The idea of licensing laws changing might seem a positive one at first - and publicans will already have been following the issue for some time. Today it became apparent that the supermarkets will also have an interest in 24-hour availability of alcohol - see the BBC's report here.
This, I believe, is a bad move for the smaller independent.
Let's imagine, for a moment, that the UK manages to adopt a Continental model of drinking - we stop bingeing, we behave responsibly and everyone's happy with us. The issue remains that we will end up with an entire nation that expects, by right, to drop into a supermarket and buy a bottle of wine. That's fine if you're one of the giants - you just tell your staff their hours have been extended and offer a bit of extra money. You may well be opening for 24 hours already.
If you're one of the few remaining independents, however, it's different. It becomes yet another area in which you cannot realistically compete. You're unlikely to get the throughput of customers to justify paying someone to work the antisocial hours the new retail laws will bring in. Hopefully during daylight hours this won't matter a lot, but people won't really just buy wine when they're in the supermarket at night, they'll get their groceries as well. And that's where your trade will start to fall off.
At the moment it's difficult to see how the smaller retailer will be able to play in that market. The answer will probably include finding some sort of specialism with which the bigger companies don't want to compete; personally I can't think of what this might eventually be.
