Struggling pubs reel from rising business rates, wages and energy bills, with customers at limit of what they will pay
N
ick Evans is staring in vain at columns of numbers, trying to make them add up to a profit. He is a co-owner of the Old Crown Coaching Inn in Faringdon, Oxfordshire, a pub and hotel whose rich history is etched into its crooked wooden beams and cosy snugs.
Oliver Cromwell stayed here in 1645. A room believed to have been used by the notoriously severe “hanging judge” Lord Jeffreys to condemn rebels now stages happier encounters: it is the honeymoon suite.
As a former City trader, Evans is no stranger to profit. But this is hospitality, a sector that has known nothing but sucker punches since the onset of Covid-19.
