The Pub trade is dying - Minimum price for Alcohol?

PARlance

syklops wrote: »

Considering a can of coke wholesale is about 20 cents, to be honest, 2 euros is not grand.

2 euro is fine for me. I'm not sure the wholesaler would let me into their warehouse, offer me a nice seat, put down a nice fire, stick on sky sports and grab a glass, ice and possibly a bit of lemon for me.

L'Enfer du Nord

PARlance wrote: »

2 euro is fine for me. I'm not sure the wholesaler would let me into their warehouse, offer me a nice seat, put down a nice fire, stick on sky sports and grab a glass, ice and possibly a bit of lemon for me.

Thank f**k! Musgraves must be one of the few places left you can enjoy a pint without Sky Sports distracting you.

dr.fuzzenstein

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

Sounds like hell.

You want hell? Go to a pub called "Yolo" in Ennis.
If you are over 18, you are already to old. It's sardine tin packed and the music can be heard in the surrounding counties. Can't vouch for their drinks, because I wouldn't set foot in it.

Lyaiera

PARlance wrote: »

2 euro is fine for me. I'm not sure the wholesaler would let me into their warehouse, offer me a nice seat, put down a nice fire, stick on sky sports and grab a glass, ice and possibly a bit of lemon for me.

I prefer lime.

elperello

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Would there be much support for a kickstarter campaign to take the government to court and eventually the ECJ over this when they introduce it? At the very least we'd be able to delay it until the Scottish ruling, which isn't due for at least another year.

The D'OB farce over the last week has shown that it's time we stopped relying on anyone to get us out of these ridiculous situations. The media won't help, most of the powerful voices are bought and paid for, our representatives are bought and paid for - it's up to us to make a difference.

As I understand it, and I'm intending to do more research over the next few days, the process essentially involves taking a case to the high court in Ireland asking for an injunction against the bill until the ECJ has issued a ruling. In Scotland, it was ruled legal by a lower court in accordance with Scottish law, but then referred by an appeals court to the ECJ for clarification on whether it's legal under EU law. Many have expressed the opinion that the ECJ is likely to rule against it.

What are people's thoughts on this? If I were to research this and ascertain (roughly) how much such a legal campaign would cost, do you think people would be willing to chip in despite the fact that we can't be certain such an attempt would succeed?

That is constructive and any research you can do would be very welcome. I would be glad to chip in.

This thread keeps losing focus. We need to concentrate on the fact that most of the political parties, most of the trade organisations and a coalition of 30 NGOs are in favour of MUP. It seems almost impossible to stop us being robbed for the simple pleasure of drinking within safe limits in our own homes.

anncoates

PARlance wrote: »

2 euro is fine for me. I'm not sure the wholesaler would let me into their warehouse, offer me a nice seat, put down a nice fire, stick on sky sports and grab a glass, ice and possibly a bit of lemon for me.

Thinking that merely providing (often substandard) premises on which to drink justifies a markup of around 900% is part of the Irish problem.

On the subject of dispensers, I seem to remember them being common years back, or at least before the Celtic Tiger if by dispenser you mean those little spray things for giving 'splashes' of mixer.

buried

All politicians and all political parties are backing this due to the fact that this kind of measure, the politics of telling people how to live their lives in a more "health conscious" way, This modern noise is literally one of the last sticks of "power" these politicians have. Mainstream, established politicians and parties no longer control the economy. That's a fact.
They all have given corporations, banks, the markets all the power and control they once had. This has been the case for over 40 years. The only thing they have left is to dictate to their electorate on how to live their lives, "don't smoke this there" - "don't drink so much of this here" - "our job is to save your lives, that's what we are trying to do". Its all a facade. They all know this is the last stick they have to wield and they all use it to stop all of the rest of us actually realising - "whats the point of these people?"
That's why there is so much of this dictatorial $hite politicians spout nowadays. Its literally state sponsored, establishment psychological terrorism. And its totally hypocritical. If these things, cigarettes, booze etc etc are so bad for us, like they constantly tell us, then maybe they should ban them outright no? Nope, they can't do that. The markets and corporations wouldn't dig that. So the ordinary person gets lambasted with guilt on how they live their lives instead from these political fakes. And we take it. We shouldn't take it anymore. I'm sick of it anyways.

darkpagandeath

Yup do as we say it's for your own good coming from people that look like they ate a few to many cream cakes and had a few to many beers really makes my blood boil. Diabetes is what they should be worrying about that and Ireland is the Fastest population in the EU. Size 16 should not be considered a normal average size.

-=al=-

Minimum pricing on sugary drinks! Stop the diabetes!

darkpagandeath

-=al=- wrote: »

Minimum pricing on sugary drinks! Stop the diabetes!

Nope price and prohibition never work. Education is the answer, But that requires work and though out policy. All you have to ask yourself is, Will a higher price stop you drinking ? And especially will a higher price stop the ones drinking that are apparently the problem.

PARlance

anncoates wrote: »

Thinking that merely providing (often substandard) premises on which to drink justifies a markup of around 900% is part of the Irish problem.

On the subject of dispensers, I seem to remember them being common years back, or at least before the Celtic Tiger if by dispenser you mean those little spray things for giving 'splashes' of mixer.

Nobody is forcing you into the (substandard or not) premises.

€2 for a can of coke is good value and a good offering in a pub. Much better value for money than the glass bottles. If I pop around to the local shop, I'll pay just over a euro for a can of coke, if a pub charges €2 then that's fine with me, I'm happy to pay that premium for the service.

And that wholesale figure of 20c is way off the mark. I've grown up in retail and my family still have a convenience store and there's no way a business like a pub is buying cans in for 20 cent.

dr.fuzzenstein

darkpagandeath wrote: »

Nope price and prohibition never work. Education is the answer, But that requires work and though out policy. All you have to ask yourself is, Will a higher price stop you drinking ? And especially will a higher price stop the ones drinking that are apparently the problem.

I think -=al=- was a bit tongue in cheek.
But it looks like going that way. Higher taxes on salt, sugar, fat, flour, meat, milk, cream, ketchup, mustard, cabbages, bacon, in fact every food stuff should carry a 200% tax surcharge to pay off the bankers force us to live a healthy, government approved life.
Maybe government appointed trainers and health advisers?
They would work out a dietary plan and exercise regime for you and since they are government appointed, they could enforce their plan with fines and or imprisonment. Prison of course will have exercise forced upon you at gunpoint.
So expect this guy to kick your door down at 05:00 and telling you to "drop an give me 20!", followed by 10 laps round the house with a 40kg backpack and forced marches in the evening.

anncoates

PARlance wrote: »

Nobody is forcing you into the (substandard or not) premises.

€2 for a can of coke is good value and a good offering in a pub. Much better value for money than the glass bottles. If I pop around to the local shop, I'll pay just over a euro for a can of coke, if a pub charges €2 then that's fine with me, I'm happy to pay that premium for the service.

And that wholesale figure of 20c is way off the mark. I've grown up in retail and my family still have a convenience store and there's no way a business like a pub is buying cans in for 20 cent.

Premium is such an abused word in Ireland. It generally means paying through the nose for bog standard goods and feeling that it is an expression of superior purchasing power or cachet. Like paying over the odds for Heineken but thinking stuff Tuborg is muck because it's priced a bit cheaper.

We probably won't find common ground here. You think somebody has the right to charge completely extortionate prices for the seeming largess of providing a drinking premises, I don't.

As for being 'forced', in a way people are because of the more of less blanket occurrence of price gouging so saying people can opt out is a bit disingenuous unless options like Weherespoons (widely reviled by many Irish people, surprise surprise) spread a bit more.

As you're in the trade, what is the general mark up on a can or splash-size bottle of coke by the way?

rubadub

syklops wrote: »

Considering a can of coke wholesale is about 20 cents, to be honest, 2 euros is not grand.

What wholesaler sells for that? any links?

I see musgraves online currently works out 43.5cent a can including the VAT if buying 24.

Pubs could buy cheaper in the supermarkets but the can would have mulitpack labelling and if you check the consumer forum you will see that loads of people have huge issues with that simple word being on a can. So most pubs just give in and buy the cans coca cola approve of.

I think €2 is relatively good, most would sell a tea or coffee for more whose ingredients would cost less. Even it if was 20cent that is €1.80 extra per drink, while beer can be €4.50+ extra per drink over supermarket prices.

dr.fuzzenstein

rubadub wrote: »

What wholesaler sells for that? any links?

I see musgraves online currently works out 43.5cent a can including the VAT if buying 24.

Pubs could buy cheaper in the supermarkets but the can would have mulitpack labelling and if you check the consumer forum you will see that loads of people have huge issues with that simple word being on a can. So most pubs just give in and buy the cans coca cola approve of.

I think €2 is relatively good, most would sell a tea or coffee for more whose ingredients would cost less. Even it if was 20cent that is €1.80 extra per drink, while beer can be €4.50+ extra per drink over supermarket prices.

You wonder about people sometimes. Those would presumably be the same people who would buy the same product in Tesco or Dunnes rather than Aldi or Lidl (they do sell some mainstream brands) and knowingly pay more for them, only not to be seen to shop in that "poverty shop".
Those same people do sometimes wise up to the cheap brands. I remember in Germany, those people would buy no-name wine, spirits, cigarettes and some food items and transfer them from their original packaging to some empty "premium" brand packaging they kept, so people won't think they're poor and have to shop at Aldi/Lidl. No good if you spot their Merc in the car park. but they would just say they're nipping next door to the "proper" shop.
There used to be an awful lot of snobbery, it died with the Celtic Tiger. It might come back, though.

VinLieger

Gaudio wrote: »

The fact of the matter is people can charge whatever they want for their product, if you feel it is overpriced then don't purchase their product, go elsewhere.

Yeah cus other than wetherspoons there's hundreds of other pubs giving out value for money

/sarcasm

dr.fuzzenstein

Gaudio wrote: »

Then don't go to the pub if it's too expensive. Price fixing isn't the solution, breaking up cartels in the solution, the introduction if wetherspoons is a great start.

Agreed.
For too long Ireland was a small market of <4million, not a lot of money in the country, no foreign companies interested in opening up here due to higher cost and not enough potential turnover and the domestic market being divvied up between a handful of players who could gouge at will. It was like a small, south American dictatorship in the 70's and that was in the 90's.
Since then the population has grown, the markets opened up, the internet has certainly laid waste to the worst rip-offs, international players are being attracted to Ireland and slowly but surely Ireland is being dragged into the 21st century. Pubs have held on the longest, there the 70's banana republic status quo has been protected by our 17th century licensing system and utterly fcuked up attitude to alcohol, protected and enforced by the government.
It's very difficult for foreign players to come in and offer some genuine choice and value.
Wetherspoons could be the new Ikea. i remember when they came in, the combined howl of retailers of crappy, overpriced furniture and even crappier and overpriced divan beds could be heard all the way to Stockholm. The law had to be changed to allow for shops over a certain size. yes, the small, crappy "supermarkets" were another state-enforced crap standard. (I'm from Germany, so I find them laughable sizewise, they're not "super", they are "ok-ish, so should be called ok-ishmarkets, because they would be just about OK for a small town with no more than 2000 inhabitants.)
I would say in another 20 years Ireland might be where Germany was in the 80's, retail wise. Of course always a bit smaller, but that is to be expected.

anncoates

Gaudio wrote: »

The fact of the matter is people can charge whatever they want for their product, if you feel it is overpriced then don't purchase their product, go elsewhere.

In Ireland, especially Dublin, we don't have the extent of business competition to enable punters to vote with their feet.

Ironically, when people do stop going to pubs and drink at home because of the cost, they just lobby politicians to try and stymie that too.

Saying if you don't like high prices, just fcuk off is disingenuous in a very restricted monopoly market. It's like trebling taxi fares and telling people to start walking home if they don't like it, or doubling income tax and telling people to fcuk off to another jurisdiction if they have an issue with it.

Hopefully as more big players enter the Irish market, competition will increase.

jobbridge4life

Gaudio wrote: »

The fact of the matter is people can charge whatever they want for their product, if you feel it is overpriced then don't purchase their product, go elsewhere.

The fact of the matter is that they can't and the reason they can't is precisely because people have been staying away in their droves but why bother changing when you can just force the legislature to accommodate your greed.

dr.fuzzenstein

anncoates wrote: »

In Ireland, especially Dublin, we don't have the extent of business competition to enable punters to vote with their feet.

Ironically, when people do stop going to pubs and drink at home because of the cost, they just lobby politicians to try and stymie that too.

Saying if you don't like high prices, just fcuk off is disingenuous in a very restricted monopoly market. It's like trebling taxi fares and telling people to start walking home if they don't like it, or doubling income tax and telling people to fcuk off to another jurisdiction if they have an issue with it.

Hopefully as more big players enter the Irish market, competition will increase.

And that is exactly how that works!
I think it was Mary Harney who told us to "shop around" if we were dissatisfied with value in Ireland. Shortly after that online shopping took off and the jist of the reply to just taking your business abroad was "THAT'S NOT WHAT WE MEANT!", followed by being called "unpatriotic" for refusing to be gouged by Irish retailers.
Ryanair was massively unpopular with the government and the IAA, how dare these fly-by-night cowboys who are not even a proper airline piss in Aer Lingus soup?
Every tiny little concession to a proper, open market had to be fought for tooth and nail. of course, if you have a good racket going and some jumped up upstart is set to piss in your soup, the first thing you do in Ireland is to run to your buddies and relatives in government so they can shelter you from the big, bad world.
Most countries there is no protectionist racket, it's "compete or die". High time that came in here, too.

kylith

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

And that is exactly how that works!
I think it was Mary Harney who told us to "shop around" if we were dissatisfied with value in Ireland. Shortly after that online shopping took off and the jist of the reply to just taking your business abroad was "THAT'S NOT WHAT WE MEANT!", followed by being called "unpatriotic" for refusing to be gouged by Irish retailers.
Ryanair was massively unpopular with the government and the IAA, how dare these fly-by-night cowboys who are not even a proper airline piss in Aer Lingus soup?
Every tiny little concession to a proper, open market had to be fought for tooth and nail. of course, if you have a good racket going and some jumped up upstart is set to piss in your soup, the first thing you do in Ireland is to run to your buddies and relatives in government so they can shelter you from the big, bad world.
Most countries there is no protectionist racket, it's "compete or die". High time that came in here, too.

Just look at when Bupa came here; VHI went boo-hooing about the fact that Bupa's members were younger so they should subsidise VHI and what happened? Bupa took their ball and went home, so to speak.

Irish companies had it too good for too long, and now they want the competition stamped out. Pubs were too expensive so we took to drinking in the comfort of our own homes, now they want to force offies to put up the prices to discourage that. Just wait; before long there'll be calls to increase the price, increase the tax, or just plain ban home-brew kits because people are making their own booze instead of paying pub's extortionate prices.

Flex

anncoates wrote: »

As you're in the trade, what is the general mark up on a can or splash-size bottle of coke by the way?

I have a friend who works in Coke Cola and had another who formerly worked in Britvic (supply 7UP, Club Orange), and a 24 pack case of 200/220ml glass bottles typically cost was €12.00 a case (that was the total price charged for a single pub and is inclusive of VAT), €0.50c per bottle. 113ml bottles were about half that.

Typical price in a bar in Dublin is €2.50-€3.00, so about a 550% mark up on 200ml glass, near 1000% on 113ml bottles. Unsure about cans, but cant imagine why it wouldn't be similar.

anncoates

Flex wrote: »

Typical price in a bar in Dublin is €2.50-€3.00, so about a 550% mark up on 200ml glass, near 1000% on 113ml bottles. Unsure about cans, but cant imagine why it wouldn't be similar.

Breadline margins, to be fair

And if you don't like it, fcuk off to another pub except that they nearly all charge the same.

Am I doing this right?

anncoates

Snowfall wrote: »

A pub can charge whatever they want, the owner took the risk to start the business., you're not entitled to a beverage at a price you deem to be fair. You can either choose to pay or not to pay. This is why fair competition and anti cartel legislation are so important.

Let us know when this legislative idyll comes to pass here.

Eutow

Snowfall wrote: »

A pub can charge whatever they want, the owner took the risk to start the business., you're not entitled to a beverage at a price you deem to be fair. You can either choose to pay or not to pay. This is why fair competition and anti cartel legislation are so important.

Yes, which is why people choose not to pay by not going to the pub as much and deciding to drink at home. The government want to stop this choice by making it less attractive price wise to drink at home compared to the pub by closing the gap between off-licence and supermarket prices compared to pub prices. The whole point of this thread. People are fed up with nanny government and their false claims of doing this because they care for the peoples health.

walkingshadow

Alcohol is the nectar of the nitwit.

anncoates

Snowfall wrote: »

What's your solution?

Obviously more competition in the market and less lobbyist meddling in the market by vintner stooges.

PARlance

Flex wrote: »

I have a friend who works in Coke Cola and had another who formerly worked in Britvic (supply 7UP, Club Orange), and a 24 pack case of 200/220ml glass bottles typically cost was €12.00 a case (that was the total price charged for a single pub and is inclusive of VAT), €0.50c per bottle. 113ml bottles were about half that.

Typical price in a bar in Dublin is €2.50-€3.00, so about a 550% mark up on 200ml glass, near 1000% on 113ml bottles. Unsure about cans, but cant imagine why it wouldn't be similar.

The orginal issue was in relation to someone's local offering a can of coke for €2. We know these wholesale at about 50c so the margin isn't the same in that instance. Still a nice margin.
But the premium charged isn't extortionate vs the price you would pay in a convenience store (using that as it would be disengious to compare a pubs prices vs a mutlinational retailers)

And much more to the point, which @anncoates seemed to miss before going off on a rant, is that the costumer is getting nearly twice the amount of coke for less than they would pay for a glass bottle in most pubs. So I maintain that any pub that sells a can of coke at €2 is offering a decent service.

Most pubs don't sell cans for the very reason that they will sell far more bottles whilst making greater margins.

Mec-a-nic

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

I think it was Mary Harney who told us to "shop around" if we were dissatisfied with value in Ireland.

It was this person - I remember it for two reasons - a) it was the only thing of sense I ever remember her saying and b) I started buying all my wine in France using the cheap off-season fares to Cherbourg... (still am)

elperello

Tune in to Dr Varadkar at about 10.45 into this link on the Ray Darcy show last Thursday.

http://www.rte.ie/radio/utils/radiop...2D06-2015:

He clearly sees the Alcohol Bill as part of his legacy. Something he thinks he will be remembered for, even though our health service is riddled with seemingly insoluble problems.