The price of a pint

It is just what the market will pay. OK, operating costs might be higher in Surrey, but that isn't what is directly driving the retail price. If costs don't justify the price and the margins are high on the pricey pint, in theory competing pubs will open and drive the price back down. If there are no licences or locations available, the high prices might stay. Whether the owner is making a killing depends on what they paid for the pub. If they paid a price (high) that reflected the high-margin pints and scarcity of competition then they are just getting a fair return on that investment. If they got in early and secured the property cheaply before anyone thought that people would pay GBP3.75 for a pint, then they've made a very good investment.

By the way, GBP3.75 or about $6 is what we pay here in a nice bar (pub) in a good location.

I dont buy that story either. Never had a bad pint in a spoons. Most of their pubs have up to 6 real ales on the go at any one time,multiply that by say 700 pubs thats an awful lot of beer thats just about to go off. A feeble excuse me thinks.

Cheers

Mista h

They get a lot of stick Wetherspoons, some of it justified perhaps but on balance Gawd Bless 'em...

Probably an attempt to discourage sorties from the likes of Weatherspoon clientele. 

A pint of beer used to be like a loaf of bread or a pint of milk - an SKU, or "single known item" in trade parlance. It was something you used to know the value of and which would be roughly the same price everywhere within a given area (South-East, Scotland, North-West etc). That's not true now. People charge whatever they can get away with. At the football we have to pay £3.80 for a 440ml (about three-quarters of a pint) plastic bottle of lukewarrm Carlsberg. I worked in a big ad agency until last year, and in the bar (yes, we had a bar at work! ) a pint of Peroni was £2. In the local hostelries it was about £4.75.

I do not really get the point here.

Not that I am trying to devalue the posts of those who hold a different view to me - and the most expensive pint I ever had was in Oslo Gardemoen Airport about ten or twelve years ago, which cost me about £6 or £7 of Norwegians Crowns. This was immediately after my grandmother's death ...

I did not complain, and I paid up. I did not like paying it, but with an hour to fill before the flight home, I fancied a pint of beer ... You might call it a rip-off, or you might call it capitalism at work. 

But a beer is no necessity, and it seems to me that it is strange to complain about the price of luxuries, which by definition are not necessities. 

When I read people talking about luxury items being expensive to buy, and in the case of hifi items expensive to maintain, I think to myself that the point is lost already. What sympathy can one have for such a view? In my opinion none. 

It is a strange priority to complain about the price of luxuries, when there are so many more pressing issues in daily life to address as a higher priority!

ATB from George

On the plus side - experienced.

On the negative -

Seems dubious authority on which to slur a company.

Where I come from beer is considered as staple.

When there is water, or tea, then a beer is clearly no necessity, though it is a simple pleasure which I enjoy, ...,  but I would not complain about the cost of it. If it is too expensive I'll get it somewhere less costly! 

I remember once going to a pub near the Royal Albert Hall in London with a bass-playing friend. The pub was called the Zetland Arms, and once I saw the tariff, I simply ordered two halves! We enjoyed these in the same time we would have enjoyed two pints, and thus we had just as a enjoyable a time for a reasonable cost! Certainly this proves that beer is no necessity however! 

ATB from George

If beer is a luxury then tea certainly is too.

Beer is a staple food as mentioned above; tea and coffee are not.

Dear Derry, 

Please do not selectively argue the point. I said with water or tea ... I never mentioned coffee! Perhaps I should have said, "with water available, beer is certainly a luxury."

ATB from George

Grapes are an important staple food for me. They come in glass bottles labelled "Three Barrels". Lovely when I can afford them.

Peter

With water available anything but water would be a luxury then (beer is 95% water anyway)?

Here in the States we have a concept of "voting with our feet," meaning if one is not happy, for example with the price of beer, leave for a less-expensive establishment !

Of course prices vary just as widely over here.  Our equivalent of 0.4l of warm Carlsberg is 12 oz of Bud Light or Coors Light at a baseball game for $7.  Fortunately, here at the ball park there are tucked away vendors of much higher quality beer for only $8   One beer per outing is usually my limit, due in part to the high prices.  Nor do I buy the high-priced low quality food inside the ballpark. But that's just me . . .  I complain about the price of beer yet spend $$,$$$ on hi fi.

Exactly. 

ATB from George

Are you an ascetic?

I have no idea about that! For others to judge perhaps?

ATB from George

Now that really would be to add two and two and make five.

Anyone can - in my view - complain about the cost of necessities, particularly where big business is making an overly large profit from the supply of such leads to an artificially high price for them.

Of course as we [as a civilisation] approach the ever more expensive ways to unlock fossils fuels, it may be that energy costs rise significantly even without profiteering ...

ATB from George

Hello George

The reason i started this post in the first place was to see if anyone on this M/B could in anyway explain/justify how one pub can charge £2.00 more than another pub for EXACTLY the same pint of beer. Maybe i am just becoming mean in old age but i felt that i had been ripped off,like at footie yesterday £2.75 for an almost cold bottle of Fanta which must be about 30p  to buy in a supermarket.

If anyone on here is connected with the pub trade i would love to here your views.

Mista H

Dear Mista H,

I reckon that in a free market situation, based in a Liberal style democratic culture, variable competition [and pricing according to what the market will bear] will always lead to quite wide price differentials. To prevent this sort of thing, one would need a command economy based in all probability within a dictatorial one party governmental system - be this Fascist or a Communist ...

Now one may think that our Western system occasionally throws up the possibility for profiteering [and wide variations in price for quite simple consumer products], but I would venture that this a better situation than a command style economy, whether the market is distorted to a completely level playing field price-wise, but I suppose it is a matter of personal opinion, as to which system produces better results overal  I am sure that there are faults in both systems.

ATB from George

Don't forget that the more money they print up to cover their stupidity, the higher prices on everything will go.  Inflation is not the price of items going up so much as it is the value of your currency going down.  And it is a stealth tax that hits the lowest income sector the hardest.

As for price discrepancies on a given item - much if that is context.  I went to an outdoor Phish concert in July in Dallas, TX and the venue concessions were charging $3.00 (in 2000 year dollars too) for 16 oz bottles of water.  But I was so hot & thirsty that I paid it and at the moment it seemed like the best money I had ever spent!