The catering industry has been struggling in the last few years, fewer people are willing to go out and spend money on eating out because they are trying to save money and not be frivolous when they need the money for their food at home. This is having a massive impact upon the hotel industry too; the weekend away is not as popular because the public don’t have the ready cash to spend in such an indulgent way. However, the one strange success story is the restaurant with rooms concept somewhere between a high end restaurant and a hotel but it is a lot less formal.  They are springing up over the countryside and even in some town centres and are picking up a fair amount of trade.

Many of these restaurants are more expensive than your average high street restaurant but they are not in the level of the top end restaurants so they are filling a gap in the market for those who will save up to treat themselves occasionally but don’t want to completely break the bank in the process. This middle of the road without serving middle of the road has got people excited about eating out and staying out again.

They are predominantly restaurant spaces and there is a lot of focus on the food and atmosphere with the rooms being warm and country house chic rather than big hotel style. Everything is the right side of grand and the right side of familiar and this seems to be a combination that people are finding irresistible. The recession has created a whole new market that will provide businesses with a whole new opportunity to add some quality rooms to their services and become one of the new restaurants with rooms.

The government is still hell bent on cracking down on the excessive drinking culture of the UK, they have upped prices and launched campaigns demonstrating the negative side effects of drinking. To their dismay it seems to have had no impact upon the public’s desire to drink and their increasingly hard line tactics are making no difference at all, in fact they are continuing to be ignored by an alarming amount of the population. This is alongside the continuing problem of pubs closing daily and it begs the question where can a happy medium be reached between encouraging moderate drinking and yet not contributing to the closure of so many village pubs.

There are so many mixed messages about alcohol consumption that many people just choose to ignore the advice completely. The number of units just seems to be decreasing and the effects of the alcohol seem to be getting worse, even though nothing has changed. Bombarding people with information to scare them is definitely not the way to try and encourage people to be healthy.

One obvious solution to this problem is to look at the alternative drinks that pubs have to offer, there is a serious gap in the market for a good quality non alcoholic drink that does not break the bank. Many of the drinks that pubs offer are the same price as the alcoholic drinks, where it used to be cheaper to drink a coke or lemonade it is now the same price which does not encourage people to choose these drinks. Plus drinking caffeinated drinks all night can make the drinker feel just as bad in the morning as if they were drinking alcohol which puts many off. Then there are the fruity bottled drinks that are just full of sugar not exactly what many people want to drink if they are trying to be healthier. Maybe it is time for the landlords to have a good look around and find their non alcohol drinkers something good to drink which does not cost the earth and is not packed full of sugar and caffeine to compensate for the lack of alcohol.