It probably not the most popular pub in Moseley, it might not even actually be in Moseley, but the Highbury is certainly large and it’s just re-opened. If you ask many people around and about Moseley they’ll probably tell you they’ve never bothered to go there and that might have been one of the factors that contributed to it shutting down.
Concern that the Highbury wasn’t really considered a destination pub have caused the new owners to radically rethink the Highbury concept. We spoke to the new owner who told us “We’re really excited about the new Highbury. We could’ve just slapped some new paint on it and updated the picture of a fried egg on the menu but that wouldn’t have met the needs of the 21st century customer. We’re acutely aware of the gentrification of Stirchley and the expansive villas of Moor Green Lane and we wanted to really get under the skin of what our new customers wanted.
To do that we’ve carried out focus groups to find out what people like about the Highbury, we don’t want to drive existing customers away, but we want to know what we can change. The results have been truly fascinating. It appears that people do like BIG SCREEN SPORTS and the full range of continental lagers. They also like the reasonably priced bar menu and the large function room. Though this is where it gets really interesting, it seems that most of our customers really don’t like getting robbed at gunpoint by armed robbers. So we’re looking to completely remove the terrifying robbery scenario from the Highbury experience. It will effectively be zero tolerance of masked thugs.
We think this will really refresh the atmosphere and make the place wholly more sympathetic for a quiet pint.
Oh they also told us they wanted more Michael Buble impersonators.”
It looks like we can all look forward to less exciting times at the Highbury.