Yes, they’re closing pubs over here, but how do you feel about them launching new pubs in cities like New York, Los Angeles and Miami over the next 12 – 18 months, despite the current economic climate?
Apparently they’re supposed to have a very similar menu to our ones, although localized beers and drinks.
Wetherspoon’s is hated on here and seen as a shitty pub, but do you think this is a brand experiment destined to go the way of New Coke?
29 comments
Doesn’t matter where it is, or what brand.
Folk will always want cheap food & cheap booze.
Wetherspoons is one of the few affordable places to drink and they generally have good local offerings. They’re incredibly popular here, though whether that will translate to a US market is a question for the Americans I dare say.
Fuck knows, if you had asked me 10 years ago would Pret work I would have said no then I went to NY and they seemed to be everywhere!
Might work. Using Reddit as a baseline for how much something is hated isn’t advisable. The internet is by nature a more negative side of ‘reality’. I don’t love or hate spoons, but one thing I can say is I rarely go in an empty one.
Where is it hated? I love spoons, cheap beer which is rarely shit, food that is quite edible and a decent table service.
Good luck to him
It’s more likely to work there than Tesco ever did. Cheap booze and food is generally a winning combo. Hope they enjoy the zebu burgers.
I thought when I got a job at wetherspoons it would confirm reddits hatred of the place for me but honestly it’s done the opposite I’ve felt much more looked after as an employee here than any other crappy job I’ve done just for the money. I can see them being seen as the bad guy for local pubs, but some of the critisms of the place seem ridiculous to me. Hope they do alright in America cos I hear they don’t really have a pub scene
Witherspoons definitely serves a purpose, always a good start point for a day/ evening drinking session, cheap beer and spirits, food maybe not great but it does the job. If its in decent location it will do fine
Reddit especially the UK subs hate everything. I wouldn’t use it as a baseline.
It is also a part of every healthy business to close premises that aren’t profitable and opening new ones in hope of gaining new ground. You’ll find the chain businesses do this all the time.
Wetherspoons closing pubs isn’t an overly worrying thing; as a company they’re not adverse to closing one’s that simplest aren’t working.
The Bodmin closure for example has been wanted by the company since about five minutes after Tim Martin demanded they opened it.
Not convinced they have the influence or brand success to make it in the states, however.
Wetherspoons is just the Greggs/Maccys of the pub world. It’s consistent, it’s cheap & it’s alright.
People go on about it’s killing the traditional pub, when a lot of the time that traditional pub is a load of shit and run by a bigger (albeit less rich) knobhead than Tim Martin…or/and under a greedy brewery.
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Similarly with Greggs “ohhh use the independent bakeries,” the two in my town are absolutely rank, use cheap produce and are overpriced as fuck. If a greggs was to move in tomorrow, I’d use them over the 2 independents.
Not so sure. They are going to need to stand out in a very competitive area. They also need to adapt for American market, don’t assume they can just carbon copy what works in Macclesfield to Miami.
For the record I can’t stand Wetherspoons
They love their low quality chain restaurants out there, it will do well.
The UK needs Spoons.
Living out in the States, I would say them doing a carbon copy of a British Spoon’s probably wouldn’t work. There’s tons of chains that are somewhat similar, but they focus more on the food side than the beer. The only way I’d see it working is if it played up the British theme. There really isn’t a British themed chain over here. In the city I live in there’s a small Irish chain with 3 pubs. They probably are the closest to a Spoons as they have the good mix of pub/restaurant feel.
My spoons is awesome. Great staff, lovely customers and a huge cheap array of food and drinks 💥
Old Rosie Scrumpy and 200 million firearms….
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Y’all never been to a shit ‘UK-style’ bar in a US university city. They gonna love this.
Bad. When they get noticed by big US companies, it will be taken over, just like with so many UK companies, and then they will change things and make things worse to increase their profits. Similar to what they did with Creme Eggs.
I love their pubs
There are a load of people in this country for whom spoons is the only place that they can afford to spend time inside with friends. You can get a pint for like £1.65 – which means (if you’re a slow drinker) you could spend an entire evening out socialising for a fiver. That might be less than the heating bill sitting at home.
Spoons is a national institution in my book, long may it continue.
I like spoons. It’s consistent and cheap. I see it as my go to fast food resteraunt but with alcoholic beverages although some are much better than others. My local go to one is great. Good luck to them
Less pub culture in US as you have to drive everywhere. Food based
Might work in a metro area/ busy city.
Don’t care whether a good or bad thing
There’s no mention of this anywhere else on the internet and the account that posted this was created today with no other posts anywhere else on Reddit
I don’t like Tim Martin but I love spoons. Saved a lot of beautiful buildings and always good value of course
They will be lucky to survive. The US restaurant business is fiercely competitive.
As an American lurker I would like to chime in, Wetherspoons fits the mid dining range, not fast food but not high end either. It would be in the same category as Applebee’s. We saw something like this with the Elephant and Castle chain and I expect it to follow the same trajectory. I’ve looked over the menus of the chain and I’m pretty confident that it would do well for the first six months and then tank. The menu doesn’t offer anything different, if they’re featuring local beers it still doesn’t offer anything different, basically it would be enjoyed as a novelty and then quickly forgotten.
As an American, I can tell you that there are two things that would make it succeed:
1. Keep the beer fuckin’ *cheap.* If you can offer a non-shitty beer (like a decent quality IPA, for example) for less than five dollars, especially if it’s *significantly* less than five dollars, you’ll have to fight us off with a stick. We have good beer now, in case you haven’t gotten the memo, but god damn is it pricey. Give us good and *cheap* beer and we’ll fall onto our knees with gratitude.
2. So as to differentiate it from TGIF or Applebee’s you’d have to lean into the ‘British’ theme to a ridiculous degree. To the point that a British visitor would be absolutely appalled and flabbergasted at the over-the-top parodic absurdity of it.