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Telegraph
03-04-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Six pints for £50: How the soaring cost of a pint is killing off the pub round
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.
The Guardian
15-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘There's no stress': gamers go offline in retro console revival
Nestled between an original Donkey Kong arcade machine, a mint condition OutRun racing simulation game and booths wired up with GameCubes and Nintendo 64s, the engineer Luke Malpass works away dismantling a broken Nintendo Wii. There has been a steady stream of people bringing in their old game consoles for repairs or modifications, on the house, to Four Quarters, a retro games arcade in Elephant and Castle, which has been transformed into a games clinic for two days. Gabriella Rosenau, 35, brought in her broken Wii that had been in the garage 'for years'. 'I still play my brother's old Nintendo 64 and I love it, but I'd really love to get [the Wii] fixed.' 'I've done the odd bit of Call of Duty and the PlayStation stuff, but I have more of an interest in the retro games,' she adds. Rosenau is part of a growing community who are ditching contemporary video games and picking up the consoles from their childhood, or even before their time. And gen Z gamers are following suit, with 24% owning a retro console, according to research by Pringles. What started as a passion project for Malpass, restoring consoles to their former glory, quickly evolved into a full-time business. At its peak during lockdown, his company RetroSix employed 16 people to cope with demand. He puts this down – in part – to people being stuck at home. 'People were bored, finding things at home and searching for things online. 'We originally were just selling on eBay, we didn't even have a site, and eBay were limiting our sales because they thought it was fraudulent,' he says. 'It literally took over.' RetroSix still gets hundreds of requests each month from people hoping to get their consoles fully working and playable, or upgraded. This has 'stabilised', Malpass says, though the community is still expanding. 'There's a whole variety of people who are into this now. The older-than-me generation, so sort of late 40s, early 50s, who tend to be PC-based with Amigas and Commodores. Then my age, so people in their 30s, who are very much into the Game Boys, the Mega Drives, Super Nintendo Entertainment Systems, things like that. 'And then there's a younger generation that are either into [the] Nintendo DS, things they played with that are starting to become retro, or they're just really obsessed with retro as a whole. So you do get people in their 20s that are more obsessed than we are, even though they didn't grow up with it,' he says. Malpass has amassed a large following on social media and has 61,700 subscribers on his YouTube channel, AngelSix, and 44,100 followers on RetroSix's TikTok, where he shares videos about repairs and his inventions with the community. The young people who engage online say they are reaching for retro games because of the distinctive gameplay, and for the chance to 'switch off', Malpass says. 'You turn your console on at the top, you're gaming. There's no stress, there's no internet, you're not competing against the world. You've got yourself in a game, you feel a sense of achievement as you're going and that was originally what you used to do,' he says. 'I think younger generations have got a lot more stress now, growing up in the social media world is mentally very challenging. [Retro video gaming] is their safe place. It's like their escape,' he says. Matthew Dolan, a software developer in his 40s, brought along parts of his Game Gear console. His passion for retro gaming and technology stems from nostalgia and childhood memories playing games his father had written for him on the BBC Micro. 'It was a great introduction to technology,' he says. 'You get all that joy from just literally playing it. Going through batteries, planning your long car journeys out based on how long they'll last,' he says. 'They're not relying on flashy graphics in the same way [as contemporary games].' Going one step further, Dolan now fixes and adapts consoles himself, and says he spent £7,000 on the hobby last year. 'I got some of that back, from selling things on, but it's not cheap.' He got stuck trying to repair some of the chips on his Game Gear and needed Malpass's expertise. A repaired Prestige Edition Game Gear console from RetroSix costs £298.80. The LED edition costs £334.80 and mods or servicing on the console start at £36. Game Boy A handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It first came out in Japan in 1989 and was released in Europe in 1990. It is estimated more than 118.7m Game Boys and Game Boy Colors have been sold worldwide, making it one of the most successful handheld consoles of its era, popular owing to its compact design and affordability. SNES The Super Nintendo Entertainment System, also known as the Super NES, was the second home video game console released by Nintendo internationally. It was first released in 1990 by Nintendo in Japan and reached Europe in 1992. It is estimated that the SNES sold 49.1m units worldwide by the time it was discontinued in 2003. Xbox original The Xbox console was Microsoft's first games console offering and the first instalment in the Xbox series of consoles, first released in Europe in 2002. At the time, it sold for £299 and was competing with Sony's PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's GameCube. The second-generation Xbox 360 was released in 2005. Amiga A line of personal computers produced by Commodore International from 1985 until 1994, until its bankruptcy. Other companies continued producing the Amiga after this. The Amiga 1000, also known as the A1000, was the first personal computer released by Commodore International in the Amiga line. It was known for its advanced graphics and sound. Popular games include Alien Breed, Syndicate, Sensible Soccer and Eye of the Beholder. Game Gear A handheld gaming console, released by Sega in Japan in 1990 and in Europe the following year. Game Gear primarily competed with Nintendo's Game Boy, the Atari Lynx, and NEC's TurboExpress. During 1991, about 520,000 Game Gears were sold across Europe, with more than 130,000 of those being sold in the UK.
