Change from a pound, well i never. (Wetherspoons (Piccadilly, Manchester))

Member Name: dannybwoii

Product:	Wetherspoons (Piccadilly, Manchester)
Date:	06/01/09 (20 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap beer and food

Disadvantages: poor quality food and an undesirable crowd at times.

Wetherspoons is as much a high street name as mothercare, which worries me slightly as in my town these two outlets are pretty much next store. Anyhow, JD Wetherspoons also commonly known as 'spoonies' has been trading since 1979, during this time it has grown to a McDonald like chain of outlets and although in this time it has undoubtedly made huge profits and continues to do so, this seems to be at the cost of the up-market pub it originally set out to be.

There are a number of positive aspects to the expansion of the chain. Firstly the beer is cheap, just as of last week it announced that some brands will be 99p a pint which is great news in these hard times however from my experience in my local, it already attracts enough drunkards and undesirables, so at 99p a pint they will set up camp there. A second positive thing about being such a large chain is that the food is cheap, but cheap is not always good. Wetherspoons offer a traditional set menu which consists of all the usual pub lunches, however, the food is of a poor quality and it was revealed earlier this year that they mislead customers which there claims of '100% British beef'. Not only that but there hygiene practice in some locations has been found to be a little under par. To be fair to them, they do offer a decent eating area as far away as possible from the bar, and did have a no smoking area, even before the smoking ban came in. However even with these things in place it's impossible to escape the noise and mayhem just a few feet away.

For me, Wetherspoons is a place i would visit for maybe a drink and nothing more, i wouldn't stop there long...continuing with the McDonalds analogy, it's a place you might get a burger occasionally when hungry but not sit down there to eat a full meal. It's not all doom and gloom however, one last positive thing i can say about this establishment is that it has a large range of beers and ales on tap and the pubs themselves have lots of seating area available.

Summary: A place i would visit for a drink or two and nothing more