The £5 pint
Posted by: Ewan Aye on 03 September 2008
Is there a problem with this logic?:
Supermarkets sell beer at an affordable price; Asda for instance with their imported Belgian 5% lager for £2.97 for 4 500ml cans (and very nice too) or their bottled ale at 3 for £4 (Tanglefoot, Badgers, Shepherd Neame etc).
Pubs are charging £3.50 - £3.75 a pint in my area and buying a beer in a pub usually amounts to buying a round - so when it's my turn it'll be £12-ish. It's come to the point where I just don't do it anymore, whereas previously I'd visit the pub maybe 2 or 3 times a week. Now I go about once a month - if that. What really stuck it in for us is that the designated driver would drink lemonade that cost MORE than the beer! That's really like rubbing your nose in it and was the final straw for me. It was like they were laughing in our faces.
Now, beer isn't exactly a rare commodity and it doesn't take much to make it, so taking into account that staff have to be paid whether they are pulling pints or sitting on a stool in a corner of an empty pub reading the paper, wouldn't it be better to lower the price to sell more and make some money? It isn't astonishing that pubs are closing at a previously unknown rate, and I for one simply cannot afford it. When we now go out, my mates and me, we take our £25 each and go for a meal instead. Just think about the input into a vat of water and barley, and a restaurant meal and compare the value.
The answer, it would appear, is to raise the price of a pint to at least £5 to make up the difference.
I think it's time to laugh in THEIR faces. Have these idiots ever been to business school?
If I ran a pub, I'd hire a master brewer to set up a micro brewery in the cellar, knock out a good ale at £1.50 a pint and designated drivers and children get soft drinks for 50p. I'd either be a millionaire within a year, or I'd be at the bottom of the Thames with concrete shoes.
I think we should tell the industry what's what, because they seem to have a problem understanding.
Posted on: 03 September 2008 by scottyhammer
JUST GOT BACK FROM TURKEY WHERE I WAS PAYING £1.75 FOR A DECENT PINT !
Posted on: 03 September 2008 by scottyhammer
beer you dope!
Posted on: 03 September 2008 by djftw
Back from France where I discovered with a combination of amazement and horror that bottles of wine can be bought for between €1-€2 that is easily the equal of the stuff that sells for 5 to 8 times more over here. We are getting raped! The other thing is that French supermarket larger is actually quite nice, and about a third of the price of say Carling in this country, which is barely drinkable!
A local brewery announced a 3p a pint hike in the wholesale price today, don't know what they think they are playing at, the pubs round here are already dead. Mind you the government are the real crooks, have you ever worked out how much of your money they get from alcohol and tobacco? It's no surprise the retailers are being squeezed, I was talking to the owner of the off license in my town and she was saying she only stocks cigarettes because people buy other odds and sods when they come in, on average they make about 5p a packet!
Posted on: 03 September 2008 by Ewan Aye
It's quite a thought, isn't it, that those profiteering most from the most lethal substances such as alcohol and tobacco are the government.
They have the blood of millions on their hands.
I cannot emphasise enough how much I detest politicians.
Posted on: 03 September 2008 by Jim Lawson
quote:
I cannot emphasise enough how much I detest politicians.
I believe you have...
Posted on: 03 September 2008 by djftw
quote:
Originally posted by Jim Lawson:
quote:
I cannot emphasise enough how much I detest politicians.
I believe you have...
With great frequency!!!
Posted on: 03 September 2008 by tonym
quote:
Originally posted by scottyhammer:
JUST GOT BACK FROM TURKEY WHERE I WAS PAYING £1.75 FOR A DECENT PINT !
Turkish beer ain't half bad IIRC!
Around this neck of the woods the pubs are really struggling. Those that don't sell decent food just can't hope to survive. There's a super little pub just down the lane from us but since the landlord hasn't been able to recruit a decent chef we don't go there much, neither do many other folks. Who wants to sit in a near-deserted pub & pay over the odds for beer?
Sadly I think the days of the traditional pub are numbered.
Posted on: 03 September 2008 by steved
As someone who works in the industry, as both brewer and pub owner, I can empathise with the previous posters here about the price of beer.
It is important to realise how much the price is distorted by excise duty and VAT (tax on tax). With progressive beer duty, medium sized brewers like ourselves are at a very significant disadvantage compared to microbrewers, yet cannot get the economies of scale enjoyed by the big brewers.
All brewers have been hit with extreme problems with pricing and availability of their raw materials. They are also impacted directly by price increases in fuel and energy, which also affect virtually every other incoming cost. Much of this also applies to pubs.
Regarding the comparison of pub and supermarket prices, some brewers (though not mine!) are partly to blame by caving in to pressure from supermarkets and selling too cheaply to them (Stella being an obvious example). The problem is then compounded by supermarkets selling beer and other alcohol as a loss leader.
The gradual demise of the British pub is caused by many factors; it is not fair to lay all the blame at the door of the breweries. Both sectors of this industry are struggling at the moment, and much is due to the effect of Government legislation and taxation, inflation, and the general economic malaise.
I'm so depressed I need a pint!
Steve D
Posted on: 03 September 2008 by Bob McC
On the other hand I went to see my lad ay Uni in Leeds and we went for a pint in Wetherspoons. I couldn't believe how cheap it was.
Oh and by the way order a 'grande' beer in a bar in France and you'll think UK pubs cheap!
Posted on: 03 September 2008 by Stephen Tate
My local is £3.00 a pint ( popular beers/lagers/ciders) and is becoming increasingly empty, struggling to keep going.
A pub across the road selling the same drinks at £2.00 a pint (don't know how ) and is absolutely jam packed every night.
At weekends this pub struggles with demand.
It's obvious my local is doing something wrong.
Steve
Posted on: 03 September 2008 by Steve S1
Steve D,
I have every sympathy with the smaller brewer (or any small business, as it goes). But people think that the larger brewers care about pubs. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Over the years every budget increase was accompanied by one from the brewery. Even allowing for duty, draft beer and lager is extortionately priced over the counter. The breweries (sorry let's not dignify them with that noble title) the 'producers of beer' will always win because of the scale of sales they can achieve with supermarkets, hotels and food outlets (remaining pubs).
Steve
Posted on: 04 September 2008 by Ewan Aye
No, I said I cannot emphasise enough. It might be enough for you, but it's never enough for me.
Posted on: 04 September 2008 by Ewan Aye
I'm pleased that Steve can give an inside view on this.
Didn't we all complain at the very start of the changes to traditional pubs, say 15 years ago, that we wanted pubs to be places where you could go for a pint and socialise and not to be places for children to run around and 3/4 of the floor area to be laid out as a restaurant? I still fail to understand why pubs need to alienate their traditional customers in favour of less frequent visitors, being the meal eaters. I know it's all about costs and overheads, but what if all the catering crap was cut away and pubs went back to being pubs, with no more overheads other than heating, lighting and the landlord behind the bar. I might be wrong, but it seems to me that the attempt to take on the restaurants has failed, except by those few of course that are perfectly geographically positioned for family days out. The vast majority of pubs should be just pubs.
Posted on: 04 September 2008 by Ewan Aye
I was oop-north recently on a business trip and I stayed over at a small Yorkshire village/town. That evening I took my book and newspaper to a recommended local pub and noticed they had Old Thumper on the pumps, so had a pint of that (guest beer, obviously). I settled into a corner and there were 4 old boys on the next table, in their 70s & 80s. After a while I got chatting. I noticed that people had come in and one couple - city types*, asked for food. The landlord said "If you're quick you can follow those others that have just left because I've directed them to The crown".
It was great - just a small local country pub with good people, good beer and I was in heaven.
*You have to remember that after a couple of pints I wasn't a city type myself anymore. I was moving into the terrace cottage 3 doors down from Bert here and I had already been accepted into the community. I belonged here. I was never going back to London, and if I had had my flat cap already, it would have been on my head.
Traditional pubs. That's what it's all about (in my rose tinted naiveté)
Posted on: 04 September 2008 by hungryhalibut
We cannot afford to go to the pub these days, particularly when thay charge about £1.50 for a coke or orangina for the children on top of the £3+ price of a pint. However, at the sailing club, the beer is only £1.80, wine is £6 a bottle, coke costs about 40p and you can sit on the balcony and look at the sea.
Nigel
Posted on: 04 September 2008 by Roy T
quote:
On the other hand I went to see my lad ay Uni in Leeds and we went for a pint in Wetherspoons. I couldn't believe how cheap it was.
Once every couple of weeks I meet friends in a Wetherspoon pub and enjoy the cheap food and beer but I am concious that the staff never stop moving and I expect the hard working bar staff more than make possible the cheep food and drink. The price and atmosphere in the Wetherspoon pub differs markedly from the two Young's pubs I also visit but it is horses for courses with you paying your money and making your choice as where to spend an afternoon or early evening.
Posted on: 04 September 2008 by seagull
MMMMMmmmm Beeeeer, one of my favourite topics...
Sadly, the traditional pub is a dying breed but ...
I went to Oxford last week-end with Mrs S and used my instincts, having left my GBG at home, and found two rather excellent city centre pubs ("The Eagle and Child" and "White Horse" ), they shared several characteristics...
They both
- had that comfortable feel of a real pub, small nooks and crannies, a mixture of furniture - not identical uniformly spaced tables and chairs.
- served excellent beer in good condition. I tried Deuchars IPA, Timothy Taylor's Landlord, Wychwood Hobgoblin and White Horse Wayland Smithy.
- served food but we only ate in the latter.
- had connections with Lewis - CS Lewis and Sgt Lewis (and Morse of course!) respectively.
- were busy without being oppressively so with people dropping in for a drink or a meal then moving on.
I suspect that both would be heaving during term time.
