I have known and used the Tal y Cafn for many, many years. What a roller coaster over the last ten. It just about sums up everything that is wrong with the licensed trade today. It used to be a Greenall Whitley pub when the brewery was like a great, paternal family looking after their brood of tenants. It served food as long ago as the 1950s, ham, egg and chips on a Saturday night, and a bit of a dance. Always well run, never any trouble, the customer knew what they would get before they even went there.
Around ten years ago things started to change dramatically. The tenants at that time still gave it a basically pub drinking atmosphere, but food was taking more and more priority. The landlords wife was a bit of a handfull, upset a fair few, bar sales going down (not their fault, just changing drinking habits) and they packed it in. The brewery, now in the middle of tremendous change (it was 300 years old but within the next year or so it was no more) put in some very young, inexperienced males to "run" it. Overnight they destroyed all the trade that had taken 50 years to build up. They were terrible.
So Greenalls sold it. A couple of fiftyish males bought it, spent some cash on improvements (car park etc), were excellent with the food and built up a very good, repeat food side. But, they moved on to another residential pub, and sold to guess who---say no more---Punch Taverns. Different manager every week, no customer knew what to expect before they arrived. Then another couple took over, I don't know if they bought it or what. But a load of money was spent on the building and gardens, work went on for months on end, and this couple tried everything possible to build up trade. Loyality cards, transport home, special nights, promotions, cut price residential deals, they did the lot. But of course, it wasent enough, trade went up but not enough to pay for all the improvements and promotions. Shame because they were professionals. So then it was down to closed, or erratic hours, or God knows what the food is going to be like tonight. The drinkers were all long gone.