Goodbye WFH, hello WFP (that’s working from pub) this winter
In the historic Cutty Sark pub in Greenwich, south-east London, the cat Mahela purrs and curls up by the bar, a coffee machine hisses and a cluster of heads are studiously bowed over laptops beneath the hull of a 19th-century paddle steamer.
At the bar, education copywriter Jen, who’s worked from this pub on the banks of the Thames a few days a month since parent brewery Young’s brought in its £15 Work from Pub (WFP) packages in 2020, chats with the staff. “It definitely beats the water cooler,” she says.
Across the UK, water-cooler chat is giving way to bar banter as laptop workers migrate into their local boozers and the abbreviation WFP joins those 2020s neologisms WFH (working from home) and, starrily, WFA (working from abroad).
Pubs are braced for a rough ride this autumn as suppliers cancel the long-term fixed-price energy contracts many rely on. The energy support package introduced by the government in September offered businesses “equivalent” support for bills to that given to households. But that will only partially offset the squeezes on hospitality providers from rising energy bills, food and drink prices, and staffing costs, and the impact of Britons tightening their belts.
Many pubs have already seen a doubling of their bills in recent months, and country pubs that rely on heating oil and liquefied natural gas are only minimally supported by the government plan.
In August the Fontmell, a Michelin-recommended gastropub in north Dorset, announced that it would close its doors, citing a £58,000 increase in utility costs. In July the Gillygate, a historic public house in York, whose energy bills had risen from £900 to £2,500 a month, announced its closure after 300 years of trading.
The celebrity chef Tom Kerridge,
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