LONDON'S NIGHT LIFE

Greymouth Evening Star, 7 May 1931, Page 11

LONDON'S NIGHT LIFE

/BUSINESS BECOMES “BAD.”

A crisis in the life of London’s night restaurants and dance clubs has developed. Night life business is “bad.” and many famous supper resorts are threatened with serious difficulty. Cabaret entertainers are demanding exorbitant fees. Rents have increased 50 per cent, in the last three years. Patrons are growing more and more blase, and at the same time have less money to spend. The average customer of a supper restaurant is now worth only £1 >3/-, according to an expert who explained the situation to a Daily Express representative. On an extension night, when the law permits a restaurant to sell drink until 2 a.m., a once-weekly privilege, the value of the guest rises to £2. Millionaires who spend £lOO x>n a gay supper are rare. • Extravagant young men who lavish their money on champagne parties are almost extinct. " Take, for instance, the budget of one famous Piccadilly resort. Here are the liabilities: —Rent, £ll,00f) per year; rates and taxes, £3500 per year, license and monopoly value, £2500 per year; cabaret, £6OO a week. All this is paid for before the business of catering begins! Staff wages are £3OO a Week, and the cost of a dance band is at least £5OO every week. It is . stated that the latest scheme of the London restaurateurs to attract customers is the employment of “supers” to make the establishment look “gay.” The depressing atmosphere of the empty restaurant is removed, and the attraction of smartly-gowned women and well-dressed men is substituted. All the “supers” receive is a meal in return for their services.