Price of a pint !

yeah i can see that re tourists, still plenty coming in which is great. some ppl i know - they own businesses both north and south cc, they see the rises and falls with seasons, and one of them was telling me about three hotels beside them, that are recently new-ish. I couldnt believe it.

the booze industry wont survive on using tourists alone, but i agree, ppl have no issue it seems paying the nuts prices being charged. but with the prices they are charging they seem happy to gamble. id like to see them have a warning shot wakeup call , might get them back to reality. but i think the greed and seething sloth of ripping ppl off is too great a taste.

thats us, the route we went. we'd only go for the beers now and then. its not as weekly as it used to be, by miles. And we're not the only ones, friends the same.

Contrary to what many say the cost associated with the beer itself is not the only driver of the price of the pint. Staff wages and overheads per pint are higher than the cost per pint from Diaego etc which for a Guinness is about 2.10 plus excise of about 0.55c I believe. With scale the mass producers you would imagine be able to produce for less than they do but they are not going to turn a 6.50 pint into a 5 euro pint. But pubs could definitely get some deals for customers if they were willing to take other products and drinkers were willing to change their drink also.

Weatherspoons are using their purchasing power to get cheaper deals but there is no way there is profit on a 2.05 pint. If everyone went in a drank Abbot Ale for example they would lose money. But its a loss leader enticing people in the door. One person in a group may have it, but others will take different options where there will be some profit, order food etc. What Weatherspoon's do however is focus relentlessly on wages and overhead which leave the overall cost base lower that your regular bar

The big difference I see from say 30 years ago in the pub business is than in many cases the owner/operator of the bar and their family often filled many of the shifts in a bar. This was always more common in rural areas and is part of the reason for pints being cheaper outside the cities where often bars have managers and staff at all hours and high rentals rather than being owner operated with lower rental and wage costs. There are bars now starting to run offers during low footfall times which probably use the lower staff requirements at these times to facilitate offering a lower pint. Offers like the below. But the key is getting numbers through the doors consistently as the fixed costs are not going to change but the more pints you sell the lower the fixed cost per pint, which is another thing that helps Weatherspoons with their model to get people through and consuming pints / food as soon as possible to serve as much as possible.

We will hopefully see pubs with offers like the below trying to address this

Count yourself lucky. Thats cheap nowadays.

+100%, good point.

My two points are:

(1) pubs complain about costs, including excise duty, but never blame Diageo + Heineken

(2) people complain about prices, but won't switch

The three Spoons outside Dublin closed. If consumers changed their behaviour, that should not have happened.

I should see more Beamish and the likes of White Hag Darkness at €5, but I don't.

The Auld Triangle on Dorset street should be thronged - maybe it is, I don't live in Dublin

The Lark Inn on Meath street should be busy - to be fair, it usually is when I visit

Blue Note would be a relatively low overhead bar I would imagine which is likely the reason they can charge 5euro. Once overheads and wages are factored in there is no way White Hag supply the beer at a low enough cost to make the differential between 5euro and 6.40 per pint. Would need to supply at under 1 euro per pint plus excise. They would however have lower staff costs Id imagine being a small pub serving no food and also if they own the premises would have no rent. Being there 25 years I assume they own it?? So lower overall overheads is likely what allows them to charge 5 euro

Which given they were approached by the brewery leads me to think that Diageo and the vintners may collude to set the price of a pint at what the market will bare as if there is profit in a 5 euro craft beer pint in the blue note, other smaller, owner ran pubs in the area should be also able to provide 5 euro pints of Guinness and still turn a profit.

I’ve never seen it in Dublin to be honest.
Im heading dub laoghaire direction on Sunday and I think there’s a Wetherspoons that direction that I’ll have to look at.

if there was demand there would be the offering. What they don’t want is barrels sitting half full for weeks which is why they carry what sells on tap and if they offer craft beer on bottle only.

Good beer at reasonable prices is what people look for. Craft or otherwise. In fact I think many places missed a trick by pitching locally sourced beer a premium product. In most countries what comes from the local brewery is actually cheaper. The new breweries should focus on building a market. Good quality local beer supplied to local pubs at a reasonable prices. That’s the way it used to be until Guinness started buying up all the local breweries and shutting them down.

My ideal pub has a stout, an ale and a lager on tap, sourced locally, with a “special tap” for one offs and seasonals and a guest tap for good deals or beers from other areas.

Is it more of a popularity thing?

I'm old enough to remember when everyone was mad into Budweiser.

Now it's the local beers, IPAs, etc.

"Rockshore seems to be the big one now"

Next to nobody drinks Rockshore unless they're forced to as a festival/event that only have it on tap. The marketing for it is massive but absilutely everyone I know or have spoken with about it describe it as píss.

Moretti and Madri are the "hipster" lagers these days.

I'd disagree that they all pretty much taste the same, I wouldn't drink a Budweiser or Miller if they were free, I drink Carlsberg 99% of the time, so no one would consider me a lager hipster.

Furstenberg, that's one I haven't heard of in a while.