Comments on: AJC Gets Answers on The Angel and Other Lawford Pub Closings

By: decaturite

decaturite — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 03:25:11 +0000

Jonny, regardless of the timeliness of your post…its great to have some confirmation of suspicions I had about that place while it was open.

Hope you’ve found a better gig!

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 02:35:57 +0000

You know…I used to complain about DLP’s, and then I realized that their Pints were actual sized pints. Around 4 plus ounces of beer per…

Then I stopped complaining in my head….

No one talks in there now….

That they are closed.

By: Jonnysmokes

Jonnysmokes — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:21:03 +0000

I am a little late but it makes me smile that they have fallen on hard times.
As I previous employee who has moved on to bigger and better things I can tell you first hand that they treat there staff horribly. I have many stories but the one that stands out is when managment added money to the draw after an employee counted it then questioned him about the amount in an attempt to frame them for stealing.
Shadey people who could care less about you or there staff.
By the way there not english altough they make a sad attempt to speak with an accent.

By: decaturite

decaturite — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 22:44:52 +0000

Dude,
All I ask from a local business is not to be misled. At the beginning of ’08 many Decatur restaurants closed because of liquor license expirations. The Angel is the ONLY one that misled its paying customers by blaming a “backlog” of liquor licenses. In light of this, I was a little annoyed when the AJC article cited money problems, but the owner gave no further clarification.

In most cases, if a restaurant is in trouble, they may be “ashamed”, but usually aren’t completely unwilling to talk about their struggling business. If nothing else, its done in the hope that paying customers will come to their aid. From the start, The Angel acted like it had something to hide.

That’s all this post was meant to point out. Don’t lie to your customers. I certainly don’t lie to my neighbors. Neither is good for our yuppie lib community.

P.S. The Angel didn’t close because there are too many Chili’s. Chains may be the reason in other parts of metro Atlanta, but Decatur barely supports a single Ruby Tuesday’s and is violently loyal to independents.

By: Peter

Peter — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:30:47 +0000

No offense, dude, but this “businesses have a certain responsibility in serving the local community” stuff sounds like a hollow, yuppified version of plain old Southern gossip-mongering. With all due respect, cut the crap. You want to know because you want to know. It sates your ego or your curiosity or your need to know other people’s business. It also hints a bit at the double-standard limo-libs (with which Decatur is loaded) often apply to businesses. If the family next door were having money problems, would that be something you felt you had a right to know? If your answer is no -and I sure hope it is- why does a business have obligations to the community that a private household does not? And if, somehow, it does have additional obligations, why do they extend to letting the public in on its financial difficulties.

I mean, did it ever occur to you, during this (admittedly mild) bout of self-righteousness, that maybe the owners didn’t publicly air their troubles because they were embarrassed or ashamed of them? For God’s sake, these were bars. They sold beer. They weren’t running the public transport or the maintaining the electrical grid. The implication that they breached some sort of duty to sell beer to the community is just a bit silly, isn’t it?

I love and frequented the Prince of Wales, and if the Angel is at all a similar situation then all the information you need about its money problems was right in front of you. Simply put: people didn’t go there often enough. Let’s face it: Atlanta ain’t Boston or New York. English pubs are niche establishments in this Chili’s-clogged town, and five Derek Lawford pubs is at least two too many.

It’s a shame the POW had to be one of the places go, as it was the flagship, the most authentic of the DLP enterprises, and (as someone above mentioned) it really did evoke the pubs north of Hyde Park if you squinted your eyes a little. But that’s business, and people who actually went to the freaking place more than twice a month saw the writing on the wall. No pestering emails necessary.

By: Carl

Carl — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:19:53 +0000

To me, their lack of disclosure shows why they weren’t a good fit for this community. They initially created the impression that it was out of their hands and implied that we should feel sorry for them and mad at the State. I’m much happier calling a spade a spade.

By: decaturite

decaturite — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 14:24:45 +0000

Thomas, your entry has me rethinking this post. Even when I originally wrote it, I was hesitant to post those last two paragraphs. Everyday I have to walk the line of how much opinion I write. For the most part I think I’m pretty even-handed. In this case, I obviously was not.

I don’t think I’m owed anything by The Angel because I spend money there. Perhaps the sentence about owning up to financial trouble was a bit too extreme. You are right that a business owner has enough trouble and heartache/burn without having to deal with a screaming, nosy public. It is not part of the local government, its private.

But I do believe that businesses have a certain responsibility in serving the local community. I believe that saying that you’re temporarily closed because of a “liquor license backlog” and then just closing up shop for other unexplained reasons is a little dishonest. That’s what got me a little annoyed. I expected better. That’s the only area I expected any sort of transparency. If you’re closing, tell the truth about why.

So for what its worth, I’ve reworked the opinion a bit.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 23:32:34 +0000

I’m a little surprised by the last two paragraphs in this entry. I don’t think that a private business owes details of its finances to the community at large. I’m not saying this as it relates to The Angel in particular, but as a general stance on business. Posting messages throughout the city to find out what’s happening with a restaurant doesn’t entitle you to answers. Would it enhance your reputation within the community? Possibly. Still, if you’re trying to work something out for financial difficulties and it ends up successful, as an owner, I wouldn’t necessarily want to share the details with everyone.

Plus, you aren’t owed anything because you spent your money there. If you pay $5 for a pint, you have decided that your $5 is worth the pint of beer. It isn’t worth $4.50 of beer and $0.50 worth of future information.