Six pints for £50: How the soaring cost of a pint is killing off the pub round

Telegraph

03-04-2025

The etiquette bible Debrett's says we should do it. The late philosopher Roger Scruton called it 'one of the great British institutions'. And we've all tutted at friends who have slyly ducked out of this sacred national ritual.
I'm not talking about queuing, obsessing about the weather or standing up for the national anthem. I'm talking about getting a round in at the pub – and it's a British tradition that's under threat because of soaring beer prices.
The average price of a pint is set to rise by 21 pence to more than £5 for the first time in history, according to the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA). This might come as news to Londoners and residents of other big cities, where a pint regularly costs £8. But added to other cost-of-living pressures, the time-honoured notion of standing a round of drinks for the entire group you're with is dying. When four pints of lager and a packet of cigarettes can set you back £50, you can see why.
'Younger people can't afford to buy rounds anymore,' says Luke Bird, 30, the manager of the Four Quarters pub in Peckham, south London. 'Everyone's just far more price-conscious. If there's a two-for-one deal, people will maybe pair up. We do shots deals – five for £15 – and that's usually helpful if people want to do something communal.'
Sir Tim Martin, the founder and chairman of Wetherspoons, which has around 800 boozers in the UK, says people are buying full rounds less regularly in his pubs. 'I suspect yes, in general. Unfortunately, statistics show that pubs have lost half their beer trade to supermarkets since the year 2000, a staggering decline. Inevitably, as the price gap for a pint has widened between pubs and supermarkets, due mainly to the punitive tax inequality, round-buying has declined,' Martin says.
As beer prices get frothier than a badly pulled pint of mild, people's behaviour is likely to change further. 'A £5 pint as standard might mean that people can't afford a night out at their local,' Ash Corbett-Collins, the chairman of the Campaign for Real Ale, tells me, although he adds that the price rises are 'no surprise'.
The cost of a pint is rising because of Rachel Reeves's Budget announcements from last autumn – the reduction in business rates relief for pubs, the increase in their Employer National Insurance rates and rises to the national minimum wage – coming into effect at the start of April, the BBPA says.
In London, the average price of beer will be heading towards £6 a pint but in many London pubs, the cost has long breached £7 and a round of five pints can be pushing £40.
Separate research lays bare the stark economic and social realities facing pubs and drinkers alike.
The average spend per person per pub visit has risen by an eye-watering 55 per cent in just two years, to £23.97 (including food), according to figures from Lumina Intelligence's Eating and Drinking Out Panel and its Pub & Bar Market Report 2024. Regular pub-goers visit a pub just 1.2 times a week, and a fifth of them never or rarely drink alcohol, a figure that's predicted to rise as Britons become more health-conscious. It's no surprise that an average of 34 UK pubs are closing every month.
The aversion to rounds is most pronounced among young people; not because they're stingy but because they tend to have less money. Plus, young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 (and particularly young men) are more likely to be non-drinkers than the rest of society, according to both Lumina and Drinkaware. This 'Generation Z' age bracket is particularly mindful of alcohol's potential harm: young adult drinkers are significantly more likely to experience anxiety or depression compared with drinkers aged 25 and over, Drinkaware says.
Therefore a series of alternative drinking trends has emerged among the youth – and few of them involve wobbling across a sticky pub floor with a clinking tray of alcoholic drinks. Mindful consumption, sober curiosity, zebra striping and bookending may sound like album titles you might find in a dusty jukebox. But they're actually Gen Z drinking routines.
'The cultural norms are shifting in the way people go out. The way people socialise now is very different,' explains Ed Bedington, the editor of pub trade publication The Morning Advertiser and co-presenter of The Lock In podcast. Zebra striping, for example, is the practice of alternating between alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, while bookending is starting and ending the evening with an alcohol-free tipple. This younger generation tends not to go on pub crawls in the way that people once did, Bedington adds.
The way they pay for their drinks is also different. 'Young consumers are more likely to set up a tab and pay their way individually. Pre-pandemic, there were lots of mobile phone apps out there that would divide up your bill for you,' says Bedington. This avoids situations where 'you're out with a group of friends and you've had one pint and they've had 15, and everyone's saying, 'Let's split the bill,' and you want to punch someone in the face'. We've all been there, Ed.
In 2023, a viral Facebook community started buying drinks for strangers in Wetherspoons pubs in the spirit of altruism. This was done via the chain's app, and all the buyers needed was the drinkers' pub name and table number. But however well-meaning these munificent virtual Mother Teresas were with their secretive 'Spoons spritzes, the fad is unlikely to rescue the round's national decline.
Other factors are at play. Given young people's financial constraints, going out these days is more of a special occasion than before. 'Everything is far more events-driven. People have to have a reason to go out. You don't pop out to the pub anymore,' says Bird of the Four Quarters, which draws in eager punters with banks of retro arcade games and regular DJ nights. Bedington says that Gen Z want 'experiential' nights out involving activities such as 'axe throwing' rather than pure drinking. A jar of pickled eggs on the counter is no longer entertainment enough.
In the name of research, I put the Great Rounds Debate to my extended family on my wife's side: 19 people aged between their early 20s and their 80s. Different cohorts had different takes. Those over 25 still buy rounds, albeit in groups of three or four if a large gang heads to the pub. Offering the bar staff a drink is also customary for one brother-in-law ('a bit old school'). However, the younger among them confirm that rounds have largely vanished. 'Rounds at the pub are pretty much dead,' says one nephew, a student. 'In a big group it's every man for himself, [largely] because of the price. When the money gets really tight, we end up just bringing flasks and ordering a mixer at the bar.'
The irony of the round's demise is that beer prices have actually – slightly unbelievably – fallen relative to those on low wages. In 2000, the national minimum wage was £3.60 an hour and the average pint cost £2, according to the Office for National Statistics. This meant that people could buy 1.8 pints with their hourly pay packet. From next week, the minimum hourly wage is £12.21 and the average pint will cost £5, meaning that people can buy 2.4 pints per hour worked. Woo-hoo. Session? Er, no. When the price of everything else is rocketing (rent, bills, you name it), that extra half-pint seems scant consolation.
What's at stake here? The death of the round threatens pubs' roles as what the American urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg termed the 'third place' – informal public gathering spots that are the heart of any community's social vitality. Such places constitute the foundation of a functioning democracy, Oldenburg argued. Wetherspoons' Martin agrees, arguing that pubs bring together all strands of society. 'We should worry. Pubs are a social melting pot. Staying home and staring at the four walls is bad for the state of mind. Dinner parties (VAT-free meals, unlike pubs) are the antithesis of the 'melting pot' and participants tend to belong to similar social groups,' Martin says.
Others are less worried. The Morning Advertiser 's Bedington thinks the pendulum will swing back the other way eventually. 'Every generation rebels against the one that went before it. Someone said to me that Generation Z are the ones that had their drunk parents putting them to bed, and they're kicking against that by not drinking. The ones that follow on from there will adopt different habits again,' he says. So let's raise a glass to the traditional pub round – due to make a comeback some time around 2035.