It is an awful shame about the Navigation. Seemingly, Danny and his partner tried everything they could to make a go out of it.
Who today would want to run a pub? With all the rents/rates/ties/overheads it is absolutely impossible to make even a modest living in 90% of pubs.
With Robinsons pubs it must be 99% of them. The ties are against you all the time. You have to buy virtually everything from them at their dictated price. It isn't their fault. It's just that, that's the way they have operated for 200 years and it has worked up until now but now there is so much competition from independent breweries these days and Robinson's brand is just too tired and too expensive. I'm sure the management at Robinsons know this - so it's not a revelation.
I drove through Hazel Grove last Friday at about 10 pm. There are a lot of pubs on the road mostly Robinsons. Those that weren't shut were empty. You could see through into them from dark to light.
There was one though, The Wetherspoons, it was absolutely full. In fact there were as many people outside it on the path as there were inside the pub itself. So somebody is doing something right.
