A lot of restaurant chains are closing down - some high profile ones are cutting back dramatically. It would seem that it you target your audience too finely you risk cutting your throat. The ones that are surviving are those serving low-quality food at cheap prices - the chips-with-everything brigade - and that allow marauding bands of kids to infest the place. Not my cup of tea, I have to admit.
Some more up-market pubs are also surviving, but only if they don't make the mistake of trying to replicate their success too widely. A couple of pubs - 4 or5 at the absolute maximum - seems to be the optimal survival number, but even they have to be localised and not too far apart.
We're lucky in our neck of the woods as we have a myriad local pubs that serve really excellent food at reasonable prices - we have 3 that are our regular places for a Friday evening, where you're not set back by more than £80 for a really good, 3 course meal for two, including drinks.
The problem that pubs have, of course, is that they live or die by the quality of the chef, meaning that a pub with a chef-proprietor is the best place to go. So long as he owns the place, you're guaranteed a good meal for a long time. Skin in the game?
Talking of food, I spotted an item on the BBC News website about weight and it contained a BMI calculator - here are the results:
BMI isn't the most accurate measure of health - rugby players regularly come out as overweight due to their muscle, but it's a reasonable guide.
A sobering thought that 79% of men in my age group are overweight or obese.
Here's some food for thought. Diesel cars are facing a ban due to their emissions - but Bosch has invented an exhaust system that will slash the nitrous oxides to 1/10th of the legal limit. I wonder what impact that will have on the ban, especially as diesels are more thermally efficient and pump out less CO2 than petrol cars. Banning something in totality, rather than regulating the output and allowing technology to provide a solution, seems to be a heavy-handed and perverse approach - but that's to be expected from politicians these days.
Talking of food, I spotted an item on the BBC News website about weight and it contained a BMI calculator - here are the results:
BMI isn't the most accurate measure of health - rugby players regularly come out as overweight due to their muscle, but it's a reasonable guide.
A sobering thought that 79% of men in my age group are overweight or obese.
Here's some food for thought. Diesel cars are facing a ban due to their emissions - but Bosch has invented an exhaust system that will slash the nitrous oxides to 1/10th of the legal limit. I wonder what impact that will have on the ban, especially as diesels are more thermally efficient and pump out less CO2 than petrol cars. Banning something in totality, rather than regulating the output and allowing technology to provide a solution, seems to be a heavy-handed and perverse approach - but that's to be expected from politicians these days.
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