Hmmmmm....£2.80 a pint of real ale in my local. However, slumming it in Weatherspoon's can see a pint obtained for as little as £1.70. I don't trust Weatherspoon's real ales - normally go the bottled Czech stuff at £2.10 before wandering off to a real pub.
£2.50 in my battle cruiser, wholesale prices have gone up about 17% since christmas last, and are set to go up even further as higher fuel costs filter into the equation. Alot of pubs are only passing on some of the costs as it'd simply shock punters out the doors if they passed it all on, they're absorbing the rest and hoping it'll get better. It's a perfect storm really, crop failures, high fuel costs, inflation in cereals, taxation, super markets selling at below cost, the impact of deregulated licensing; it used to be hard to buy booze outside of a pub, now it's hard not to be confronted by stacks of lager piled high down your local mega-market, forecasts are a 40% drop in sales through pubs over the next ten years which means, of course, a monumental culling - your local probably won't be quite so local much longer.
Did you get into the pub game before or after the smoking ban Ploughman? The reason I ask is that up here the ban has pretty much killed off quite a few once busy pubs.
After, I wouldn't have gotten into it before. I did smoke but now loath the weed with all the demented passion of a convert. The pub I bought was on its knees so it's hard to say what impact the ban has had here, but in general it has had a serious impact on alot of pubs causing a significant loss of trade, and been a real source of conflict with gaggles of smokers making noise/blocking pavements and access to the pubs/****ing off the neighbours and nearby businesses.
The Irish experience has been a drop in trade followed by a recovery to very nearly pre-ban levels, we've yet to see a recovery here in England and Wales, and if it does come it'll be hard to spot amongst all the other challenges pubs are experiencing at the moment.
Or just go to Tesco's and get 16 bottles of Becks for £7.99 I used to love pubs when I was younger,but these days I don't know how any of them survive.
Originally posted by Ploughman: ...and been a real source of conflict with gaggles of smokers making noise/blocking pavements and access to the pubs/****ing off the neighbours and nearby businesses.
Yeah, that became a real issue up here. I live directly opposite a police station which has a pub right next door (the pub has closed within the past few weeks).
Over the years it wasn't uncommon to see half a dozen cops charge out of the station and into the pub only to re-appear a few minutes later with prisoners and wounded in tow. But after the smoking ban came into force there seemed to be a permanent police presence outside the pub trying to keep the pavement clear. I wouldn't be surprised if the police had some part in the pubs recent closure.
Originally posted by Schwarz.13: I have to say that the smoking ban in Scotland, despite the initial slumps in trade and furore, has been a resounding success!
Yeah, it's been a success in that folks can't have a smoke with a pint any more. But I wonder how much of an increase there has been in people drinking at home as a result of the smoking ban? Isn't it generally accepted that if people are going to drink it is best done in a licensed premises? I really think it should have been left to the landlords to decide what type of pub they wanted to run.
