Rib Eye steak is about £12 / Kilo wholesale. So why does your 300 gram steak ( £3 retail ) cost you £15 - £25 in a regular restaurant ( Oh, that's a place where you go to eat, where people cook for you and serve you, You get a set table, no your lap in front of the TV, in pleasant atmosphere with alcohol on sale too. Oh and afterwards they clear away and do the washing up!
you may remember those
)
You need a reasonable return on your investment in traps, electronics and a basic Point of Sale system. ( this is not a shoot in a farmers field ) Clubhouse? Toilets? ( 2 seperate ones remember ) The cost of keeping a parking lot for say 200 or more cars in a reasonable state is going to make you gasp. Even if it's just a cleared piece of ground with gravel on it. Grounds are regularly down private tracks that need some sort of maintenance. A couple of quad bikes or gators. Power reticulation or perhaps even a generator system. A shed for maintenance and storage ( oh and a security system because scrotes love high value, resellable stuff stored in quiet locations away from populations ) You need a good 10 acres of ground for even a small shoot. You'll need insurance and some tame lawyers to put up with the constant stream of noise complaints and changing requirements from local councils. My guess, sucking my thumb is that you will need around a million quid of loose change and 10 acres plus of land to get into having a 'reasonable' organised, attractive ground capable of drawing the 'premiere' tag. It could be considered a high risk investment what with the whims of a legal system that favours one muppet who moves in next to an established ground and makes a noise complaint. If you are going to run registered shoots you need staff not just scorers ( 10 - 15 of those for the day ) but shop and ground staff. People that need paid holidays and sick leave and paternity and maternity leave.
Would a return of say 10% be reasonable on your capital? Add all the overheads and you need to sell about 3 million clays a year to just break even. That's a lot of shooting.
Most of the Premier grounds publish annual accounts at companies house so you can go and sanity check this lot easily.
The question is not 'why does it cost 35p a clay?' the question is more like 'Why does anyone get into the clay shooting business at all?'
I live in North Wales and will happily drive 100 miles or 2 hours for a good registered shoot. ( I have little choice but to do so ) If there were more up here I'd support them, even at £35 p a clay but sporting doesn't have the support that it does down South. As for why Northerners won't pay the prices, well they are notoriously tight with their money. It's how they can afford to fill the car parks with Jags, Mercs, BMW's, Range rovers and other assorted hardware.
Small club shoots are well supported as has been said. My local little shoot has 7 stands but puts on a 100 birder by swapping the targets at mid day and shooting two rounds. it gets 50 shooters on a Sunday but that's not going to make anyone rich, it's probably only just making ends meet. Places like Catton Hall are heaving when they run a registered shoot so there is the potential I'm sure. EJ's has obviously seen that potential and is giving it a good go.
As for Southerners travelling up here, we'd rather you lot stay down there thank you!
