Man your pumps, Wetherspoons are coming

Only Indians?

I have a tinge of regret not having visited the Carlow, Waterford or Cork pubs.

A few weeks ago after a drop-off at the airport, I parked in Swords at 10am and had a breakfast in the pub.

So I have by now visited all seven Dublin pubs, one of which has since closed.

It is astonishing that they can profitably sell pints of beer for 2.05 in the suburban Dublin pubs in 2024.

The thing is that the lager drinking side of the average Irish pub drinker has changed dominant lager many times.

Heineken only became what it is now in the mid-late 00s; Carlsberg and Harp having traded position for decades before that and with periods of other brands in the ascendency. Miller was absolutely huge for a long time and has nearly completely faded away - I can't consciously remember seeing it in an offo recently let alone on draught.

Prior to the mid-late 00s, Heineken was a punchline about rugby boys; not the #1 lager in pubs.

Harp was the main beneficiary of Budweiser changing distributor/licence brewer here - it went to C&C and most of the taps stayed with Diageo; if a bar already had Carlsberg, Rockshore and Hop House they could offer them Harp. Budweiser on-sales presence is now tiny, at least anywhere I go - guaranteed there's some clusters around the place where its common, like how Carling is in Donegal.

It's a better product than Budweiser also.

Problem with Harp is that you have about 2 generations of people who despite never tasting it, or not tasting it since their teens, will insist that Harp is a terrible beer!

I believe it may have been the top lager seller (in a crowded market, so top being sub-20%) in pubs for longer; but was initially far, far less dominant in off sales than now.

The best detailed figures I can find are from 2008 when Heineken bought Beamish & Crawford, so by the time the rugby boy joke image was pretty much shaken off; and even then they weren't really strangling off-trade. Yet.

Heineken Ireland had 22% of lager off-trade with Diageo - primarily Budweiser, based on other figures in the docs - having 32.5%; On-trade for lager they had 43.8% to Diageos 41.4%. B&C had a much higher off-trade, likely Miller; and Comans 8.2% pretty much solely from Dutch Gold!

(on a side note, you can see consistent off-trade growth over the period for Gleeson - I can't remember what they were importing at the time. Its not Corona, that was Barry & Fitzgerald back then edit: Bavaria)

Looking at newspaper archives and it seems everyone claims to have been on top, everywhere, at the same time. A claim that Holsten Pils had 20% of the market "in Dublin" at one point in 1985 for instance. Seriously doubt that's real, but it was from a marketing puff piece and printed as fact. Something newspapers still do to this day.

Oh, I was really talking about the on trade.

I wonder what share of the market Dorfmeister cans had.? Got through a lot of them in the day, along with Fosters ☺️. Royal Dutch (not Dutch Gold) fitted in that category, too.

If it was 5% and priced at £1, it was premium! Never understood those paying over the £1 for weaker beer!

Royal Dutch 5 for a fiver, iirc Dutch Gold was 6 for a fiver iirc. Always went Royal personally.

We're off topic but Coors is huge in a lot of Galway towns recently.

can someone please explain to me how westherspoons with much cheaper drink and good value food, especially compared to the competition, had to close all its venues outside dublin???

And remember the venues had a lot of money put into them.

Wrong type of mnc beers.

Staff in the Waterford branch were always top notch, never had an issue.

Can’t comment on other branches.

The thing I don’t get is any time I was in there they were doing a steady good trade, and a very good trade during Christmas etc.

Maybe they needed to be packed solid all the time to make a real go of it??

The Dún Laoghaire and Cork branches were the ungodly messes where I experienced this. It feels like they had an issue holding on to capable staff. Now to be completely fair it seems to be variable by branch

We were in the one on abbey street last weekend, fantastic interior and great location but when we sat down to eat there was a constant clatter as staff were dumping glass bottles into their bin. Simple logic of creating a nice space for punters seems to be missed

No it isn't.

Loads of pubs still doing very well in the places that Wetherspoons set up.

Also Wetherspoons are doing just fine in the English towns where transport is as bad or worse than Ireland.

And "conservative" I would call higher standards. The quality of pubs around the Spoons in Ireland is clearly just seen as worth the extra money for the average Irish customer. People were obviously happier with what was already on offer.