28/06/2026
When I reopened the doors at Christmas, after closing a couple of months earlier, I done so due to a LOT of messaging and people saying how they miss it and messages with promises of support if I reopened.
I also said that I would monitor very closely the income and outgoings especially in light of the continued raising of commercial utility prices, enormous jump in business rates and the raid on small businesses for National Insurance and the jumps in wages.
Since then we've also had a mad man in the White House flexing his non exsistent muscles and sending energy prices sky high and disrupting world commodity trading and suppliers have passed these addition costs on to us, with more notified in the last few days.
The promised support hasn't materialised and again in July our energy prices will again rise.
In total (including the largest jump in business rates in my entire almost 4 decades trading history), my trading costs have now jumped ยฃ17,000 to even open the doors and sadly we can all see with our own wallets how much we all have left to go out and enjoy ourselves. Anyone who knew town 20, 15, 10 or even 5 years ago would not recognise the tumbleweed market square most daytimes let alone night economy. Sadly the support for the number of businesses in town is simply insufficient and I certainly don't blame any customers! Nor do I blame any business as I know every one is fighting to survive even those that appear full. Profit is key to continuation of any business, not simply pleasing people.
It literally is cheaper now for me to to stay closed than open the doors and that's a mad situation that has been going on since I reopened in December.
As such, and given my health issues, I have taken the decision that our final trading day will be Friday 10 July - exactly 5 years to the day we opened as The Egg & Monkey and welcomed our first and most loyal customer Stuart (thank you for your almost daily support minus those pesky sunny days and far too many holidays lol).
Will I be back?
Never say never, and I shall await the next budget with baited breath and see if the PM in waiting delivers on the promises he has made in recent months to slash VAT, drop business rates by 20% overall for hospitality and place pubs back at the heart of the community, exempting smaller independents completely from business rates.
It's been fun, but for now the ride is over.
Thank you all
Kyle xx