The Pub trade is dying - Minimum price for Alcohol?

PapaQuebec

Post removed at request of "ardinn"

maxxie

I am in the trade but the pubs were happy enough to rip people off for long enough and many still are!
Crying much like the taxi drivers. But I like my job so hey what do I care..

kenmc

Dionysus wrote: »

I was in Ranelagh some time back and I went into numerous pubs with a friend looking for a place to have a chat. None existed.

Used to though. McSorleys was a lovely ould place until they tore the ar$e out of the place and turned it into a "chic" white bar. Absolutely ruined the place entirely. Haven't been back since, would have gone there a fair bit before they messed it up, and I never even lived in walking distance of the place.

mann

Thats it lads i cant take any more so I'm off to chat with a poor pub owner to see if he has anything to add to this thread,

My poor heart bleeds for the chap each time he moans about his pub trade going down hill as he takes my €4.50

he said instead of giving everyone a christmas drink he would give the money to charity :rolleyes: of course we all know he did that :pac:

jack presley

I did my usual this NY Eve and stayed in drinking at home with a few mates. Did many pubs still charge an admission fee to get in?

HellFireClub

jack presley wrote: »

I did my usual this NY Eve and stayed in drinking at home with a few mates. Did many pubs still charge an admission fee to get in?

Did the very same here, local put a tenner on the door for St. Stephen's evening/night, we all stayed in the house and had a few drinks instead. I spent the same amount on drink on Stephen's night (six cans for ten Euro), as my local publican wanted to take off me for getting past the front door of the pub, make sense out of that if you can (haha pardon the pun!) :D:D

F*ck you Jack, I had my fun and that's all that matters, you'll have to do an awful lot better than charging me a tenner to see the inside of your pub if you want to get my custom back! :cool::cool::cool:

Resi12

YET AGAIN WITH THE ENTITLEMENT! Lower you prices, boo-fcuking-hoo. Do they think people have sympathy for them?

grizzly

HellFireClub wrote: »

I find it hard to believe how every pub in Ireland seems to have only one very belligerant supplier. How come nobody has taken the initiative to take a weekend away in another EU country and see if they can import a few pallets of their own sauce and run a 2.50 Euro a pint promo for a week???

They find life after a stunt like that very difficult.

fonecrusher1

I actually counldn't give a toss about the poor pubs going down the sh!tter. I remember for the 1999-2000 NYE night my local pub decided to reward its locals by charging them 10 punts on entry. And this place is your standard quiet suburban pub, nothing special. Some bloody cheek.

Myself & a few lads i used to regularly meet up with in this place for a few pints (loyal customers) refused. I ended up going to a friend's house for a few cans instead.

Greed, greed & more greed. This pub lost a lot of customers that night. Myself & a few other people i know haven't been in there since.

matrim

ScumLord wrote: »

Not really, you either sell the Diegio drink or something else, you can't offer a cheap eastern European larger alongside the Irish stables from what I've heard.

I've heard that rumor before but don't know how true it is.

I was recently discussing something similar with the manager of my local and he said the biggest problem with getting in unfamiliar beers is wastage with it going off because it doesn't sell quick enough. Personally I think part of that can come from not marketing the new beer enough, and people not realising it's there (e.g. it took me 2 months to notice they started selling bottles of budvar). But they do also have to contend with the problem that a certain amount of customers won't try new beers when in a pub. e.g. if you've ever sat at the bar in porterhouse, you'll see some groups of people walk in, find out they cannot get bud / Heineken / Carlsberg and leave without even trying the alternatives.

And someone said earlier they were annoyed that they went to the pub and it had a karaoke night. While this would annoy me too as I hate karaoke, at least the pub is trying something to attract customers. It's not for me but this would attract some people to the pub when they might otherwise have stayed at home. So as long as you have different pubs trying different things, hopefully there will be enough of a mix for everyone

obliviousgrudge

Well the VFI make members have a minimum charge for drinks already.

My dad is a bar manager and they have to charge a certain price. VFI have too much power already, and whatever happens to these overcharging pubs, serves them right.

HellFireClub

fonecrusher1 wrote: »

I actually counldn't give a toss about the poor pubs going down the sh!tter. I remember for the 1999-2000 NYE night my local pub decided to reward its locals by charging them 10 punts on entry. And this place is your standard quiet suburban pub, nothing special. Some bloody cheek.

Myself & a few lads i used to regularly meet up with in this place for a few pints (loyal customers) refused. I ended up going to a friend's house for a few cans instead.

Greed, greed & more greed. This pub lost a lot of customers that night. Myself & a few other people i know haven't been in there since.

1999-2000?!?!?!?!? My local tried that one week ago on Stephens Night, two years into a recession, that's how deluded these lads are!!! Then they all start moaning and think it's a big mystery when people don't go back and give them custom, and they want price controls introduced to be saved from themselves!

Absolute sheer f*cking MADNESS!!! The only thing the government should do for these idiots is organise a mandatory FAS course for every single one of them on how NOT to p*ss your customer off and lose their goodwill and regular custom...

Mec-a-nic

The Pub Trade lobby killed off the café-bar proposals in 2005 which would have made them better able to compete in an expanding market. Now they have to compete in a price-only, contracting market so their swift fall should not be a surprise, nor hindered in any way, it's natural justice.

ScumLord wrote: »

The choice of drink is limited / the quality of the drink is terrible, the music is just awful

Agreed, most pubs sell the over-advertised crap rather than anything of quality or craft I'd prefer to drink. (see sig)

smellslikeshoes wrote: »

Pubs are just like any other business if they can't stay afloat they should fail, simple as that really.

There are an extra 200,000 on the dole, forcing a lot of other businesses out, why should pubs be exempt?

Mr. Presentable

There are too many pubs. What we have here is a long overdue adjustment. We need to lose about 2 of every 3 licences to approach the numbers in similar cultures to out own. Harsh, I know, but true.

ardinn

emmetmcl wrote: »

Well the VFI make members have a minimum charge for drinks already.

My dad is a bar manager and they have to charge a certain price. VFI have too much power already, and whatever happens to these overcharging pubs, serves them right.

Really?? news to me - a VFI member - are you sure its not the owners who make him charge a certain price - because what your saying is false.

Rarely do I head to the pub anymore as it's jsut too expensive, charging close to a fiver for a pint of watered down warm beer is not what I consider value for money,especially when so many pubs are happy to add a few cents to the cost of the pint come 12am without so much as a notice to say so.

Last time I was out I asked for a pint of Coors as the selection was quite limited, cue the barman handing me a can of Coors and a pint glass before asking for 4.90. Deciding that if I was going to be gouged I may as well make the most of it and changed my order to a Jameson.

Next day in the supermarket I found 24 cans of Coors for 27 euro, now if the pubs are so desperate to keep my custom they should try to compete with the supermarkets and lower prices not insist that supermarkets and off licenses face restrictions in offering cheap alcahol.

fonecrusher1

HellFireClub wrote: »

1999-2000?!?!?!?!? My local tried that one week ago on Stephens Night, two years into a recession, that's how deluded these lads are!!! Then they all start moaning and think it's a big mystery when people don't go back and give them custom, and they want price controls introduced to be saved from themselves!

Absolute sheer f*cking MADNESS!!! The only thing the government should do for these idiots is organise a mandatory FAS course for every single one of them on how NOT to p*ss your customer off and lose their goodwill and regular custom...

Thats the problem with pub owners, they think we're still in the good times. People just don't have the same spare cash for drinking in pubs.

Its not the supermarkets that are causing this. Im sick of publicans saying oh we can't reduce prices because of this & this & this... I don't care. Not my problem. Your sob stories aren't going to justify me paying the guts of a fiver for a pint of fizzy alcoholic beverage. No way.

Pauleta

Publicans are moaning because they are not loaded anymore. The majority of them are still running healthy business's. Its not the customers fault that during the boom years publicans were on top of the world and forked out huge mortgages on expensive houses and other such luxuries.

HellFireClub

fonecrusher1 wrote: »

Thats the problem with pub owners, they think we're still in the good times. People just don't have the same spare cash for drinking in pubs.

Its not the supermarkets that are causing this. Im sick of publicans saying oh we can't reduce prices because of this & this & this... I don't care. Not my problem. Your sob stories aren't going to justify me paying the guts of a fiver for a pint of fizzy alcoholic beverage. No way.

The sheer extent of their obvious deslusion I think is scary though, the sense of entitlement that is obviously still there on their part, the implied notion that they can call government policy changes and that they will be accommodated. We saw this before a few years back when Mc Dowell tried to introduce a new type of Cafe-Bar license and the publicans lobbied and actually managed to block it, helped along with some vested interest publicans in Leinster House.

I won't be sad to see a single one of them going to the wall, they have treated their customers disgracefully over the years. Maybe down the country you might get a bit of respect but some of the sh*t I've seen over the years in the pubs of the suburbs and City of Dublin, pubs with an inch of p*ss on the toilet floor, being refused at the door when you were 23 because the policy was over 25's only, all this now is to the fore of my mind now when I decide to support my local publican, (which I don't do anymore), and this is before we even start a conversation on price!

ScumLord

I thought happy hours and promotions on drink was illegal now?

matrim wrote: »

I've heard that rumor before but don't know how true it is.

I was recently discussing something similar with the manager of my local and he said the biggest problem with getting in unfamiliar beers is wastage with it going off because it doesn't sell quick enough. Personally I think part of that can come from not marketing the new beer enough, and people not realising it's there (e.g. it took me 2 months to notice they started selling bottles of budvar). But they do also have to contend with the problem that a certain amount of customers won't try new beers when in a pub. e.g. if you've ever sat at the bar in porterhouse, you'll see some groups of people walk in, find out they cannot get bud / Heineken / Carlsberg and leave without even trying the alternatives.

I guess that's where I'm different I love trying new beers. I went to an Irish pub in a smallish Spanish town and they had a big long list of international beers, many Irish ones I'd never heard of at prices of around €2 so I sat there for the day and tried them all (there was pretty much nothing else to do in this town).

HellFireClub

The publicans groups are another vested interest group that need to be dismantled just like how the taximen were dealt with. We all remember the insane queues and waiting times of 2-3 hours for a taxi out of town around this time of year in years gone by. Only now are they actually working out that they are legally allowed compete with each other and offer a fixed price deal to be driven to a location with the meter off. My local taxi company now offers fixed price trips into town or the airport which would previously have cost twice the fixed price deal now being offered. Even the taxi men, not exactly known for embracing change or thinking outside the box, have been able to work out the simple enough relationship between inevitable change and business survival.

kenmc

Personally, I'm more into Quality than Quantity. I'm happy enough to go to a pub and spend 5 (or even 6 or 7 euro depending) on GOOD, QUALITY, CRAFT beer, usually Irish produced by small, local brewers like Dungarvan, Trouble, Carlow, Clanconnell, Whitewater, Fransiscan Well and Hooker breweries, amongst others. I usually can't even buy these beers in the offlicence anyway - most of them are not bottled. I can often get them on cask in some of the new craft-beer friendly pubs like Against the Grain, LM Mulligan and the pioneer in this as far as I'm concerned, The Bull and Castle. The beer is always fresh, it usually changes a bit from batch to batch since it's made by hand in small batches, and there's always a chance these small breweries will have brought out a Christmas or Autumn or other seasonal beer. When's the last time you've seen any of the big boys doing this?

Guinness would be my LCD - lowest common drinkable - which I will resort to in the last instance - other than heading off home. Thankfully I'm resorting to this less and less though as more bars in the city are finally seeing the light, and presenting a choice of beers to the discerning drinker. I don't want to only drink one type of flavourless beer all evening, I like to experience many different flavours in my beers. There are bars that I won't go into, because they don't sell beer I want to pay money for - I've left people at the door of Hogans to go home because I couldn't be bothered squeezing into the already heaving bar, queing at the bar for 20 mins to drink a pint of average-at-best Guinness, when I could just go home and have my choice of vastly superior drinks in the comfort of my own living room.

It's not so much the price I pay what bothers me, it's what I get for that price. If a pub has Beamish and Guinness, I'd go for Beamish, it's got way more flavour and is usually cheaper. If a pub has OHaras and Guinness and Beamish, I'll go for the OHaras, even though it might be more expensive than both of the others - the price doesn't come into it.

Personally I can't wait to see the back of Cafe Insane, Thomas gReeds, Samsara et al, and hope we get back to the old days of a place you can go to meet your friends and have a chat, but can read a book or the paper in the corner whilst waiting for them to arrive, and where the barman takes some pride in his job.

Oh, and I'm only 33 btw, not some ould fogey.

HellFireClub

kenmc wrote: »

Personally, I'm more into Quality than Quantity. I'm happy enough to go to a pub and spend 5 (or even 6 or 7 euro depending) on GOOD, QUALITY, CRAFT beer, usually Irish produced by small, local brewers like Dungarvan, Trouble, Carlow, Clanconnell, Whitewater, Fransiscan Well and Hooker breweries, amongst others. I usually can't even buy these beers in the offlicence anyway - most of them are not bottled. I can often get them on cask in some of the new craft-beer friendly pubs like Against the Grain, LM Mulligan and the pioneer in this as far as I'm concerned, The Bull and Castle. The beer is always fresh, it usually changes a bit from batch to batch since it's made by hand in small batches, and there's always a chance these small breweries will have brought out a Christmas or Autumn or other seasonal beer. When's the last time you've seen any of the big boys doing this?

Guinness would be my LCD - lowest common drinkable - which I will resort to in the last instance - other than heading off home. Thankfully I'm resorting to this less and less though as more bars in the city are finally seeing the light, and presenting a choice of beers to the discerning drinker. I don't want to only drink one type of flavourless beer all evening, I like to experience many different flavours in my beers. There are bars that I won't go into, because they don't sell beer I want to pay money for - I've left people at the door of Hogans to go home because I couldn't be bothered squeezing into the already heaving bar, queing at the bar for 20 mins to drink a pint of average-at-best Guinness, when I could just go home and have my choice of vastly superior drinks in the comfort of my own living room.

It's not so much the price I pay what bothers me, it's what I get for that price. If a pub has Beamish and Guinness, I'd go for Beamish, it's got way more flavour and is usually cheaper. If a pub has OHaras and Guinness and Beamish, I'll go for the OHaras, even though it might be more expensive than both of the others - the price doesn't come into it.

Personally I can't wait to see the back of Cafe Insane, Thomas gReeds, Samsara et al, and hope we get back to the old days of a place you can go to meet your friends and have a chat, but can read a book or the paper in the corner whilst waiting for them to arrive, and where the barman takes some pride in his job.

Oh, and I'm only 33 btw, not some ould fogey.

Yeah, I get the impression that you are trying to create of yourself here, a "discerning drinker" as you've referred to yourself, who probably wouldn't be prepared to bend down to take off a tenner that you happened to find stuck to your shoe.

In fairness you don't sound at all representative of most consumers in Ireland who are fairly pressed for disposible cash. You put quality above quantity, while most people will expect quality, equally most people I think would expect their money to go a lot further than 7 Euro a pint would allow for...

matrim

ScumLord wrote: »

I thought happy hours and promotions on drink was illegal now?

My understanding is that they cannot drop the price during the night but can have "happy days" or open at a low price and then put it up at a certain time (once they have this on the price list)

So I think the law says you can't sell at 5 euro from 4-6pm, drop to 3 euro for 6 - 8pm, and then raise to 5 euro for the rest of the night. However you can sell for 3 euro from 4 - 8pm and then raise to 5 euro for the rest of the night.

I guess that's where I'm different I love trying new beers. I went to an Irish pub in a smallish Spanish town and they had a big long list of international beers, many Irish ones I'd never heard of at prices of around €2 so I sat there for the day and tried them all (there was pretty much nothing else to do in this town).

I'm the same and love trying different beers but from my experience this isn't the norm among most pub goers

4zn76tysfajdxp

HellFireClub wrote: »

Yeah, I get the impression that you are trying to create of yourself here, a "discerning drinker" as you've referred to yourself, who probably wouldn't be prepared to bend down to take off a tenner that you happened to find stuck to your shoe.

Oooooh... thinks he's too good to drink my tenners does he? :mad:

Dyr

kenmc wrote: »

Personally, I'm more into Quality than Quantity. I'm happy enough to go to a pub and spend 5 (or even 6 or 7 euro depending) on GOOD, QUALITY, CRAFT beer, usually Irish produced by small, local brewers like Dungarvan, Trouble, Carlow, Clanconnell, Whitewater, Fransiscan Well and Hooker breweries, amongst others. I usually can't even buy these beers in the offlicence anyway - most of them are not bottled. I can often get them on cask in some of the new craft-beer friendly pubs like Against the Grain, LM Mulligan and the pioneer in this as far as I'm concerned, The Bull and Castle. The beer is always fresh, it usually changes a bit from batch to batch since it's made by hand in small batches, and there's always a chance these small breweries will have brought out a Christmas or Autumn or other seasonal beer. When's the last time you've seen any of the big boys doing this?

Guinness would be my LCD - lowest common drinkable - which I will resort to in the last instance - other than heading off home. Thankfully I'm resorting to this less and less though as more bars in the city are finally seeing the light, and presenting a choice of beers to the discerning drinker. I don't want to only drink one type of flavourless beer all evening, I like to experience many different flavours in my beers. There are bars that I won't go into, because they don't sell beer I want to pay money for - I've left people at the door of Hogans to go home because I couldn't be bothered squeezing into the already heaving bar, queing at the bar for 20 mins to drink a pint of average-at-best Guinness, when I could just go home and have my choice of vastly superior drinks in the comfort of my own living room.

It's not so much the price I pay what bothers me, it's what I get for that price. If a pub has Beamish and Guinness, I'd go for Beamish, it's got way more flavour and is usually cheaper. If a pub has OHaras and Guinness and Beamish, I'll go for the OHaras, even though it might be more expensive than both of the others - the price doesn't come into it.

TBH I love trying out beers and wish we had some diversity in our pubs instead of the diageo dictatorship but the dilettantishness of that post just made me cringe.:o

kenmc

HellFireClub wrote: »

Yeah, I get the impression that you are trying to create of yourself here, a "discerning drinker" as you've referred to yourself, who probably wouldn't be prepared to bend down to take off a tenner that you happened to find stuck to your shoe.

Absolutely not, I pick up a 1cent coin if I see one.

In fairness you don't sound at all representative of most consumers in Ireland who are fairly pressed for disposible cash. You put quality above quantity, while most people will expect quality, equally most people I think would expect their money to go a lot further than 7 Euro a pint would allow for...

Well if I'm out for the night with 35 quid in my pocket, I'd rather have 5 nice beers at 7 quid, than 7 crappy 5 euro pints, especially if I can get them in the offlicence at 24 cans for the same 35 euro. And I'll have just as good a night as the lad who has 7 pints of 5 euro blandness. And I'm not talking about 7 euro for a pint of 5% beer either.

noodler

I have to agree with the choice argument.

I know it is probably a pain to have beers like Erdinger, Paulaner etc on tap but at least have a few bottles. Also, a few blonde beers maybe? Hoegarden or Leffe? The pallet has expanded a little in recent years and I am sick of the usual suspects.

EDIT: You can see by the names that I am not exactly asking for anything too uncommon.

HellFireClub

kenmc wrote: »

Absolutely not, I pick up a 1cent coin if I see one.

Well if I'm out for the night with 35 quid in my pocket, I'd rather have 5 nice beers at 7 quid, than 7 crappy 5 euro pints, especially if I can get them in the offlicence at 24 cans for the same 35 euro. And I'll have just as good a night as the lad who has 7 pints of 5 euro blandness. And I'm not talking about 7 euro for a pint of 5% beer either.

Yeah but a lot of folks are on a lower budget, if I'm going out mid week now for a pint, I'm not putting anymore into it than 20 quid.

If I'm getting a taxi to meet mates, add 30 quid to that, the whole thing for me stops being value for me at that stage, 20 quid, that's it these days I think...

fontanalis

kenmc wrote: »

Absolutely not, I pick up a 1cent coin if I see one.

Well if I'm out for the night with 35 quid in my pocket, I'd rather have 5 nice beers at 7 quid, than 7 crappy 5 euro pints, especially if I can get them in the offlicence at 24 cans for the same 35 euro. And I'll have just as good a night as the lad who has 7 pints of 5 euro blandness. And I'm not talking about 7 euro for a pint of 5% beer either.

I bet you never had a Duff in your life!