Why a pub lunch can be the healthy option
by Max Wind-Cowie
12/08/09 Max Wind-Cowie thinks that serving school lunches in pubs might not be such a bad idea...
In today’s Mail, Prue Leith is quoted as suggesting that children should have their school dinners in local pubs. At first glance this seems like a wonderfully silly idea – one can only imagine the reaction in our increasingly alcohol-phobic society. A policy that saw troops of school children introduced to afternoons in the boozer is quite hard to swallow. However, I think it bears closer thought.
For starters, Prue is right to argue that something must be done to reinvigorate local pubs. A combination of the smoking ban, higher tax on alcohol and the recession has impacted massively on the viability of public houses. It is estimated that 52 pubs are closing a week and that, in villages and rural areas, the situation is disproportionately worse. Outsourcing school lunches to these pubs might be just the thing to keep them afloat and to retain the social capital that they can add to small and isolated communities.
There are other potential benefits. Under-age drinking would no doubt be affected – it’s hard for a publican to claim they didn’t know that a customer was under eighteen when they’ve been popping in for their school dinner every day! In addition, such a scheme might help to undermine the hard drinking culture that pervades the British relationship with alcohol. By introducing children to the pleasures of a teetotal lunch in a pub you might be able to encourage an appreciation of the social and foodie aspects – rather than simply a commitment to self-destructive inebriation.
So well done Prue – a radical and interesting policy that could work on many fronts and produce many benefits. And I’m sure you’d get a very interesting new breed of dinner ladies who would be more than happy to supervise the saloon bar rather than a soulless canteen!
Michael
This would have a limited effect in helping the pub industry because it would generally only cosy up to big business and leave untouched those smaller independent pubs which are most at threat from closure.
For example, in terms of rural schools, the lovely multi-million pound refurbished old coaching house might be able to cope with feeding a couple of hundred children: the small (kitchenless) two-room pub with a selection of guest ales and a dozen or so tables wouldn't exactly be in the running when any contract was put out to tender.
Ditto with urban pubs. The big-business chain pubs with their already extensive menus and top-quality kitchen facilities (Beefeater et al) are probably at far less risk of closure (and simultaneously far more likely to win any school contract) than the small independent pub that has no kitchen, no room for a kitchen and no money for a kitchen - I'm sure you see the point I am trying to make.
As such, the idea doesn't seem so 'radical' to me.
Max Wind-Cowie
Thank you both for your comments. Michael, you're absolutely right that lots of local village pubs will not have space to squeeze hundreds of kids in for lunch each day. But they could, as some pubs do already, deliver food to schools as an extra source of revenue. It's also worth bearing in mind that lots of rural pubs offer deals such as 'pensioners lunches' already - which also involve large sittings of people for high-quality, low-cost food. This is definitely not a panacea, as you point out, but if we want to protect our independent pubs we do have to try and think of new ways for them to generate custom.
v st clair
The alcohol industry would find ways to subtly indoctrinate those children into the binge drinking culture while they chomped away on their lunches. - subliminal marketing in the style of Derren Brown, the faint background smell of beer being associated with a break from classes ....
With our A&E departments full of unconscious underage alcoholics every weekend, this idea wants some careful thought!
Stuart McLaughlin
About 12 years ago while enjoying a holiday on the River Shannon in Ireland we moored in the small town of Drumshanbo in Co Leitrim and wandered to the local pub for lunch - we had to wait until after 1.15 for ours as the pub ran two sittings of lunches for the local school which lacked the facilities - it made perfect sense in a small rural community, meant that the revenue went into a local business...and the food was great.