Possibly a thread elsewhere already but
Temple Bar has always been overpriced but €9 for a pint is pretty insane.
Roughly 90 pints per keg × 9 = 1800 per keg they must be making a pretty penny. I know rents, insurance, staff etc
Locally i paid €4.90 for a pint of Birra Moretti
So would or do you pay €9 a pint..
Nearly every pub here that's effectively agreed to serve one breweries products already sells one other product. Guinness in Heineken or C&C only bars, Bulmers in Diageo bars etc. So similar regs would have no impact here.
A lot of places in Dublin that were Heineken only now have Guinness and Wicklow Wolf Elevation at that, so even if it was a rule of two, they've done it already.
Not any more though. As I say 5/10 pubs in my town have gone Diageo only since November.
We need the license cap removed and the cost of a license dropped significantly inc costs of late opening licencing.
Once you dont need to pull in the same revenue to keep the bar open you have more freedom to stock the drinks you want to stock.
These regulation changes would not suit the big breweries.
Diageo rep offered my old local (closed now) €10k refurb “grant” on the condition they removed the O’Haras taps.
€80k is the rumoured amount for one of the places here.
What!? That can't be legal!
Heineken is not a universal beer any longer, locally anyway. Coors and Carlsberg are the big sellers. Carlsberg is nearly a euro cheaper than Coors. Heineken 0 is on tap alright but its day is starting to be done as well. Quality of Guinness is poor in my local so mostly the lager is the seller
I going to call BS on that.
From AI Google overview and from my own knowledge
In Ireland Diageo distributes and brews Carlsberg under license
So why would they be pulling one of their own popular brands for less popular ones?
CarLING is not Carlsberg.
Carling was MolsonCoors and is now Heineken distributed.
It's not because the deal won't say "to remove O'Hara's" it will be something like giving Diagio use of a certain amount of lines or maybe all of them.
Murphy's and Beamish never had an impact in Mayo because they are too Cork.
Mayo is a long way from Cork.
Back in the day you would never get the Cork Examiner in Mayo.
I'm not sure if the Irish Examiner is popular in Mayo now that it has been rebranded.
The first Murphy's tap in Mayo was in "La Choumier" a would be fancy French restaurant that is now Coxs, back in 1989.
It only lasted a few months.
Ok, thanks for pointing that out.
I can't read.
My bad, sorry, read Carling as Carlsberg.
No longer calling BS on it, sorry poster.
No harm if any of these illegal documents were to "accidentally" be made public
What illegal documents ?
There isn't anything illegal going on. It's like saying someone who takes out a Burger King franchise is breaking the law. Or a coffee shop that only sells one brand of beans is breaking the law.
Diageo deal, 100k over 3yrs to remove all opposition taps. One craft beer remaining (local). Anyone doubting me just visit a popular Hen & Stag venue in Co Leitrim and its the only pub NOT serving Coors.
I believe you. Could be the next town they are targeting. At least you have a craft beer.
In nearly every other country, and indeed in nearly any other industry in Ireland except wholesale of alcoholic drinks, exclusionary deals like this are illegal.
We've had interesting test cases in such minor things as ice cream fridge access; but the alcohol drinks industry is protected from this by the apparatus of the State deciding that its all OK for some reason.
That Heineken and C&C are at the same stuff and see it as legit competition also reduces the potential challengers to comparatively small companies with tiny funds for legal challenges.
Where are the LVA and VFI in all of this. They've been sitting back for the last ~25 years looking into the abyss at their industry sinking further and further and SFA in terms of action from them.
The Irish Pub is the last outlet remaining in every city, town and village across the whole country that can boast by and large they're family run units - the most of them are.
Almost gone are all the small independent family run retailers from small local shops, small local butchers, small local clothes stores, hardware stores and so on… even small farms are going.
The Pub has bucked the trend because it has been a very popular outlet throughout Irish history, but now it is seriously under threat too.
The VFI and LVA surely must looking at the trends of all of the above and see that pubs are next? If not - they are absolutely delusional. If they are - WTF are they doing about it?
There should be mass action by pubs to protest Diageo's and Heineken's stranglehold on the wholesale market. Refuse en masse to sell their produce any more, every single pub. Hit the bankers spelt with the W in the pocket. It's the only language they understand.
For it to work - every pub from Malin to Mizen need to get in on it. Cripple the suppliers.
Some will say that action will kill the pub. Well, might as well have the obituary tomorrow as the next day. It's coming anyways.
They are convinced that they can make at home drinking more expensive, e.g. via MUP which they full bloodedly supported and by lobbying for likely EU-level illegal differential duty on off-sales. And then that'll save them.
But it won't. And that's basically it for strategy.
None of them are willing to properly stand up to the big breweries, due to the likelihood that customers will just go to someone who isn't. When they get chances to sell stuff cheaper, they go for the easy option of making more margin cause its "premium" - most craft kegs cost less than the big brewery kegs do, but by **** are they ever cheaper as pints.
Intransigent Guinness drinkers, who believe every bit of folklore about their mass-produced pint, are a huge part of the problem here by the way. That crowd will not change to another pint, and hence it becomes impossible for a publican to stop selling it.
Additionally, any time they do some form of pro consumer action in unison, as rare as that is; they get threatened with anti cartel laws, e.g. there was a LVA price cut in the early days of the financial crash and they were told off for it.
And they are the people fueling the price rises.
None of them are willing to properly stand up to the big breweries, due to the likelihood that customers will just go to someone who isn't.
That there is why exactly the publican is held over a barrel - if you pardon the pun. That someone who isn't needs to be booted out of the VFI/LVA within 5 minutes of breaching the action. No comeback - and that needs to be made clear as day prior to any action.
The LVA/VFI need to have a much bigger clout in this game than they are displaying.
Not all publicans are members though. Also, many of them are only members in order to get insurance discounts or to have backup in the case of discrimination claims against them.
We need a coordinated professional protest movement. March into bars, get the Guinness bottles and kegs,
Bet Doran mmmmmm of drink some yes but most down the drain. Break up guinness lines on bar
It can't just be the "apparatus of the state" because it happens in other countries in the very same way. These deals don't officially exclude anything which is what makes them legal.
They are certainly not illegal in other parts of Europe.
How is there not a case taken against them by other brands?
Is that not clearly abuse of a dominant position which is illegal under EU Directive Article 102 ?
In my experience even the smallest breweries are cutting deals and handing out incentives so maybe it suits them or they just accept it because smaller suppliers are not even trying to compete with the top brands.
Even if it was made illegal the vast majority of pubs would still go to Heineken or Diagio. Publicans and customers are not suddenly go be all over craft beer because these deals stop.
It would be like a scene from Shameless 🤣.
That crowd will not change to another pint
Change to what exactly?
I've already said in order to change to another drink, you have to LIKE THE TASTE of the drink. It's not like changing from Ballygowan to another water.
Most people have a tipple that they like the taste of and they'll stick to it because they aren't mad about the other drinks.
It's not about "intransigence", it's about taste.
They can't afford it
Rather proving my point
