BII Membership Survey Results

Dear ,

Last week we asked you, our members, to contribute your experiences to our second survey during the closure period of your businesses. We are sharing this with you, our members, first before we deliver the results to the wider industry.

Your collective voice allows us to present all of the challenges that you face, the concerns you have and the reality of your individual situations, to Government.

As part of the Taskforce working on the reopening of our sector, we needed to get an understanding of the issues you are facing, to enable us to use that information to ask for the right support from Government, as well as tailor the help and guidance we at the BII can offer you.

Your response has been fantastic, and it has highlighted that whilst there are several key areas of shared concern across our diverse membership, there will be no one-size-fits-all approach to the safe reopening of your pubs.

The report can be seen by clicking on the link at the bottom of this email and covers not only the statistical findings from the survey, but also your questions around the clarity you need from Government, as well as some of the ideas that you are already thinking about to instil confidence in your staff and customers.

Dependent on your own situations, many of you are concerned about the relationship that you will have with your local authorities going forward. Will you get support to help you safely reopen, or will there be lots of red tape to cut through, impacting on your profitability?

Other concerns centre on how best to deal with customers who may not be adhering to the social distancing rules, what will be "recommended vs required" from Government for you to reopen, and how you can keep your pub atmosphere appealing whilst keeping everyone as safe as possible.

We have also recently shared the draft protocols that were sent to Government for their consideration - if you missed those, there is a link to them at the bottom of this email again. It is our belief that Government will be sharing the final guidelines in the next week or so, and as soon as we have the official release of those, we will of course share them with you at the earliest opportunity. We will do all we can to help you understand and tackle what will be required.

In addition to ensuring we have heard your voices, we wanted to give you access to the voices of the people who will shortly be returning to your pubs - your customers.

We have undertaken an in depth study in association with KAM Media, which interviewed over 1000 consumers, asking about their plans, concerns and behaviours when hospitality reopens.

Every pub is different, so you will be able to see results from many types of customers, across a wide range of demographics. Our hope is that this report will assist you in producing clear, actionable and tailored plans to instil consumer confidence.

We will be sharing the report in full with you on Monday 8th June, so please look out for further information early next week.

As we undertook this research to be of benefit to you, our members, this report will only be able to be accessed by logging into your online account.

The final question in our survey touched on what you feel you need help with going forward, and requirements for further support.

A continuation of our calls for support from Government was high on the list, in particular for those of you who are not currently eligible for a grant. You also want clarity in terms of the expectations on you to protect your customers and staff, as well as a solid timeline set out for reopening your businesses.

Rent debt was another area that concerned you, in particular 66% of you had no plan in place for how and when your debt would need to be repaid, making it very difficult to plan for the future of your businesses.

We also had a lot of comments on how appreciative you have been of the support, information and guidance that the BII has provided over these last months. We exist to support you, so those comments have been hugely valuable to pass on to the whole team here at the BII who have been working hard for you, our members.

We will continue to support you with clear, actionable information and practical advice to ensure we can all get back to the Great British Pub as soon as possible.

Steven Alton
BII CEO