The people who run the place are fine and to be fair I think, as you'll probably gather from the repeated visits, people have given it a few chances. That said, the whole business plan and gimmicky branding is seemingly pushing the place down the swannee.
Unless I'm missing something and they're getting exceptionally busy late weekend evenings, they really can't be doing that well. The usual faces pop in more rarely and for shorter periods, whilst there aren't exactly people queuing up to replace them. And this is in the first month- the occasional new faces I see in there aren't seen often again either. On top of that they're employing considerably more staff (at least an extra one or two bar staff, 2-3 more in the kitchen than Scolly's one man show) bringing musicians/bands in every night and a host of new AV/Audio equipment.
Unless I'm missing something, it's hard to see how the sums add up - I doubt that 30p extra on each pint's enough to compensate. With the summer and the attraction of the beer garden waning, along with initial curiosity and friends ofthe mgmt ebbing away, it's tough to see a miraculous recovery. Christmas and New Year perhaps, but there's little loyalty atm.
The Thai food's good and probably the main thing attracting people, the management nice enough, but it's sad to see a certain decline already. The pub badly needed a change, but a lot of the improvements have been cosmetic and marketing led - critical improvements on things like the minging toilets haven't been made. It's the same to a large extent, with friendlier management and music far more likely to repel people. The ideal of it becoming a destination pub seems far away for the moment, and it's not exactly pulling up trees locally either.
