Chris Maclean: Wetherspoon's dirty war

26 July, 2007

I’ve just walked past Wetherspoon's and noticed it has their poster up headed “Deal or No Deal” and listing the comparative prices of three local pubs in town against its own. The good news is that I’ve made it. The Railway Hotel is now officially seen by the management of Wetherspoon's as competition. Should they have reason to be scared? I don’t know. It certainly looks like they have lost custom since the smoking ban but I don’t know if we can be perceived as a threat.

Still, the list of quoted prices is interesting. At least 75 per cent of my quoted prices are wrong, stating we are more expensive than we really are. Seemingly a skulking manager has secretly visited my pub and taken down the details. He must be hideously inept to get so many wrong. It isn’t as though I'm hiding the price list. It’s on the wall on the customer side of the bar.

But what is really offensive, at a time when all licensees are under attack from legislative changes and zealous council officials, is that Wetherspoon chooses this style of marketing. Politicians learnt years ago that if all of them kept slinging mud at each other the only thing the electorate would see is muddy politicians. What does Wetherspoon hope to achieve?

Last week Wetherspoon's ran out of CO2 gas and asked to borrow some. In a gesture of neighbourliness I lent them a bottle. I don’t think that will happen again in future.

So how do I respond?

Wetherspoon’s campaign is called “Deal or No Deal”.

The Railway Hotel’s new campaign is called “Fight or No Fight”. We are going to list the number of times the police are called to incidents in pubs in this town and compare them.

Yes, we are more expensive.

But you are less likely to witness a drunken disturbance accompanied by blue flashing lights.

It’s a dirty campaign and I feel sullied to be dragged into it.

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