Publicans want 15% levy on off licence sales....

Here they go again, the vfi/publicans wont' give up on this !!! talk about ignoring the elephant in the room as to why they are struggling to survive

I was out with a couple of friends in a pub this weekend. About half way through the night I realised that I was fighting a losing battle with the sound system, my throat was hoarse from shouting at people and my ears were ringing from people shouting back. At one point I was waiting for lulls in the music just so I could squeeze in a few words every couple of minutes. Eventually I just gave up and complied with the pub was clearly trying to get the punters to do; stop wasting valuable drinking time chatting to your friends, I finished up my pint and got the hell out of there.

Needless to say that is yet another pub on the list of ones I won't be visiting any time soon. Honestly I think a lot of pubs have forgotten the reason people go to them in the first place (or at least why I'd go), to have a drink and a laugh with friends. Drowning out conversation might force people to drink more, but at the price of repeat business. I've no regrets in seeing pubs like that go out of business.

Cabaal wrote: »

This is a worrying aspect of many people in this country, we are certainly nothing like the French or Germany when it comes to drink. We drink to excess as a country.

Cabaal wrote: »

No the likes of France and Germany aren't stuck in the 50's, but at the same level it certainly has a overall healthier attitude to drink then Ireland as a country does.

Its more about the enjoyment and enjoying people's company and less about getting sh*tfaced in order to enjoy yourself.

Hmmmmm I've been to pubs in Germany which have their own dedicated areas for vomiting.

Clearly this is the VFI's latest Eureka moment after that whole "minimum-pricing" push didn't work out...

**** the VFI. They are a shower of complete **** and have no business intuition whatsoever. If they did, they'd readjust and figure out how to increase profits. But no, they're stuck in the Tiger and have no concern for their customers, they see them as wallets with mouths. They need to get their heads out of their holes.

I have zero sympathy for an industry that refuses to change it's ways. People are starting to realise that there's far, far nicer beer than the swill most pubs serve like Heineken and Budweiser, a new craft beer pub just opened in Limerick and its doing well so far. I wouldnt be a big beer drinker but having a few nice ones at home then having to drink whatever crap is on tap in most pubs makes me just want to drink spirits all night,and that gets expensive.

remember this back in 2005?


http://www.rte.ie/news/2005/0415/62034-alcohol/

The Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, has announced that the Government intends to create a new 'cafe-bar licence'.
The licence would require qualifying establishments to provide hot food on the premises as well as alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks during opening hours.
It is one of the proposals to be contained in the Intoxicating Liquor Bill.
The main purpose of the Bill is to streamline licensing laws by repealing all 600 existing provisions and replacing them with one Act.
All retail liquor licences will now go through the District Court, a new nightclub permit will replace the current exemption order and there will be new arrangements for theatre licence provisions.
The new cafe-bar licence will be available for premises smaller than 130 square metres and will cost less than the going rate for pub licences.
A cafe-bar would operate under the same opening hours as pubs.
Mr McDowell said he hoped the development would help encourage a shift away from binge drinking and would counteract the trend towards super pubs.

It's a proposal that might have generated jobs and was popular with the public.

The vintners assocation killed it. I remember seeing a programme at the time that stated that 1/3 of fianna fail back benchers were publicans. That's why the bill was killed.

They are money grubbing bastards who couldn't give a flying fcuk about their customers or even their staff. It's about the profit that they make.

I have little sympathy for the publicans, they need to adapt to fit the new drinking landscape. There are several reasons I don't like going to pubs

Cost. I am not going to pay ~€5 for a pint of horrible generic beer like Heiniken that I can get for a euro in an offie. I can't afford it, and even if I could it wouldn't be worth the money.

Noise. The 'music' is inevitably at a level where you have to roar at the top of your lungs just to communicate with the person beside you. When I go to a pub I go to socialise, not to sit drinking in deafened isolation.

Choice. I enjoy beer. I like craft beers. I like to support Irish craft breweries. I went out Saturday and I was happier to climb up and down three flights of stairs for a pint of something nice than I would have been to drink Heiniken from the bar on my floor. I do not like generic mass produced US lagers and am highly unlikely to frequent a pub which only stocks them. If you have to chill the lager to within a couple of degrees of freezing it's a bad sign; it means that it tastes like muck and they're chilling it to that point so it's too cold to taste.

Boredom. Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I like to do other stuff when I drink. Chatting to my friends is nice, but sometimes you can run out of things to chat about, so it's nice for a pub to have a pool table, or to loan out decks of cards, chess games, or other such amusements. Maybe they'd get damaged, but second hand shops generally have stacks of games and puzzles for only a couple of quid.

Sport. I have little interest in GAA (unless its my home county) and less in football. I am not going to sit in a pub that has the Premiership showing on multiple tellies regardless of how nice the pub is. If you're going to show sport on one telly put a subtitled film on another. It's especially annoying because it seems that >90% of pubs show sport so there isn't really anywhere to get away from it.

Stephen Fast Missile wrote: »

This isn't really the case. Craft beers etc are still a niche and most people (myself included) just want the run of the mill beers like Guinness, smithwicks, Heineken etc. if a pub doesn't have Guinness I will in general avoid it.

For most pubs it isn't worth their while having stuff out of the ordinary on tap. Most pubs stock a good few different bottles as it is. From speaking to one or two pub owners I know they just wouldn't sell enough on tap to stock any more than one or two non-main stream beers as they just sit in the tap and go off.

surely smaller kegs of the non mainstream stuff would be the way to go in that case.

Like many others I've started avoiding pubs because I'm sick to the back teeth of the stupid loud music that they insist on playing