Swan and Rushes, Leicester

I am landlord of the Swan & Rushes and would like to reply to "Sparts73" and "Blob".
Sparts73 seems outraged that the Swan was a bit smelly when he visited en route to a comedy event. By the time of his posting I guess he visited on the evening of Sat 14th Feb. On this day we were packed until about 7pm with football fans so I imagine that the smell was of B.O. and spilt beer (probably not so stale) but not of our canine friends. Next time I will open a few more windows. Thanks for pointing it out, I wasn't aware of the problem.
As to Spart's brightness comment, this is something I don't "get". There are only bright lights at the point of service. I would expect more people to complain that the pub is underlit than the other way. We have bright lights shining down at the bar so that customers can see what good condition we present the real ales in and also to help us pour the sedimented beers most effeciently.
Spart, all I can say is you should visit us on a more normal day and you might find our surroundings as pleasant as our regular customers do. You might even find a few "spectacular" pump ales.
Blob and any other football or rugby fans we might have pissed off with being a bit short with them on match days: I put my hands up and admit that match days stretch our operation in many ways. The large volume of customers that demand rapid service in a short period of time places demands on the staff that seems to constrain our ability to deliver the level of pleasant personal service that we normally pride ourselves upon. We really value the sports day trade though and the last thing we want is that our customers think that we take them for granted or feel unwelcome. So: sorry, we'll try to improve but please read on...
Please understand that the priority for all the staff, when there's lots of people waiting to be served, is to process the orders as quickly as possible in order to be fair to those who are waiting. It's nothing directly to do with maximising income it's just obviously the right thing to do when you work on a bar. So what staff want is a clear order that allows them to deliver it efficiently, take payment then move on to the next customer. This often doesn't happen and customers will queue for several minutes, get to the bar, get the attention of staff and then start to work out what drinks they want, often adding a pint of Guinness for the bloke they've just seen walk through the door. Why does this piss us off? It's not because we sell any less it's because customers pissing around stops us getting the queues down and any queue is a measure of how behind you are in your work.
I mention all this because I think your problem is with our apparent attitude (and I can understand this) and not really with our food policy (we sell loads of food on match days, we sometimes run out, we sometimes have surplus, this can't be such a big deal).
If you have been subject to poor service or attitude from myself or any of my staff and have done nothing to provoke such then I can only apologise unreservedly. If you have been subject to same but have been inconsiderate of the fact that the place is packed with people demanding immediate service from your bar attendant then perhaps we might agree that things could have been handled better on both sides.

2 Mar 2009 03:40