Many pubs show no loyalty to regulars

Eating turkey, spending time with your family, watching rubbish telly, receiving unwanted presents, and buying gifts for people you don't like are among the myriad reasons for disliking Christmas.

Turkey: enough to drive a teetotaler to the pub.

But it does have its upsides. One of them being that it is a great excuse to pop down to the pub with any mates you have not seen since last Christmas. The only catch is that there is the chance that the doors will be locked to your preferred boozer.

This is the curse of the 'Closed - private party' syndrome that afflicts far too many pubs at this time of the year. Numerous occasions in my drinking life I've turned up with a thirst at a favourite pub and been turned away.

This is surely no way for landlords or pub companies to treat people who may well have been drinking in your pub all year round - your most loyal customers in fact.

You're not sorry, you're just disloyal.

This is surely the worst way to treat loyal customers and I find it hard to believe that the retail industry would implement anything quite as potentially damaging to their prized most valuable shoppers.

But in pub-land it happens all too often. Yes, I can understand the desire to cash in at this very busy period but I wonder just how much damage it potentially creates among that year-round clientele. Maybe it is minimal?

The best 'Christmas system' I have encountered was at the East India Arms on Fenchurch Street in the City of London when it was operated by Young's.

East India Arms: regulars-only zone over Christmas.

During the run up to Christmas the landlord would hand out keyrings to his regular customers and only those with one of these prized 'passes' was allowed to cross the threshold in the final working week before the Christmas break.

Any non-regular was not allowed through the door that week, regardless of how much cash they had stuffed in their wallets. As a regular this seemed a wholly satisfactory arrangement that kept the part-timers ('Sunday drinkers') out of the place.

It would be good to see it replicated in other pubs even if it meant that many doors would probably be closed to me during the month of December. But any lover of pubs (who understands pub etiquette) would have no beef whatsoever with a sign on any locked pub door that read  'Closed - regulars party'.

Sainsbury's to split with Jamie Oliver

It's called evolution - you hire somebody and they come in with big ideas and often a large ego and ultimately they end up running the show.

I bet Sainsbury's didn't think this was going to happen with Jamie Oliver. The little guy who was brought in to re-connect the company with its food heritage is now the big man in the relationship. But his out-sized presence is getting a little too much for some senior people in the supermarket.

Brand Oliver bigger than brand Sainsbury's.

If he'd done as bad a job as John Cleese, when he was brought in to resurrect Sainsbury's in its really dark days (and failed abysmally with those appaling megaphone ads), then there wouldn't be a problem. Actually, he'd have long since gone.

But he hasn't failed, he has been a phenomenal success and played a big part in helping rebuild Sainsbury's food credibility.

However, such is the popularity of brand-Oliver and his position in the public's consciousness that it is raising some concern at Sainsbury's Holborn HQ.

Plenty of concern inside the Sainsbury's glass box.

Is he now bigger in brand terms than Sainsbury's? This leads to the reallly big question: does his presence in the supermarket's advertising really drive great sales growth or is the upside chiefly in raising Oliver's own profile and that of his myriad activities outside Sainsbury's?

When the celeb overpowers the client then there surely has to be serious consideration of when time should be called on the association.

When asking Sainsbury's about the current Oliver contract they would not comment and strangely pointed Retailinsider.com to Oliver's publicist who ultimately failed to respond. Why does the power appear to be in the Oliver camp? Tail wagging dog anybody.

Sainsbury's: maybe trying somebody new tomorrow.

Just how long will it be before Sainsbury's and Oliver part ways? Maybe sooner than we all think.

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