An expert has warned the price of a pint could reach '£15 to £20' unless the government steps in to help the pub industry. The stark prediction comes from Tom Stainer, the chief executive of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), who says landlords are facing huge cost increases.
He says the cost of living crisis means they are facing a five to six-time increase in running costs, which threatens to put a huge number of venues out of business. Speaking to the Daily Star he said there’s a “real crisis going on” and we are seeing a “perfect storm” of factors that “will affect just about every pub out there”.
Tom says the costs for pubs were skyrocketing. He said: “We're seeing pubs where their energy costs are going up by not just a little bit - we're talking 500% to 600%.”
The chief said that, put very simply, “how much would 500% be on a £5 pint - you’re talking ridiculous amounts of money, 15 or 20 quid for a pint.” But despite prices of a pint creeping up across the country, the actual increases needed to sustain boozers in this situation are so enormous that they aren't realistically going to happen.
“What you can say with surety is you can't possibly pass on these energy increases and you can't increase the pint by 500%,” he said. “You'd be talking about pounds of pounds added on to the average cost per pint - and we already know because we did a survey this summer that more than 50% of the British public now believe the cost of a pint is already unaffordable.
“And that was done before the cost of living crisis before everyone was looking at their own money. And before these huge energy bills came in. It just isn't viable for pubs to pass [price hikes this big] on to consumers because people wouldn't come drink at pubs anyway.”
He said that, given the sheer size of the cost jump and improbability of paying for the costs through beer “however successful businessman you are… the pub you're running you cannot do a 500% increase on your energy costs.”
“So thousands [of pubs] could be affected by this. And they can close - and the difference with [pubs compared to] other sorts of businesses is once a pub closes it very rarely comes back.”
“We need government action we need the government to actually start stepping in and doing something about energy costs, doing something about business rates, something about the tax people have to pay on beer.”
Pubs pay one of the “largest business rates of any business [type]” compared to other businesses and few have any money stored away “for a rainy day” because they used it all in the pandemic.
Tom said that in many ways things are even worse now than they were during the pandemic because then, among other things, “we had a reduction of business rates, we had the VAT cut on food.”
Now he, like the rest of the industry is begging for immediate government action with thousands of boozers hanging in the balance and just hopes that “with a new prime minister stepping in, the top of their inbox is going to be doing some help hospitality”.
