(Philip Toscano/PA)
(Picture: PA Wire)The price of a pint has passed £8 in London for the first time as pubs are hit by spiralling inflation.
Drinkers paid £2.30 on average for a pint in 2008, but soaring ingredient costs pushed that to £3.95 this year.
This represents a 72 per cent increase since the financial crash, according to hospitality industry consultancy CGA.
The highest price it found was £8.06 in London, while the cheapest cost just £1.79 in Lancashire.
The CGA did not name the venues but this is the first time that it’s regular analysis of prices from random samples of the UK’s 90,000 bars and pubs has seen the a pint pass £8.
The drink industry fear customers will stop going to public houses if costs become to high.
Brewers and landlords are expecting a boost from the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee four-day weekend.
The British Beer and Pub Association estimates more than 90 million pints will be downed during celebrations.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a global supplier of wheat, has caused the cost of grain to rise, forcing pub companies to threaten further rises.
Barley, one of the main ingredients of beer, has been badly affected.
Clive Watson, chairman of City Pub Group, which operates 41 pubs in London and the South, said ingredient costs had risen by 10 per cent, “wage inflation is probably 7 per cent and electricity inflation is 100 per cent, so that blended cost price probably puts the price of a pint of beer up 12 to 13 per cent”.
Mr Watson said his company would hold its prices this year, adding: “We just want people to go back to the pub.”
Greene King, a chain operating around 2,700 pubs, said last month it was rising prices by 4.7p per pint on average while Marstons, the brewer, put up prices by around 8 per cent in March.
