How £7 pints are destroying Britain's pubs

Telegraph

6 hours ago

Brian Whiting can still remember the first time he had to charge more than £5 for a pint of Guinness in one of his pubs.
'There was a regular who would come in most days and read the paper,' he says. 'The day I put it up to £5, he turned around, walked out and never came back.'
The reaction of his former customer just goes to show the depth of feeling about the price of a pint in Britain.
However, for publicans, incidents like this are becoming increasingly common. What was once an easy-to-afford commodity has, for many households, become too expensive.
Pub owners have been forced to repeatedly raise their prices in recent years after sharp increases in the cost of everything from beer itself to food, fuel and labour.
Many fear this has thrust them into a doom loop, where they must keep raising prices to stay afloat despite the risk of driving away cash-strapped customers.
'It's becoming very toxic,' says Whiting, who runs a string of pubs across the South East. 'You're so frightened, you've got to put prices up ... but you've got no choice but to do it.
'I worry that people think that landlords and publicans are just creaming it and making money. We work on tiny margins and we're trying to survive ... No one wants to charge those prices.
'I'm not sitting on a yacht anywhere.'
According to the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA), the average price of a pint across the UK rose above £5 for the first time this year. But for pub owners like Whiting, that figure seems strikingly low compared with what they actually have to charge.
The days when he could sell a pint for £5 and turn a profit are now a distant memory.
'You'll get a 'cooking lager' for mid-£6, but anything premium now is going over £7 for us,' he says.
James Ratcliffe, co-owner of The Black Bull in Sedbergh, Cumbria, agrees: 'Premium lager? We're at about £6.70 a pint now.
'When we first opened [in 2018], we had a pint on sale that was £4.95 ... We were worried about going over the £5 mark.
'The dilemma is that, yes, I can put [the price] up, and yes, people understand why it's going up, but there's a certain point where people say, 'I'm not going to pay it.''
Some large brewers have also been criticised for asking pubs to pay more.
Diageo, the parent company of Guinness, was accused of unfairly imposing price rises on the hospitality industry earlier this year.
Whiting warns the pint price doom loop is pushing customers out of pubs and into the supermarkets, where alcohol is significantly cheaper. 'It's not made life easy with supermarkets being able to sell booze so cheap,' he says.
Even though pint prices are typically much higher in London, the situation is worse outside the capital and other cities, Whiting believes.
'A lot of people go into a pub in a city and don't even know what they're paying,' he says. 'They tap with their card, and off they go. In a village, everybody wants to know how much the cost of a pint is.'
It comes amid a deepening crisis in Britain's pub industry. Nearly 300 pubs shut down across England and Wales in 2024 – the equivalent of six per week – according to the BBPA.
Nic Sharpe, director of the St John's Tavern in Archway, north London, highlights the barrage of costs facing landlords.
'My energy costs went up by £40,000 last year,' he says. 'Across the board, my wages are £25,000 more. The business rates have just gone up.
'It's like, f------ hell, I'm up on revenue from last year, but it's wiped out by the amount of costs.'
Sharpe's prices are approaching the £7 mark too. He currently sells a pint of Estrella Galicia lager for £6.50, which is cheaper than rival venues where he says he has been charged as much as £7.80 for the same brand.
Higher taxes have compounded problems.
Wage bills have become a particular worry in recent months after Rachel Reeves increased employer National Insurance rates.
The changes, announced in her October Budget, took effect in April and have hit the hospitality sector hard. According to a survey by the major hospitality trade bodies, one third of firms in the sector are now operating at a loss.
The Telegraph also recently revealed that some pubs have even had to start calling last orders as early as 9pm to save money on staff costs.
'We're living with [higher NI costs] now and we're passing it on, and we're having these conversations and I hate it,' says Whiting. 'The last thing I want to do is increase my beer price, I want my pub to be full of people.'
Ultimately, Sharpe believes swathes of smaller businesses will simply go bust. However, as many search for a stay of execution, one thing is certain – further price rises for punters.
'We're knocking on the door of the £10 pint,' says Whiting. 'It's inevitable.'