From struggling bar to a Wetherspoons: Has the Luther’s rebrand worked?
Newcastle University’s student union bar, Luther’s, has recently been rebranded into a Wetherspoons pub after struggling to gain enough customers.
Before the rebrand, Luther’s was left empty almost every day, with pints waiting to be drunk but never making it out the kegs. Kate Roebuck, Newcastle student union’s operations co-ordinator who has worked at the union for over 4 years, said: “Covid killed the trade that we did have”.
She added: “when people came back after Covid, people didn’t know that we were still a bar, and so it got quieter and quieter after that”.
As the income began to dwindle after the Coronavirus took its toll on the bar like it did to many other businesses, prospects looked bleak for Luther’s. The student union’s staff tried many different methods to keep the...