Wetherspoon announced it was selling off 11 of its sites around the UK – including The Sir Norman Rae in Shipley – in September last year
Wetherspoon will be closing yet another one of its pubs this weekend.
The Sir Norman Rae Wetherspoon branch on Market Street in Shipley, West Yorkshire, will call last orders today (March 24) after finding a buyer. The pub chain announced it was selling off 11 of its sites around the UK – including The Sir Norman Rae – in September last year. The announcement came one year after the company put 32 pubs up for sale, many of which have now closed.
At the time of the announcement, Wetherspoon said the decision to put the boozer up for sale was a “commercial” one and that it understood customers and staff would be “disappointed” with the news. It later confirmed the official closure date after the sale had been completed. The pub chain has not disclosed who it has sold the branch to and whether it will remain as a pub.
A Wetherspoon spokesperson said: “The final trading day for The Sir Norman Rae is March 24. It is a pub that Wetherspoon put on the market a while back and it has now exchanged to sell it. We won’t disclose who it has been sold to. Wetherspoon does, on occasion, sell some pubs and this is the case here.” The Wetherspoon spokesperson also confirmed to The Mirror that staff working at the venue would not be made redundant and have been offered roles at another Spoons within the region.
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Wetherspoon has repeatedly disputed the suggestion that the move to sell the pubs was down to difficult trading conditions. In its January 2024 trading update, the pub chain said it had 814 across the UK and in the year leading to January 21, it had opened two pubs at London’s Heathrow airport and at London Euston railway station.
In the same period, it said it had sold five pubs and eight leasehold pubs have either been surrendered to the landlord or subletted. Wetherspoon said these disposals and surrenders resulted in a cash inflow of £3.8million. In a statement released alongside the update, Wetherspoon chairman Tim Martin said the pub chain expects its finances to be in line with market expectations and the main hurdles they face are increased labour costs as well as high VAT.
He added: “Wetherspoon, like the hospitality industry, has seen a consistent but slow recovery, following the pandemic. Although inflation is, in general, reducing, labour and energy costs are far higher than pre-pandemic. A main issue for the pub trade is that labour costs are around 30% of sales, compared to around 10% for supermarkets.
“The price of a pint in a supermarket is about £1, so a 10% increase in labour costs (which are around 10 pence per pint) necessitates a one pence increase in the selling price to cover costs. However, for pubs, the average selling price of a pint is around £4.50. The labour per pint is therefore around £1.35 – 30% of £4.50 – necessitating a 13.5 pence increase in the selling price to cover extra costs.
“The inevitable consequence is that increased labour costs raise the differential in prices between the hospitality industry and supermarkets. At the same time, pubs pay far higher VAT and business rates than supermarkets, further exacerbating the price disparity. In particular, pubs and restaurants pay 20% VAT in respect of food sales, whereas supermarkets pay almost nothing, a tax differential which is surely unfair.”
