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Earlier this week, I blogged about a Twitter poll I was running about people’s attitude to returning to pubs post-lockedown. This has now finished, with the following outcome:
POLL: As the lockdown is gradually eased, how do you feel about returning to pubs and restaurants?
— Curmudgeon (@oldmudgie) May 18, 2020
Ye Olde Fleece Inn in Kendal ran a similar poll with perhaps surprisingly different results:
We are interested to see how #coronavirus has change your attitude to #pubs a big part of British Culture.@GoodPubGuide@caskaleweek@FeatureCumbria@CAMRA_Official
— Ye Olde Fleece Inn, Kendal (@fleecekendal) May 16, 2020
The figure for “I would go now” is 43% in my poll, but only 32% in theirs. However, if you take the first two options as being equivalent, it’s 64% in mine but a full 81% in theirs. Even so, if two-thirds of customers are willing to return, it should provide a reasonable foundation for business.
I speculated on whether attitudes varied according to how often people went to pubs, which could potentially distort the result. This prompted me to create a two-dimensional poll on SurveyMonkey breaking down the answers according to frequency of pubgoing. However, the result was that it made virtually no difference, with 71% being willing to return to pubs in July, with or without the weighting. Realistically, pubs aren’t going to open before then anyway.

(It should be pointed out that the free version of SurveyMonkey limits the total number of responses)

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