[sandin]

Originally Posted by syklops

What 'wrong' crowd might you be attracting selling pints at 3 euro?



Poker is definitely not past its hey day. Loads of my friends and I play regularly with Texas Hold'em being the most popular.

Wrong crowd - crowd who drink til their drunk and then just become stupid and noisy. A certain pub in Kildare went down this route and the regulars just moved on to a quieter pub. - The reguloars would have dropped in 2/3 times a week whereas the drunk types would load up once a week. Pub has since closed an re-opened.

Poker - heyday is truly gone. In 2006/2007 it would not be unusual for a rural pub to get 80+ players on a Tuesday night, now 15-20 is considered good.

Originally Posted by puffishoes

after spending most of the last two weeks around Ireland and many rural pubs. It seems they don't seem to be learning. Lots of dead pubs and over priced pints.

Reduce the cost of the pint = more punters = more atmosphere = profit.

What do yo call over priced. Decent pint of guinness is €3.80 or less in many pubs. For taht you get good pint, served to you in clean glass, comfortable seating, heating, entertainment / tv etc.

Cost of pint is about 1.65 (not sure exactly these days, but it was 1.58 2 years ago)
Of the 3.80, 71c goes in vat, 1.65 to guinness and 1.44 to the publican.

But even if the pub sells other drinks at higher margins, the average rural pub will make 1.50 on each drink.

Then you have the costs
Rates
Water Rates
Staff
Heating
Electricity
Sky TV
Cleaning
Rent if not owned
Licence fee

Excluding rent and running on a very tight budget, it would be difficult to get costs below €80,000 - add in 10k for rent and its min 90k.

That's 60,000 drinks that have to be served just to break even - Over 1000 per week.

Considering the only busy time is Sat night, its not hard to see how ends are not meeting for a rural pub - so lets knock the "too expensive" argument on the head, in reality its a cheap night out.

[puffishoes]

Originally Posted by sandin

What do yo call over priced. Decent pint of guinness is €3.80 or less in many pubs. For taht you get good pint, served to you in clean glass, comfortable seating, heating, entertainment / tv etc.

I'll have to go back over receipts but I don't recall being charged less than 4e for a pint and 12.95 for a bowl of stew

I don't want sky blaring in my ears or a band if I do, I'll go to a concert. I want to go to the pub to have a pint and a chat with my pals or other punters. The price of a sky sub for a pub must be outrageous? and the license etc get rid of this and give me the pint and the cheapest price possible otherwise I'm going to go to the off license and invite my friends to my home. This also causes them not to go to the pub and spend money.

I'm not claiming to be an expert in the field, I'm just explaining as a "punter" what will get me to the pub.

Something that has confused me over the years is i imagine the rents in Dublin for example are through the roof but generally pubs outside of Dublin's prices were fairly close which seems odd. if a pub in grafton st can do a pint for 4e surley a ruarl pub with much lower costs can go lower than 3.80?

[syklops]

Originally Posted by sandin

Wrong crowd - crowd who drink til their drunk and then just become stupid and noisy. A certain pub in Kildare went down this route and the regulars just moved on to a quieter pub. - The reguloars would have dropped in 2/3 times a week whereas the drunk types would load up once a week. Pub has since closed an re-opened.

Well that would follow on from my earlier advice of consult your regulars no matter what you do. Any major change risks alienating them and they will find elsewhere to go. That said so long as the new crowd spend more than the old crowd, then its an increase in takings.

Poker - heyday is truly gone. In 2006/2007 it would not be unusual for a rural pub to get 80+ players on a Tuesday night, now 15-20 is considered good.

Ok, I wasn't sure if by hey-day you meant its recent hey-day in the last few years, or the last time it was popular. 15-20 players on a tuesday night is still not to be sneezed at.

If the OP had 20 people coming in of a night, each of them drinking, I doubt this thread would exist.

What do yo call over priced. Decent pint of guinness is €3.80 or less in many pubs. For taht you get good pint, served to you in clean glass, comfortable seating, heating, entertainment / tv etc.

its 3.45 in my local at home(in the west), and 3.30 in my Uncles pub in west cork. 3.80 still feels a bit on the high side.

Considering the only busy time is Sat night, its not hard to see how ends are not meeting for a rural pub - so lets knock the "too expensive" argument on the head, in reality its a cheap night out.

A first class plane ticket could set you back a couple thousand euro. Just because the airline isn't making any money on it does not make it a cheap way to travel.

Its always been expensive to go to the pub and unfortunately its not getting any cheaper.

Originally Posted by Puffishoes

I'm not claiming to be an expert in the field, I'm just explaining as a "punter" what will get me to the pub.

As a punter, e.g. the guy who is handing over the money you are the expert in the field.

[Hanley]

Originally Posted by puffishoes

Something that has confused me over the years is i imagine the rents in Dublin for example are through the roof but generally pubs outside of Dublin's prices were fairly close which seems odd. if a pub in grafton st can do a pint for 4e surley a ruarl pub with much lower costs can go lower than 3.80?

Marginal cost and volume. The overheads as mentioned earlier are largely fixed, there's a lot more competition in Dublin so a cheaper price point attracts more punters without necessarily adding a huge amount of costs. Which means higher turnover and a better net margin.

Plus the bigger pubs doing more volume probably get better deals off suppliers, further increasing the net margin of each sale.

[mikemac1]

Sky must cost a lot

I'm no expert on the matter but I remember reading a British landlord getting their signal from Greece. Or maybe it was Norway.
Either way there were big savings and they won their case when it went to court

You get their local analysts at half-time and before and after and they won't be speaking English but who cares, just mute that and you'll get the English commentary for the match

Maybe ask the tech experts over in satellite forum.
Maybe nothing will come of this but worth checking out.

Better the money in your phóca then Rupert Murdoch

[WexTex]

Depending on the clientelle, you could have a wine tasting night. Could be very basic. Or have a wine of the week and offer free little taste. I might not think of wine, but if I liked it after tasting it, I'd get a glass. Take the ferry to France, pay the duty and you'll have easy drinking wines at €4-5 and very nice ones at €6-10. Have people vote on their favourites and you could carry those.

We would look for a little bit of child friendliness if having a meal at lunchtime, wouldn't take much, just something to keep them occupied: photocopied colouring pages, those beads on the wires, a safe area outside to play ..

[rainbowdash]

Whats scandalous with pricing is the €2.80 I paid recently for kids bottles of coke.

Went into a pub with kids recently for dinner and they should give cans of coke for €1, they would still be making 100%

Might encourage families in for food and a few drinks.

At a minimum pubs need to be seen to be offering some value in a recession.

[Hanley]

Originally Posted by WexTex

Depending on the clientelle, you could have a wine tasting night. Could be very basic. Or have a wine of the week and offer free little taste. I might not think of wine, but if I liked it after tasting it, I'd get a glass. Take the ferry to France, pay the duty and you'll have easy drinking wines at €4-5 and very nice ones at €6-10. Have people vote on their favourites and you could carry those.

We would look for a little bit of child friendliness if having a meal at lunchtime, wouldn't take much, just something to keep them occupied: photocopied colouring pages, those beads on the wires, a safe area outside to play ..

I'm sure there's some VAT/excise duty implications in here(??), so be careful to those considering.

[puffishoes]

Originally Posted by WexTex

Depending on the clientelle, you could have a wine tasting night. Could be very basic. Or have a wine of the week and offer free little taste. I might not think of wine, but if I liked it after tasting it, I'd get a glass. Take the ferry to France, pay the duty and you'll have easy drinking wines at €4-5 and very nice ones at €6-10. Have people vote on their favourites and you could carry those.

We would look for a little bit of child friendliness if having a meal at lunchtime, wouldn't take much, just something to keep them occupied: photocopied colouring pages, those beads on the wires, a safe area outside to play ..

I'm not sure there's much to be gained from a wine tasting evening if you don't plan on stocking a large selection of wine going forward and have the punters to drink it.

specialist wine shops in Dublin can't seem to fill a 10 seat wine tasting evening, not sure what hopes a rural pub has.

[syklops]

Originally Posted by Hanley

I'm sure there's some VAT/excise duty implications in here(??), so be careful to those considering.

Not if he pays the duty.

[puffishoes]

Originally Posted by rainbowdash

Whats scandalous with pricing is the €2.80 I paid recently for kids bottles of coke.

Went into a pub with kids recently for dinner and they should give cans of coke for €1, they would still be making 100%

Might encourage families in for food and a few drinks.

At a minimum pubs need to be seen to be offering some value in a recession.

The funny thing is when I worked in a bar as a much younger puffi, coke and the like were the biggest profit makers were you usually made 3-400% on it a lot of the time you got the soft drinks free with X amount of kegs etc too.

It really is outrageous the prices charged.

[mikemac1]

When I was a barman the most profit was

1. Mineral Water. Buy in Finches water for 69c and sell for 2.20, ca-ching
2. Minerals
3. Smirnoff Ice, Bacardi Breezer, WKD, etc. All sold for a fiver

Price of the pint was important of course but that certainly wasn't the most profitable product


I was going to include tea/coffee here but that machine costs thousands.
Not realy comparable to sticking minerals on a shelf


Every brand always had blue for still and greeen for sparkling
Tipperary Water just had to be different as they have it the other way around
I was constantly gettting the wrong bottle when someone asked for Tipperary
Head wrecker


We bought in Pepsi once, it's a larger bottle and we charged Coke prices so in theory we're giving you better value
Getting 30ml extra
Jaysus, you'd think I was offering bottles of piss.
"Have ya no Coke???"
We ended that and never trailed Pepsi again. Pepsi not popular in Ireland

[Squ]

Hows things op?