What J D Wetherspoon understands about the British pub

Wetherspoon has also kept up with changing tastes. Since 2000 bar sales have fallen from 76% to 57% of total revenue. Food has gone from 18% to 38%

J d Wetherspoon is one of Britain’s most popular pub chains. And with its solid, grained woodwork the Oxted Inn, in Surrey, is a typical Wetherspoon’s pub. Even at lunchtime on a recent Monday it pulls in a crowd: pensioners enjoying an early pint and parents dragged in for a Pepsi. Like most “Spoons”, it leans into local history. Above the bar is a row of clocks, each set to the time of a different world city: Oxted sits on the Greenwich meridian.

The pub is among Britain’s most successful cultural exports. British-style boozers can be found from New York to Mumbai.(Reuters)

The pub is among Britain’s most successful cultural exports. British-style boozers can be found from New York to Mumbai. Tourists cross oceans to visit an authentic British pub. What that means is not obvious. Country pubs, sports bars, gastropubs and microbreweries each have their own take on what it is to be a pub—from dingy bars to overpriced restaurants.

Nor is Britain the boozer’s paradise it once was. In the Middle Ages alehouses were so abundant that one Anglo-Saxon king sought to place a limit on the number any one village could have. By 1870 Britain had some 115,000 pubs. But last year that number had fallen to 45,000, a new low. Rising costs, changing tastes and the covid-19 pandemic have accelerated closures.

No venue is immune to these pressures, not even J D Wetherspoon. In its preliminary earnings announcement on October 3rd it said that its energy bill was up by 58% over 2019; wage costs had risen by 35%. And since its 2015 peak, when it owned 955 pubs, it has closed more than 160. “We had a tactical retreat,” says Tim Martin, the chain’s founder and chairman.

Now it is back on the offensive. Since 2015 sales per pub are up by more than 50%. With 794 pubs, it is Britain’s ninth-biggest chain. Last year it was one of only three with revenues of over £2bn ($2.7bn); the other two, Greene King and Mitchells & Butlers, own more than 3,600 pubs between them. And after posting record sales of £2.12bn in 2025, it plans to open 20 new pubs by the end of the financial year.

Spoons owes much of this success to Mr Martin’s economic populism. Across Britain the average price of a pint has increased from £0.46 since the firm opened its first pub in 1979 (or £2.30 in today’s prices) to £5.17. But even in London, where prices often approach £7, Wetherspoon will sell you a pint for as little as £2.10.

High-end gastropubs can pass on rising costs to wealthy customers. Value chains like Wetherspoon, with their economies of scale, can keep prices down. Your average pub is caught in the middle. Some accuse the chains of undercutting them.

Wetherspoon has also kept up with changing tastes. Since 2000 bar sales have fallen from 76% to 57% of total revenue. Food has gone from 18% to 38%. And free refills have made coffee and tea the top two sellers. “At one point, we were the biggest coffee shop in the country!” Mr Martin says. As for draughts, Pepsi sells most.

Many see Wetherspoon as a mere bargain boozer. Its image was not helped by Mr Martin’s foray into politics. He donated £200,000 to the Vote Leave campaign and spoke publicly in favour of Brexit in the run-up to the 2016 referendum. Wetherspoon adopted pro-Leave beer mats and in 2019 removed several European drinks from its menu. Jägerbombs briefly became “Brexit bombs”. This dented the chain’s popularity among liberal, middle-class types. “I’m a secret fan,” says one Spoons lover. “You have to keep it under your hat because of their reputation.”

Yet Spoons is often ahead of the times. The chain pioneered non-smoking areas before these were mandated. It had on-app table service three years before the pandemic made such things banal. And it is always quick to exploit a fad, be it smashed avocado or flavoured gin. “I used to be a surfer,” says Mr Martin. “If a wave comes along you’re happy to jump on it.”

Wetherspoon strikes a delicate balance between trendiness and tradition. Many of its pubs are housed in grand old buildings, with grandfatherly objects adorning the walls and, on the floor, a bespoke carpet designed to reflect the history of the area. This would have pleased George Orwell, whose 1946 essay on the qualities of the perfect pub demands that they be “uncompromisingly Victorian” in their design. “Orwell wasn’t stupid,” says Mr Martin. “He distilled the essence of the British pub.”

Michael Erridge of MBE Pub Consultants points to what he calls Spoons’ “ruthless consistency”. Every Wetherspoon’s pub has the same decor, the same cheap and cheerful menu. Wherever the venue, “it’s all very familiar,” says Mr Erridge.

Spoons and Moons

The balance between character and conformity sets Spoons apart. The dinner plates and menus may be the same but the plaques on local history are unique. As are the carpets, which have their own appreciation society. In Maltby, a former mining town, the carpet is a combination of pit ponies, mining equipment and motifs of the molecular structure of coal. In Durham the carpet’s many worm-like creatures are a reference to the Lambton Worm, a local legend about a giant worm that terrorises nearby villages. Each pub is a corporate approximation of “the local”.

This idealised species of pub is a family gathering place. Go at 8pm on a Saturday, and a Wetherspoon may edge towards the boozing-shop end of the spectrum. But during the week gossiping grandparents, grandchildren and pram-pushing mothers make up much of the clientele.

Orwell’s utopian pub, “The Moon Under Water”, did not actually exist when he wrote his treatise. It does now. Several Wetherspoons bear that name.

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