I’m not familiar with the UK, but is the tax on alcohol at pubs higher than at a store? My general understanding was that people have just shopped visiting pubs for other reasons - like diluted drinks, crappy food, loud music, etc.
People stop visiting crappy pubs if they have diluted drinks (quite rare, UK is very strict about being served exact alcohol measures, there is very little free pouring in the UK and many people would spot other drinks being diluted), crappy food (sadly all too common), loud music (age related), etc.
But not many pubs are crappy in these respects.
The main reasons why fewer people are visiting average or good pubs are:
* cost of living is going up so many people have less disposable income
* the younger generations are much less interested in alcohol than previous generations
The latter point is an interesting one. There are two wildly different drivers for this that I’ve witnessed.
Many of the under 25s now either don’t drink alcohol at all, or only drink a fraction of what their elders did. Many prefer to just go to the gym instead (which is the millenials third space).
On the flip side, some of the children of my friends and family say that alcohol in pubs is just too expensive, so they get their kicks from recreational drugs like weed or ket.
The number of people who have the disposable income to go to the pub regularly is falling in the UK, and the mainstay of the pub was often the working class and they are being priced out by everything getting more expensive.
There aren’t enough people with enough disposable income to weather the storms and keep going to the pub regardless, and therefore pubs (in general) are in deep trouble.
> is the tax on alcohol at pubs higher than at a store?
No, but the tax on food - which is where a lot of money lies, for most pubs in this day and age - is. Also, business rates end up being significantly higher per unit of alcohol sold. This means stores can keep alcohol prices very low (even under cost, as a promotional item).
Add to that that alcohol consumption rates are decreasing overall, sugar tax affecting non-alcoholic drinks, energy prices skyrocketing, etc.
Bars and pubs aren't really competing against the store or restaurants, they're competing against you drinking alone or with only close friends. If stepping in to have a beer and shoot the shit would cost a significant chunk of a day's wages, you just won't do it, but if I can buy more beer with an hours wages than I can drink in an hour, it's not a bad time.
Weatherspoons charge under £3 for a pint in town. That's 15 minutes at minimum wage.
Beer was far more expensive 25 years ago - £1.60 in 2000 in the student pub when I first started buying my own beer, that was about half an hour at minimum wage.
On the cost side: Wages are higher, energy costs more, rent is higher (because if the pub can't operate the owner can get planning permission to convert it to a private dwelling and sell it for £600k rather than making £12k a year in rent)
On the demand side: People are healthier and drink less. It's nowhere near as acceptable to go out for a few pints at lunch time. People can't drive to a rural pub.
The thing is, they've purchased so many historic pubs, that if you refuse to drink at one that's a choice. I'm not saying that's a terrible choice, but it's a choice that bars you from an awful lot of pubs.
Not really. Applebee’s is still too food oriented.
Wetherspoons are definitely pubs. They just have a reputation for cheap drinks and cheap meals. But there’s still a significant proportion of people who go there for drinks only.
It’s more like a drinking warehouse with carpet on the floor and a menu of mostly beige food than a larger version of a cosy country pub with a roaring fire and a varied food menu sometimes involving vegetables that have not been deep fried.
It's the VA for survivors of the 1980s as it doesn't allow music or TV inside, so tends to get ignored by the soccer followers of a weekend and the younger generation entirely.
TBF their curry club and other food specials are basically subsidising old bachelors to the point of being an ersatz social service @ £8.45 to £11.45, including a drink, for 12 hours of service every Thursday.
Generally speaking, its best described as the RyanAir of pubs. It gets you there, cheaply, but the juice may not be worth the squeeze in terms of ambience and clientele.
no music or tv? that sounds fucked... why don't ppl just drink in a park? iirc public drinking is actually legal in the uk?
(I know in some countries it's actually not -- Bratislava being one surprising example, though some cops were really chill when I was like hey sorry, I thought this was allowed, it's cold out so I bought a pounder and I wanted to warm up on the way to my hostel I'm not trying to bother anyone... though maybe they may have been letting me slide mostly because they were amused by what a pounder is once I defined it)
(A pounder is a big can of beer that got it's nickname because American frat bros will "pound" (chug) it to get very drunk quickly in places where the sales of beer are looser than liquor)
Isn’t it a pounder because it’s 16oz (US fluid ounces) which is a (US) pound?
(Note a US pint is about 474ml compared to the UK pint which is 568ml).
Of course US fluid ounces are a different size to UK (Imperial) fluid ounces. Plus the UK has 20 (Imperial) fluid ounces in a UK pint whilst the US has 16 (US) fluid ounces in a US pint.
How does it go? “A pint’s a pound the whole world around, except the UK where a pint of water is a pound and a quarter.”
As for drinking in a park, it is either something you do in the height of summer, or something you do if you are a tramp. There’s not much middle ground.
I have been to a nice ones, like the one in Exeter (but the owner is from there so that figures); I forgot the other two that were nice. Not many nice ones but they do exist.
Most expensive pint I've paid round here was £6, so pubs are about 2x that - about half hour of adult minimum wage, same as spoons charged 25 years ago.
So how do spoons make a profit?
The main difference that I see is that they buy cheap properties and thus don't have crushing rents.
What this page doesn't show is the increase in rent for these buildings.
One thing I've heard is that they have consistent high throughput so they will buy beer that's closer to expiry and hence cheaper, because they know people will drink it before it goes off.
Dunno how much of an effect that is, it can only account for so much.
Think about the price of a keg of beer - much cheaper/pint than buying beer at a pub or from anywhere else in a smaller size. Very high-volume customers have contracts with distributors that can get them even better deals, sometimes significantly better.
Alcohol is pretty much always sold at a huge markup though - 4-5x is standard in the US. UK regulation might be different, but it's likely that the majority of costs in the pub business are in insurance and licensing rather than alcohol and rent.
To be fair actually £6 a pint does sound more like it, I think I'm getting confused with rounds (so I most often spend £10-£12, but I'm buying two pints)
