03/12/2025
This really is sadly so true, everyone wants to pay good wages, but when everything goes up for a small business it’s huge, lots of businesses just can’t continue to accommodate. 🥲
A little honesty from your local pub… because apparently we’re all meant to stay quiet. 🤫
When we opened in 2018, minimum wage for 21-25 year olds was £7.38.
We’ve always tried to pay above that because we actually value our staff (wild concept, I know).
From April it jumps to £12.81. That’s a 73.5% increase in 7 years!
Now listen… we want people to earn a good wage. But maybe someone in charge should explain how small businesses are meant to afford it while:
• suppliers go up
• tax thresholds are frozen
• NI goes up
• beer duty will no doubt go up
• and business rates “relief” is ending (translation: they’re going up too)
Meanwhile the headlines are:
“Minimum wage goes up again to help with cost of living!”
But the reality for pubs like us is:
“Costs rise faster than we can pour a pint and thousands of small businesses are barely hanging on.”
You might’ve noticed the bar has been colder recently…
Yes, we’re now at the stage of saying “bring a jumper” because putting the heating on could flatten us.
This is the level of chaos we’re working with.
If this sparks debate …good.
Silence doesn’t help small businesses, and we’re done pretending everything’s fine when it isn’t.
To our customers: you lot keep this place alive.
We’re not going anywhere, and we’ll keep fighting, pint in hand, obviously. 🍻🔥