Last orders for the pint?

[Cork All Star]

My local Greene King pub sells Belhaven Black, which is proving to be quite a popular alternative to Guinness.

The Beer Orders Act was well intentioned but ended up being an utter disaster. The big brewers did run a cartel but at least they brewed beer (albeit a lot of it not very good) and had a vested interest in pubs. The PubCos which replaced them were only interested in squeezing every last drop of rent out of pubs and ended up being worse.

[Richard88]

The problem isn’t that pubs are too expensive, it’s that alcohol purchased off-trade (i.e. in supermarkets and off licences) is too cheap.

Both if you ask me although certainly the cheapness of supermarket booze is the bigger factor. You can fairly easily get 3 pints worth in the supermarket for the same cost as a single pint in many of the pubs round here. If money is tight then what do you do? Yes the pub is offering a better product, particularly in the case of real ales, but that’s a huge chasm. That said, getting little to no change out of a score for 3 pints, increasingly common in my neck of the woods, does sting a bit.

Of course it does as ever come back to property prices. I’d definitely go to the pub more if my mortgage didn’t eat up the thick end of half my take home each month, and I’m reasonably well paid with no kids to feed. I don’t know how some people manage it. Ludicrous rent and mortgage rates are a big part of the reason why going to the pub is now the luxury you rightly say it is.

There’ll always be a place for pubs though and I really don’t think they’ll disappear completely but it’s no doubt a smaller market than it used to be for the various reasons described here.

[Cork All Star]

Much of the cost of a pint in a pub is tax and duty. It is far higher than in other countries. I recall reading that when Britain was still in the EU, it accounted for something like 40% of the total tax haul on alcohol. That is crazy.

[Richard88]

I wonder what the response would be if taxes were increased on supermarket alcohol and reduced on pubs accordingly. Obviously a difficult balance to get right but surely it would make some form of sense.

I’d be interested to see what the figures are for duties on a pint and is the same amount payable regardless of the overall cost? I’m thinking of the difference between a Wetherspoons pint and your local independent which can easy be a couple of pounds. Is the difference purely the Weatherspoons business model or do they also pay less tax by selling it cheaper?

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