Man your pumps, Wetherspoons are coming

Hootanany

I'm almost sure I had a pint & a Steak for a fiver in Brum last year.

Caonima

Hootanany wrote: »

I'm almost sure I had a pint & a Steak for a fiver in Brum last year.

Holy jesus :eek:

Heroditas

ButtersSuki wrote: »

To listen to Padraic Cribbin again and again spout the agenda-driven nonsense he comes out with in the face of all available evidence is beyond laughable at this stage. That he continues to get airtime on national airwaves is almost as comical.

Funnily enough, what he says on the airwaves is very different to what he says to the vintners themselves!


Anyway, regarding Wetherspoons, they should rent out the ground floor of the disused Montrose Hotel and slap a large bar into it!
A university across the road with no bar.... Bingo!

Drkitkat

Caonima wrote: »

Holy jesus :eek:

That sounds about right we used to get two steak meals and a bottle of wine for a tenner. You couldn't make it as cheap at home.

Caonima

Drkitkat wrote: »

You couldn't make it as cheap at home.

Yep, unless running at a serious loss.

Not sure how it'll work vis-a-vis regulations in Ireland, but if they can weigh in for a steak and a pint around e8, people will be interested. That said, the southside is an unusual place.

Well, best of luck to them. Bit of long-overdue competition in town. 加油

Colonel Sanders

drumswan wrote: »

Irish people have shown for decades they don't care about beer quality. The beer in wetherspoons is better than the beer in your average crappy Irish pub,

+1

In my experience Wearherspoons are bland enough places but at least they have selections of cask & fridges full if world beers

pconn062

If it increases competition and maybe brings the Irish publicans back down to earth bit then I am all for it. I was in one on England before and would probably never set foot in one again, but if their arrival means the pubs here have to buck up their ideas then that can only be a good thing.

Technocentral

Tabnabs wrote: »

Cheap and cheerful or souless and bland. You'll get to decide at a location near you soon enough.



http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/retail-and-services/british-pub-chain-wetherspoon-set-to-acquire-dublin-bar-1.1511162

Can't be worse than the 90% of pubs in the country that just sell lager piss and Guinness, with maybe Budvar as a half decent option if one is lucky.

Geuze

Hootanany wrote: »

I'm almost sure I had a pint & a Steak for a fiver in Brum last year.

"Steak night" price is more like 8 stg for steak + pint.

No prices on JDW website, as prices vary across pubs.

I found this:

https://www.shesaidbeauty.com/va7cyc/blog/tuesday-means-steak-night-at-wetherspoon-267628

Two steaks + bottle of wine = 19 stg

Geuze

Drkitkat

I'm going back a couple of years Weatherspoons in Cheam used to do two steaks and a bottle of wine (not 2 glasses) for 10 quid. It was grand.

Colonel Sanders

I once had "steak" in a Weatherspoons in Cheltenham

The quotation marks say it all....

coylemj

If it shakes up the local market then good luck to them, Tonic in Blackrock is long overdue a major refit. There are too many bland pubs in the suburbs with not much to recommend them. I can't see JDW not buying from the local suppliers because until they have a decent size chain of pubs here it won't be economic to ship in barrells of beer or crates of minerals from the UK to a single or small number of pubs.

n97 mini

Colonel Sanders wrote: »

I once had "steak" in a Weatherspoons in Cheltenham

The quotation marks say it all....

I once had a steak in a Dublin pub for €24. "WTF!!!"

The quotation marks say it all....

Cienciano

The people make a pub. Head into any pub with a group of friends and nowhere is souless. I hope we get a few more around town. The food is hard to beat at that price and they have an excellent selection of beers. And they don't have those rip off little glass bottles of coke, they have a dispenser gun.
Whatever you think of them, it can only be a good thing for the customer in Dublin.

teotihuacan

Not a steak man myself, but my old fella had a steak each time we went there (three times in 3 weeks). He knows his steak. He reckons it's the best steak he's had anywhere. So the quotation marks around "steak" aren't fully justified. I had the burger, couldnt fault it. And as a UCD student i'll surely head down to scope the place

anncoates

What a snob fest this thread is.

dd972

Wetherspoons food is edible, cheap and not quite rubbish, that's the best you could say about it, in the UK the pubs tend to reflect where they are, go to one in Norwich or York and it'll be civilized and relaxed and a magnet for mature punters, students and tourists, go to one in Slough or Luton and it'll be a fairly dismal experience, full of Sun readers getting bladdered, just about a step up from a Foster's swilling cesspit with a pool table.

Some of the better ones in better places are fairly ornate and pleasant places for a drink.

Caonima

n97 mini wrote: »

I once had a steak in a Dublin pub for €24. "WTF!!!"

The quotation marks say it all....

You lads are mental, eating steaks in pubs all the time. If I want a decent steak, I go to a decent restaurant. If I want beer, I go to the pub. I lack this Venn diagram of "beer" and "steak" that ye seem to operate with.

Creamy Goodness

if pubs were to copy only one thing from JDW, please copy the contactless payment terminals. more dublin pubs NEED these.

seanmacc

Wetherspoons are the pub/restraunt equivilent of Ryanair (Although I'm not sure if they treat their staff crappy). They will basically buy their product from the cheapest suppliers around and will actively low ball suppliers which is a good thing. Believe it or not the main reason the price of a pint is through the roof in many pubs in Ireland is because of the likes of Diageo and Co. They will also shop around for their meat and other foodstuffs too. If you get a fantastic steak one week and a crap one the next thats why.

I used to manage an off licence attached to a pub a few years ago and we were able to scource Coke, 7up ect from an unamed supplier in the North for half the price Diageo and C&C (full legit). Granted they didn't take the returns of the glass bottles but the local bottle bank did well off us. They used to offer us cans of Guinness 25% cheaper than Diageo and Heineken and Budwieser about 30% cheaper than the other suppliers (Although it was the 5% stuff). I'd imagine Wetherspoons will start getting kegs of Blackthorn, Carling and Tennents from the North and probably be able to charge under 3 euro a pint for it. If a few Weatherspoons pubs pop up it might spur Diageo and Co to stop being so hungry.

That being said I've been to the Weatherspoons in Derry a few times, it is cheap and cheerful but its not the sort of pub you'd sit in for a prolonged period of time. The atmosphere is not great, no racing during the day and no music at night. It is probably designed that way so as to discourage the all day drinkers.

Surveyor11

Be interesting to see how it pans out, I lived in the UK for 5 years and was in the odd JDW - mostly SE England, a few up North as well. Can be a mix of experiences. Some are fine, you'd stay there for a few and move on. Probably rare I'd spent a night there. Some are thoroughly miserable, dodgy and would stay clear. So it'll be interesting to see what 'atmosphere' this creates. Will also be interesting to see how the pricing structure translates here - when I was in the UK, they used to pints for 99p (a few year back, mind you). For cheap beer and a decent selection, it's decent enough from that point of view.

ciaran76

I think the big question really is will they follow the UK model.
With wages and insurance being higher here I can't see it being as cheap.
We will wait and see I suppose and any new competitor to the market can only be a good thing.
I hope!

Banjoxed

£2.05 for a very well kept pint of Abbot Ale in the Diamond in Derry during the Fleadh. If that's the future then the spin merchants for Diageo, VFI and other self-interested groups can go play on their own flutes for that

adamski8

I think its good news anyway. if its not your thing then dont go, at worst it will take a lot of knob heads out of the pubs you do go to

stehyl15

An english pub in ireland is not right if you've been a pub in england you've been in them all they're all kips whether a chain or independent. I dont mind english shop chain like poundland that produce competition but not pubs which we have a tradition in this could change pubs in ireland forever.

mfceiling

stehyl15 wrote: »

An english pub in ireland is not right if you've been a pub in england you've been in them all they're all kips whether a chain or independent. I dont mind english shop chain like poundland that produce competition but not pubs which we have a tradition in this could pubs in ireland forever.

I take it you've been in every pub in england:rolleyes:

Have you been to any of the small country pubs in cornwall - near fowey perhaps? Little pubs beside lovely rivers that serve great food and a brilliant selection of beers, with clean toilets and immaculate garden areas.

Probably not - have you been in the cuckoos nest or the dolphin house? Traditional irish pubs alright.

stehyl15

mfceiling wrote: »

I take it you've been in every pub in england:rolleyes:

Have you been to any of the small country pubs in cornwall - near fowey perhaps? Little pubs beside lovely rivers that serve great food and a brilliant selection of beers, with clean toilets and immaculate garden areas.

Probably not - have you been in the cuckoos nest or the dolphin house? Traditional irish pubs alright.

yea but you cant get tayto in them also the guiness in england tastes like piss

Geuze

seanmacc wrote: »

I used to manage an off licence attached to a pub a few years ago and we were able to scource Coke, 7up ect from an unamed supplier in the North for half the price Diageo and C&C (full legit). Granted they didn't take the returns of the glass bottles but the local bottle bank did well off us. They used to offer us cans of Guinness 25% cheaper than Diageo and Heineken and Budwieser about 30% cheaper than the other suppliers (Although it was the 5% stuff). I'd imagine Wetherspoons will start getting kegs of Blackthorn, Carling and Tennents from the North and probably be able to charge under 3 euro a pint for it. If a few Weatherspoons pubs pop up it might spur Diageo and Co to stop being so hungry.

Thanks, can you clarify:

a NI-based wholesaler was able to sell cans of Guinness, delivered to an RoI shop, 25% cheaper than the shop paid their local RoI wholesaler?

Off-licences buy cans/bottles from wholesalers, not direct from Diageo, isn't that right?

Geuze

stehyl15 wrote: »

An english pub in ireland is not right if you've been a pub in england you've been in them all they're all kips whether a chain or independent. I dont mind english shop chain like poundland that produce competition but not pubs which we have a tradition in this could change pubs in ireland forever.

A sweeping generalisation.

I've been to plenty of good pubs in Liverpool, London and Edinburgh.

OK, the JDW chain can be clinical, formulaeic, yes, with little or no character. But there are plenty of good pubs in Britain.