and to bring in some money during lockdown, Jasmin and Tom have come up with a solution.
With no one to serve inside the pub and alcohol just sitting in the pumps the pair have come up with a delivery service called Pouch to Couch for people in Hedon and the surrounding area.
“About four weeks ago we decided that we needed to do something,” said Jasmin. “We’ve got loads of stock just sat there and we thought what we could do to keep busy and keep our minds occupied. “Tom came up with an idea to sell them in pouches. It has hit off a storm.
“It’s going really well. We take orders through the week and we’d sell about 30 to 40 pouches of cocktails and the same for beer.
“On Valentine’s weekend it brought in about £800, but obviously compared to normal that’s nothing really.
“We would usually be taking £7,000 to £8,000 a week, so it’s like nothing, but it pays for the rent and that’s what we are doing it for, to keep busy and pay the rent.”
The Government has toyed with the idea of reopening hospitality venues for some time, but with coronavirus still looming it has been difficult to pinpoint an exact date.
Boris Johnson has instead come up with a roadmap, a phasing process to ease everybody out of restrictions and in some sense back to normality.
Schools must come first before the reopening of non-essential shops and after that it will be time to consider when Jasmin and every other landlord or landlady can unlock the doors and start serving customers again.
Pubs could reopen in May, but under what restrictions? Most pub owners, although eager to open, just want to go back to normal.
“It’s a tough question,” said Jasmin.
“Every pub owner will want to be open, but at the same time you want it to be safe.
“I would rather wait and open like normal without any restrictions because it is so tough policing it all. It is so frustrating and hard to police that.
“We would rather wait and open when everything is back to normal. I’d rather do that than go back to restrictions again.”
If I didn’t save money from when we were open, I wouldn’t be here now Jasmin Minns, of the Kings Head pub