The coffee-house and café-bar trades may have fared better than expected in the Portas Review.

This is the six-month investigation in which the government commissioned the media’s ‘Queen of Shops’, Mary Portas, to look at the current state of the UK’s high streets, and to offer her recommendations for improvement. In mid-December, the shopping guru presented the prime minister with a 55-page report, which included 28 specific points of action designed to put life back into the streets which should be the heart and soul of our towns.

Mary Portas is known to be firmly against the concept of ‘clone towns’, and it had been expected that her report might contain a criticism of the major high-street coffee-chain brands and the effect they have on the nation’s high streets.  Fortunately, no such comment appeared.

Indeed, the coffee trade might be glad that it got away very lightly, because the beverage industry was one of the few to make no contribution to Ms Portas’ work.  Despite repeated encouragements from the trade’s leading news magazine, not one company in the high-street coffee sector agreed to take part in preparing a co-operative trade representation to the Portas report.  As a result, the high-street coffee sector made no corporate submission to the researcher.

Other trade bodies did, in large numbers – the pub trade and the convenience store trades were among the first to put in formal representations, and many other retail interests followed… even the Campaign for Real Ale made a presentation.  From the beverage trade, however, only Starbucks and two independent one-site cafés contacted Mary Portas with comments. As an entity, the coffee-bar trade said nothing.

Indeed, the beverage industry’s inactivity can be assessed by one comment in the week the final report appeared, when a trade body asked the coffee sector’s news magazine: ‘we are unsure what Portas is? Can you enlighten us?’

One reason for this inactivity, it has been suggested, is the coffee trade’s complacency – Mary Portas had already said that she wanted the high streets to become more ‘social spaces’. One player in the industry has remarked that: ‘as the coffee-house industry believe they already offer that, the trade did not respond because it thought it had already won’.

Fortunately, in her presentation to the prime minister, Mary Portas does indeed appear to have recommended the kind of high street setting in which cafés and café-bars can play a vital role.  She has written that ‘we no longer value human interaction and socialising’ in the kind of high streets which are failing, but that in her vision of the new kind of town centre, ‘the new high streets won’t be just about selling goods – they should be social and cultural meeting places, where shopping will be just one of a mix of activities’.

“The major issue which will hurt most coffee shops is the decline of the high street,” commented Paul Ettinger, a director at Caffe Nero. “If it continues, many coffee shops will lose their customers as high streets become dead zones. So we have a major interest in seeing the Portas recommendations implemented, and bringing the independent retailers back to the high street so they become vibrant areas.

“The high street should be the ideal place for a retail entrepreneur to get started.”

Mary Portas, who is known to favour independent business over clone-town chain businesses,  has made recommendations which should be  encouraging to entrepreneurs .  She has effectively suggested that the traditional town market is the pattern to follow, that more towns should encourage such markets, and that there should be a National Market Day when all would-be entrepreneurs can try their hand at running a low-cost retail business.

However, she has also made some suggestions which could have interesting results. She wishes to ‘make it easier for people to become market traders by removing unnecessary regulations so that anyone can trade on the high street unless there is a valid reason why not’, and she has also asked that the authorities ‘address the restrictive aspects of the ‘Use Class’ system to make it easier to change the uses of key properties on the high street’.

That ‘class’ system is a major cause of argument between coffee shops and local authorities, and local authorities certainly use it to try and maintain a desirable ‘retail mix’ in their high streets. The contradiction here is that although Portas wants a wide mix of retail activities, to give complete freedom for ‘change of use’ would run the risk of a street full of fried-chicken shops or estate agents… which she has clearly said that she does not want.

“The Portas Review provides a constructive vision for high streets, but is however somewhat lacking in understanding of some of the detailed issues,” suggests Chris Green of DPP, a consultant who advises top coffee chains on planning issues in the high street.

“It clearly pushes a new role for town centres, and this must be right.  The encouragement to a mix of uses, recognising the benefits of ‘meeting places’, could clearly help coffee shops and cafés. To encourage this mix, she implies a review of the Use Classes system. However, there is little detail in her comment, and I’m not sure she has fully understood how the existing system operates.  Whilst she encourages flexibility to address ‘restrictive aspects’, she states that ‘there need to be limits’, to avoid too much of one thing.  This is a little contradictory and suggests continued need for control.

“The suggested removal of ‘unnecessary regulations’ might help independent coffee shop  operators. Again however, it is a little lacking on detail.”

In accord with other commentators, however, Chris Green does welcome Mary Portas’ view that high streets ‘are no longer just about retail’, and need to re-invent themselves in a way that gives them a much wider appeal, in a true ‘community’ manner.

This, it will probably come to be agreed as the coffee sector digests her report, is something which can certainly be to the advantage of the coffee-house and café-bar trades.

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