Why is my Melrose pub heaving one week and dead the next?

Carlton Scott | Scottish Borders Business | September 2026

Because Melrose trades on events and weather more than any other Borders town, and most pubs run one set of prices and one rota all year. The Sevens alone brings over 12,000 people to a town of about 2,500. A wet Wednesday in February brings the regulars and nobody else. A pub that runs both weeks the same way is overstaffed for one and underpriced for the other, and that gap is the year’s profit.

Few towns this size earn their trade so many ways. Melrose Abbey brings visitors in all through the season, and the three Eildon summits rise straight off the town. St Cuthbert’s Way starts in the Market Square and sends walkers 62 miles to Holy Island. The Greenyards is the birthplace of rugby sevens, and Sevens weekend fills the town. The Borders Book Festival does it again in June. Under all of it there’s a resident base with real spending power, and rents to match a visitor town.

What is a good profit margin for a pub in the UK?

Whito’s July 2026 pub data report puts net profit at 10% to 15% for a well-run pub, on gross margins of 70% to 80% on drinks. Those are the ends of a wide range, and where a pub sits inside it comes down to its own arithmetic: what each of the top ten lines earns after the brewery or wholesaler price, wastage and card fees. Pubs that know that figure by line hold their prices with confidence. Pubs that don’t know it tend to underprice the lager that pays the bills, then wonder why a full bar leaves nothing behind.

How busy will Melrose be on Sevens weekend and should I stock up?

Very, and yes, but order for margin as well as for volume. Attendance runs past 12,000 across the weekend and the official after-parties run their own bars, so there’s real trade to be had, but you’re sharing it. Cost every line you’ll be pouring fast, run a shortened menu, build the rota from last year’s takings by hour, and set prices for the weekend itself. If you serve it off an ordinary order at ordinary prices, the biggest weekend of the year covers its costs and not much more.

In Borders pubs, we usually see a rota built for Saturday and then run all week, and a drinks margin that’s only ever checked across the whole bar, never line by line. Between them, those two explain most busy pubs that end the month with nothing, and you can fix both without touching the prices on the board.

What should my pub’s staff costs be as a percentage of turnover?

Between 22% and 28% of sales for a wet-led pub, on WorkSchedule’s 2026 UK hospitality labour benchmarks, and higher once food is most of the trade. Above that band the cause is nearly always the same: a rota written for the busiest night and copied across the week. Build each day from that day’s takings by hour, start the quiet shifts later, stagger the finishes, and move the kitchen prep to the slow afternoon. Cutting ten staff hours a week saves more than 500 hours a year, and nobody at the bar notices the difference.

How much should my Melrose pub’s energy bill be in 2026?

Between £6,000 and £9,500 a year for a small wet-led pub, £10,000 to £18,000 for a mid-sized community pub and £20,000 to £35,000 for a large food-led one, on EnergyPlus’s July 2026 pub energy guide, excluding VAT and assuming a negotiated contract rather than a rollover rate. If your pub’s above its band, look first at the cellar, which is often running colder than the brewery asks, and at kitchen extraction left on through the afternoon. The other usual cause is a fixed deal that lapsed without anyone noticing.

How much does a business coach cost in the Scottish Borders?

Between £500 and £3,500 a month plus VAT for one-to-one coaching, depending on the coach’s experience, according to Alan Wick’s May 2026 guide to UK coaching fees. The bill runs for as long as the coaching does. The price of any advice comes down to how much of the work the adviser does for you: coaching talks you through it, and a fixed-fee diagnose-and-fix piece of work goes through the numbers with you and makes the changes. The Profit Clarity Framework is the second kind: a fixed £1,495 + VAT for 30 days on your pub’s real numbers, with nothing to pay after that.

In a town that trades in peaks, we usually start with the event weeks, because that’s when an hour of planning makes the most difference.

Where can a Melrose pub owner get help with the numbers?

Carlton Scott’s Profit Clarity Framework™ is a 30-day diagnose-and-fix process on your real numbers at the fixed fee above. It’s built for owners who are behind the bar every night, and it leaves you with a more profitable pub. We’ve set out how it works for the town’s pubs on our Melrose pub page, including how little of your time it takes and what we’d need to start. There’s also an overview of the framework for pubs, and you can see the same numbers at work in a commuter town in our Galashiels café article. Most clients who commit to the framework and follow our recommendations see a full return on the fee within 90 days.

Photo © Jonathan Hutchins, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Geograph (geograph.org.uk/photo/4133212)