Prefab Pubs

The English pub stands by its tipplers through everything from trouble with the missus to trouble with the telly. Now it is being called to higher duty to buck up Britain's exports. Packed in crates and complete with everything from dartboards to mullioned windows, prefab pubs are finding a ready market overseas.

They are the proud invention of London Furniture Manufacturers Leslie Costick and Ralph Shafran, who last year found that Britain's deepening recession was drying up their once lively business of producing, among other things, such pub parts as oak bar tops and brass rails. If the home market had gone sour, they wondered, why not look abroad, where English-style pubs seem increasingly popular. After all, says Costick, in some U.S. pseudo-pubs, "they even have a tartan in the act, because they are not sure what is England and what is Scotland."

Setting things right, Costick and Shafran have so far shipped off four pubs (among them: Brussels' Old Irish Inn, the John Bull Pub in Cascais, Portugal), have 14 others (minimum price: $500,000) in the works, and are negotiating a contract to build 200 for the U.S. market. The crated pieces can transform a Laundromat into a passable pub in ten days. Most popular are the Tudor-style pubs, which feature white walls, oak beams (hollowed to save shipping weight), and wrought-iron fixtures. But they can also be had in Regency (striped wallpaper, glass chandeliers) and Victorian (crimson drapes, gaslights) styles.

All that may suggest a sort of Lev-ittavern, but Costick insists that the Levittavern pubs are absolutely authentic--and he obviously speaks from experience. "We know," he says, "what size the beams should be, how far the publican stands behind the bar counter, and how English pub fireplaces work."

And just to make sure that overseas bartenders-turned-publicans learn how to mind their milds and bitters, the firm stands ready with a stable of 20 trained barmaids to "train local staffs in typical English fashion." According to Partner Shafran, they come in two styles--"the big-breasted, gin-breath barmaid in a tight black dress, and the pink-cheeked, lusty but innocent type."

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