I went on a Wetherspoon's pub crawl with its boss Tim Martin and one thing surprised me

Let's face it Wetherspoon’s pubs are stereotyped. The majority of people reading this article will have some deep-rooted impression about who the typical customer is and what the scene of an average last orders looks like. But I’d challenge you to consider where that preconception came from. Most of the time the broad sneering remarks which have fed that vision of the unapologetically mainstream venue come from critics who’ve never set foot inside one of the boozers.

Take a typically snotty Times piece in which one of its journalists was assigned the task of getting drunk “on just £20” at a Wetherspoon. The unnamed author describes their fears about stepping into “the binge drinker's church” worrying that he will “at best see women with tattoos pulling out one another's hair while their track-suited boyfriends puke for England” and at worst “be stabbed”.

Aside from the offensive suggestion that anyone might want a night out for less than £200 or that getting wobbly from four glasses of Pinot Grigio on the roof of some Soho House establishment is somehow superior, the characterisation is just lazy.

I’ve been to Wetherspoon's countless times in different parts of Britain and while you might get some venues that are a bit rough around the edges, the truth is they're no different to any other pub. The idea that the chain has a specific clientele is nonsense. The regulars I know are family members who stop in for breakfast after dropping their grandchildren at nursery.

But once a lazy characterisation has been cast, it tends to stick, and in the case of Wetherspoon, it extends to its founder and chairman, Tim Martin. Prior to spending a day following Martin's surprise visits to different pubs across the Black Country, I researched opinions of the pub chain’s boss. 

Overwhelmingly he is cast as an eccentric Brexiteer who is unafraid to speak his mind. But there are also many press articles and social media posts that pit him against his staff. Organisations like Spoons Workers Against Brexit seem to get an oversized amount of coverage for various campaigns that merge pro-European Union rhetoric with workers' rights demands.

I interviewed Martin a few years ago and found him refreshingly unguarded. There were no hand-wringing PR people keen to “just add a bit of context,” and we met in one of his pubs, where he mixed easily with punters.

When I joined him earlier this week on one of his secret visits to three different West Midlands establishments he seemed a little more careful. Martin had clearly been burned in the past by being too blunt with journalists and even the characterisation of him as an ardent Brexiteer seemed overblown.

“I was never a member of UKIP,” he tells me. “I don’t have bad feelings about the EU.”

But he did vote Brexit and was impassioned by the debate. His drink of choice in the Wetherspoons he visits is tea, although he also likes to sip a couple of samples of the ales on offer just to check that they taste right. He might be more wary but for the chairman of a £2 billion turnover business he’s quick to crack a joke and have a laugh.

Watching him navigate the punters and staff in these ordinary venues in regular British towns, Martin manages to be both shy and outgoing. He is happy to talk to punters keen to buy him a drink but equally slightly embarrassed by the interactions.

He seems to genuinely value their feedback and listen to what they have to say. The good thing about running a pub, I suppose, is that people rarely beat around the bush when it comes to feedback. He admits that if someone thinks the pints are too pricey then they tell him straight up.

But the most surprising aspect of the pub crawl with Martin is the interactions with staff. Unsurprisingly, many of them look a little edgy when the chairman comes in to say hello, but when it comes down to business, they tell him it straight. Whether the building needs improvements or the beer is performing poorly, there are no forced smiles and “everything’s all right, sir”.

I started to realise this is one of the secrets to the brand’s success. The chairman is constantly finding out what the people at the coalface think and making changes based on their views. He knows the performance of any new beer they sell, and if there’s a dish on the menu causing the kitchen a headache, he will be aware.

His focus on the little things reminded me of a moment from Manchester United co-ower Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s podcast interview with former footballer Gary Neville. The ex-Red Devils star was digging into the finer points of a £40,000 cost-cutting measure the billionaire’s leadership team had introduced.

“I’m not aware of that level of detail,” Sir Jim told Neville.

Manchester United’s highest-ever revenue is around a quarter of what Wetherspoon earns each year, yet from what I’ve seen of what Martin knows about his pubs, their chairman would never get caught not knowing the detail behind even the smallest decisions.