€2 for pint of Mi-wadi

Howjoe1

award winning bar?

my mistake. I thought we were talking about the Dropping Well, which was looking rather tardy the last time I went for lunch and haven't been back since.

Some seem to have missed the point of the OP. Category.."RIP OFF IRELAND"

I haven't read one post that convinced me that the €2 charge was fair and reasonably.

But if people want to go along and pay that price then so be it.

But it's not for me.

animaal

sandin wrote: »

Or would the op feel better if the food simply cost an extra euro or two per person with free cordial. I learnt a long time ago, nothing is free.

You're right, nothing is free. Restaurants generally do treat incidentals as a shared cost, added to every bill. You pay a portion of the cost, even if you don't use them.

The charging model you're proposing is the same one Ryanair have implemented, where each person pays only for the services they use. I haven't yet seen a restaurant charging 20 cents for napkins, 10 cents for butter, a euro for gravy, etc. It would be a valid model, but only if it's highlighted very clearly in advance, and not as a "surprise" on the bill.

keithclancy

This is the same the world over.

I mean, Coca Cola is essentially just carbonated water and syrup anyway.

You could have the same argument about a Tea Bag since they cost a few cents on their own anyway.

Issue can be avoided if you ask the price in advance.

The price of a product in a Pub/Restaurant/Hotel includes the entire service, not what you would pay to make it yourself.

Oryx

If a bar are giving water free, and charging €2 for cordial, then yes, that is a total and utter rip off. The biggest cost to the business in this situation is the cleaning of the glasses used. If they can give water free, such a big charge for what is essentially the same thing, is ridiculous. The work involved is the same.

They also should have advised you of the cost, so you could decide whether to pay or not. Most bars charge little or nothing for cordials, so I don't think its an unfair assumption to think it would cost you little or nothing for a diluted orange. Eight euro, you could have had a pint (or two) instead.

rubadub

GarIT wrote: »

Everyone seems to be pointing out that tap water is always free. That's because it's illegal to serve food or drink and not have free tap water.

Have you a link to this alleged law? I have never seen it, but I heard of it from taximen/'blokes in pub' types.

Cienciano wrote: »

Couldnt disagree more! Tapwater is free in every pub or restaurant I've ever been in.

Tin Foil Hat wrote: »

It is free. I've never been charged for tap water in this country, ever.

There is certainly a tradition of giving out tap water free in many places. The problem now is that instead of people recognising this as unusual and as a great bonus -they have come to expect it, almost as though its their right. So when they see a dash of something added to it they expect this to be the only additional cost.

People need to get that out of their head. Think of what is fundamentally going on. If this drink was simply prediluted in the factory I do not think we would have nearly as many people complaining. -they would not have the "tap water is free" weirdness going on in their head.

Miwadi-

DILUTE 1 PART MIWADI WITH 4 PARTS WATER

so say 568ml in the glass to the brim is 113.6ml of miwadi per pint. They come in 1L bottles so 8.8 dashes per bottle. 1L in tesco is €1.99 so say 22cent per dash. So charging you 9 times the price, or a €1.78 surcharge/profit (this is ignoring all the various other costs/overheads, like some oddballs insist on doing).

Comparing this to other things in pubs, relatively, it sounds like an OK deal to me, many bottles of beer can be got for under a euro these days yet they are €4.50-5.50 in most pubs I go to, so roughly 5-6 times the price, and a lot more than the €1.75 charge on this. A pint of coke in my local costs €8.40.

collie0708 wrote: »

I understand the cost of doing business but that's about a 2000% mark up.... Can't thinks of any other product that you would expect to pay such a premium

Coffee & tea. If you go away from percentages and think of it as a fixed surcharge there are probably loads more, like the beer example.

sandin wrote: »

But the cordial was being drunk as a substitute to a soft drink

+1, this is why most big fast food chains will not give out free tap water with meals. And for some weird reason people forget about them. A pint is also 2-3 times the volume if they had ordered other drinks. If they got cokes it would probably have been 200ml bottles and lots of people will have 2 of them with a meal.

GarIT

rubadub wrote: »

Have you a link to this alleged law? I have never seen it, but I heard of it from taximen/'blokes in pub' types.

Nope, I've looked but cant find it, a friend that's a chef/manager in a hotel nightclub told me that it's a health and safety thing. Especially places that serve alcohol in case someone is so drunk they need water or to deal with dehydration etc.

mikom

GarIT wrote: »

Nope, I've looked but cant find it, a friend that's a chef/manager in a hotel nightclub told me that it's a health and safety thing. Especially places that serve alcohol in case someone is so drunk they need water or to deal with dehydration etc.

Though it was brought to the forefront with increased MDMA use a while back.

rubadub

GarIT wrote: »

Nope, I've looked but cant find it,

You won't find it, there is none. It is law in the UK only in licensed premises, there is no law here, just old wives & taximan tales, or in your case "bloke in a nightclub". Your claim was any place serving food too, this is not law in the UK, most places like McDonalds, KFC, burger king etc will not give free water so I am not sure how that myth even came about.

mikom wrote: »

Though it was brought to the forefront with increased MDMA use a while back.

This was said to be one reason, another is to stop drunkeness.

Even if it was legally free here people need to stop thinking it as being free & benign to the retailer. This goes back to my point that if this drink happened to be prediluted then I bet half of the people complaining here would have far less of an issue (would you people?).

e.g. I worked out the miwadi as 22cent per pint, 2L of cheapo tesco coke is 55cent or 15.6cent per pint. Even though this is cheaper (business pay for water) I expect there would be less complaints if they charged €2 for a pint of cheapo coke.

If for some weird reason there was a law meaning pubs had to give out free bread then you would similarly get people moaning about being charged for toast & butter, on the basis that "bread is free".

Forget this "free water" notion, compare it to other drinks & products.

Nanazolie

quick, someone tells all the hospitality businesses that they should charge tap water to their customers. Also the toilets seeing they pay someone to clean them, the water to flush them and the paper roll to ... you get the idea.
They would be well within their rights to do so. But would that be very clever customer-wise? Would it not be best for the pub to charge only 50 cents or a euro (remember, the OP never claimed that it should have been free) for a drink that has always been considered cheap and retain their custom?
8.40€ for a pint of coke? A can of coke is 330ml and must cost about 50 cents to the pub owner, anyone who agrees to pay 8.40€ for 568ml of coke deserves to be fleeced

As for fast food not giving you free tap water, I sometimes ask for a glass of water with my meal at my local McD and have never been asked to get bottled water. I also ask for a spoon because I don't like the coffee stirrers, and I get that for free too.

I also get free milk for my tea or coffee, and the last time a café tried to charge me 20 cents for butter with my scone, they saw the last of me.

keithclancy

Nanazolie wrote: »

quick, someone tells all the hospitality businesses that they should charge tap water to their customers. Also the toilets seeing they pay someone to clean them, the water to flush them and the paper roll to ... you get the idea.

Actually this is quite normal on the Continent.
I don't mind paying either, Toilets, generally in Ireland are absolutely disgusting.

mikom

rubadub wrote: »

If for some weird reason there was a law meaning pubs had to give out free bread then you would similarly get people moaning about being charged for toast & butter, on the basis that "bread is free".

*Avoids eating the bread rolls before a meal at the dropping well pub in milltown

super_furry

sandin wrote: »

Maybe next time you go in they can serve it in a glass that hasn't been washed? - Or they turn off the heating for you and also refuse to allow you sit down and use seats and tables?

Maybe they should just point you to the tap and the cordial and tell you to make it yourself, but only if you brought you own glass in.

Maybe next time you buy bottled water tell Tesco that you are not paying for is as it was simply poured from a tap linked to an underground well and put into the bottle.

Or maybe next time you don't go in and give your money to a business that isn't ripping you off. There are plenty of good pubs and restaurants out there now that are giving good value for money, support them and avoid the likes of the Dropping Well.

Electric Sheep

superscouse wrote: »

What part do you disagree with?

The fact that staff must get paid? or is it the fact that you get nothing for nothing?

The OP bought lunch - it is short sighted and foolhardy to charge 8 Euros for the soft drink that accompanies it. In less eejity countries the soft drinks are refilled for free because the establishment wants you to buy lunch on a regular basis.

If I was the OP, that would be the last time I ate at the Dropping Well.

Nanazolie

keithclancy wrote: »

Actually this is quite normal on the Continent.
I don't mind paying either, Toilets, generally in Ireland are absolutely disgusting.

True and not true. I'm from the Continent, and while toilets are charged in pubs and cafés in larger towns, they are not in restaurants. The only reason is to stop the people from the street coming into the café, using the toilets and not paying for any drink or meal either. But in smaller towns, you can still go in, ask nicely (or at a push get a coffee for a euro) and use the loo for free

And to be honest, toilets are usually much cleaner in Ireland. But may be that's only for the ladies :P

Electric Sheep

Mulumpy wrote: »

People say staying away is solving the problem. Yes the drinks are over priced but should the OP not be airing their gripe with the manager and not publicly stating it and risk more jobs and another business closing.

A business so badly run deserves to close. End of.

kopfan77

superscouse wrote: »

What part do you disagree with?

The fact that staff must get paid? or is it the fact that you get nothing for nothing?

Get a grip buddy....big difference between getting nothing for nothing and paying €8 for some cordial. Anyone who comes on here and has the neck to defend this needs a serious reality check. Yes, people are in business to make money. But businesses run on margins and Im sorry but the margins being discussed in this instance are nothing short of scandoulous. PROPORTIONALITY is the key word and €8 for what amounts to Im guessing less than a quarter a bottle of cordial is not proportional!!

rubadub

Nanazolie wrote: »

Would it not be best for the pub to charge only 50 cents or a euro (remember, the OP never claimed that it should have been free) for a drink that has always been considered cheap and retain their custom?

Some pubs will charge less, up to the person in charge what to decide, I can only presume they think it would not be best. Some pubs give out free bowls of nuts, others charge an absolute fortune for a minuscule bag. It is rare enough to see free nuts in pubs here so most have obviously decided to charge.

Nanazolie wrote: »

8.40€ for a pint of coke? A can of coke is 330ml and must cost about 50 cents to the pub owner, anyone who agrees to pay 8.40€ for 568ml of coke deserves to be fleeced

I see plenty paying around that per ml in loads of pubs, rarely bought in pints though. This is 3 bottles I am talking about, takes 3x200ml to fill a pint. I was making the point of the drink taking away from potential sales, as somebody else pointed out. If people do have cokes in pubs they will often get more than 1 of those miserable 200ml bottles.

It would be similar to a place that did give "free" bread having lads just ordering a soup and eating half a loaf, they lose out on potential sales they would have reasonably expected to have accounted for.

The OP had 2 pints of soft drinks with his meal & was charged €4, if he had ordered any other drink in that quantity the bar would probably have made more profit.

Nanazolie wrote: »

As for fast food not giving you free tap water, I sometimes ask for a glass of water with my meal at my local McD and have never been asked to get bottled water.

I remember being refused there years ago, and have seen others refused. So maybe you were lucky. Here is an old thread of a guy refused water in subway.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055554604
plenty of google hits about no free water in many mcdonalds too.

frag420 wrote: »

I'm pretty sure that was well subsidised with the price of the meal!! Cheeky mares charging for cordial!

Nanazolie wrote: »

I also get free milk for my tea or coffee, and the last time a café tried to charge me 20 cents for butter with my scone, they saw the last of me.

The price of the milk is included in the tea/coffee, you cannot just walk in and expect it free. Some places do charge, people who take no milk might be attracted to places that charge, as they do not want to be subsidising other peoples purchases, i.e. you can presume the cost of the "free" milk is added into the cost of their milk free coffee.

Some people get all upset about individualised pricing, and will happily cut their nose off to spite their face. e.g. if they went to a place with a worse quality scone with "free" butter which was €3, vs the better scone for €2 with butter for 20cent. I saw this happen with play.com when they charged postage, people refused to deal with them, though they might have been the best option.

mikom wrote: »

*Avoids eating the bread rolls before a meal at the dropping well pub in milltown

If they are given out on your table it is safe to presume they are included in the meal price (note I did not say free). If you have to ask for bread or nuts I would expect to have to pay. If I am concerned about prices I will ask what it will cost in advance -there is a weird tradition in pubs where people point blank refuse to enquire about prices, so some publicans take full advantage. I am sure many other business owners would love to take the piss in a similar fashion, if their customers rarely enquired about prices.

kopfan77 wrote: »

PROPORTIONALITY is the key word and €8 for what amounts to Im guessing less than a quarter a bottle of cordial is not proportional!!

I have already explained how it certainly is in line with other pricing, in fact it is fairly reasonable relatively speaking.

ScouseMouse

kopfan77 wrote: »

Get a grip buddy....big difference between getting nothing for nothing and paying €8 for some cordial. Anyone who comes on here and has the neck to defend this needs a serious reality check. Yes, people are in business to make money. But businesses run on margins and Im sorry but the margins being discussed in this instance are nothing short of scandoulous. PROPORTIONALITY is the key word and €8 for what amounts to Im guessing less than a quarter a bottle of cordial is not proportional!!

You are not paying "€8 for some cordial".

You are paying 8 euro for four drinks in a pub, served to you at a table, by a staff member, who gets paid for serving you.

Which may have been prepared by a barman who expects to be paid.

In a pub that pays imro charges for the music you hear.

In a pub that pays ppl charges for the rights to play that music.

In a pub that pays rates on the ground your chair is sitting on.

It goes on and on.

Oryx

superscouse wrote: »

You are not paying "€8 for some cordial".

You are paying 8 euro for four drinks in a pub, served to you at a table, by a staff member, who gets paid for serving you.

Which may have been prepared by a barman who expects to be paid.

In a pub that pays imro charges for the music you hear.

In a pub that pays ppl charges for the rights to play that music.

In a pub that pays rates on the ground your chair is sitting on.

It goes on and on.

That is a valid argument. But why, in the same place, served in the same glasses, by the same staff, with the same music, whilst sitting on the same chair, is the same water minus a dash of orange, FREE? And why wasnt the op told a dash of orange changed free to €2?

mikom

This thread is the first result on Google for... dropping well pub charge and 5th for dropping well pub cost.
Good press or bad press?

rubadub

Oryx wrote: »

the same water minus a dash of orange, FREE?

Tradition. Nobody has verified if the pub give out free water, there are several other threads about pubs & restaurants not giving free tap water.

I already explained this and asked people what they would have thought if this drink was prediluted -nobody gave a reply as I sort of expected. Perhaps they actually bothered to think for once.

In the coffee forum some guy was charged €4.60 for a double espresso, the coffee grinds for this should be around the same price as the miwadi cordial (~22cent). So you could ask the same question, why this 4.60 when the same thing, minus the coffee grinds, minus the heating of a tiny amount of water, etc, is free?

Oryx wrote: »

And why wasnt the op told a dash of orange changed free to €2?

He probably didn't ask, another point I already made.

labradoodlelady

I worked in a pub in Galway about 10 years ago. They charged €2.30 for a pint of miwadi, a little dearer than a pub sized bottle of coke at the time. Ironically, a dash of miwadi with a spirit was 80cents. The cordial used to arrive in crates, not in bottles from the supermarket and was often provided free from the drinks companies.

They justified the charge by the fact that they were open for matches and you would often get groups in for an early match who would have a few pints of miwadi. Plenty of people complained about it, but you had people sitting in a warm pub, watching a match, using the facilities, and this isn't free for the pub to supply. The charge on a cordial was their way of charging for these overheads, and recognising the fact that a table was taken up by people who weren't eating or drinking.

However, this was provided free if anybody had a meal, or if a group were in rounds and one was drinking miwadi, which is just good business sense.

It's stingy to charge that much for cordial when people are already spending money in your bar.

kopfan77

rubadub wrote: »

Some pubs will charge less, up to the person in charge what to decide, I can only presume they think it would not be best. Some pubs give out free bowls of nuts, others charge an absolute fortune for a minuscule bag. It is rare enough to see free nuts in pubs here so most have obviously decided to charge.


I see plenty paying around that per ml in loads of pubs, rarely bought in pints though. This is 3 bottles I am talking about, takes 3x200ml to fill a pint. I was making the point of the drink taking away from potential sales, as somebody else pointed out. If people do have cokes in pubs they will often get more than 1 of those miserable 200ml bottles.

It would be similar to a place that did give "free" bread having lads just ordering a soup and eating half a loaf, they lose out on potential sales they would have reasonably expected to have accounted for.

The OP had 2 pints of soft drinks with his meal & was charged €4, if he had ordered any other drink in that quantity the bar would probably have made more profit.

I remember being refused there years ago, and have seen others refused. So maybe you were lucky. Here is an old thread of a guy refused water in subway.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055554604
plenty of google hits about no free water in many mcdonalds too.



The price of the milk is included in the tea/coffee, you cannot just walk in and expect it free. Some places do charge, people who take no milk might be attracted to places that charge, as they do not want to be subsidising other peoples purchases, i.e. you can presume the cost of the "free" milk is added into the cost of their milk free coffee.

Some people get all upset about individualised pricing, and will happily cut their nose off to spite their face. e.g. if they went to a place with a worse quality scone with "free" butter which was €3, vs the better scone for €2 with butter for 20cent. I saw this happen with play.com when they charged postage, people refused to deal with them, though they might have been the best option.


If they are given out on your table it is safe to presume they are included in the meal price (note I did not say free). If you have to ask for bread or nuts I would expect to have to pay. If I am concerned about prices I will ask what it will cost in advance -there is a weird tradition in pubs where people point blank refuse to enquire about prices, so some publicans take full advantage. I am sure many other business owners would love to take the piss in a similar fashion, if their customers rarely enquired about prices.


I have already explained how it certainly is in line with other pricing, in fact it is fairly reasonable relatively speaking.

The OP did not have 2 pints of soft drinks for €4??? He had 2 pints of water with some cordial...big difference!!

kopfan77

superscouse wrote: »

You are not paying "€8 for some cordial".

You are paying 8 euro for four drinks in a pub, served to you at a table, by a staff member, who gets paid for serving you.

Which may have been prepared by a barman who expects to be paid.

In a pub that pays imro charges for the music you hear.

In a pub that pays ppl charges for the rights to play that music.

In a pub that pays rates on the ground your chair is sitting on.

It goes on and on.

Yes it does go on and on...but as I said it has to be proportional...€8 is a ridiculous mark up and that can't be argued!

ScouseMouse

kopfan77 wrote: »

Yes it does go on and on...but as I said it has to be proportional...€8 is a ridiculous mark up and that can't be argued!

What else can you buy in a pub that cost 8 euro for four pints?

Coca cola? I work that out to be just under 3 200ml bottles at maybe 2.50 each. Thats 7 euro a pint. 4 pints would be 28 euro.

Heineken? Thats about 4.50 a pint. 4 pints would be 18 euro.

To be profitable and to cover its costs, margins in pubs are large.

You cannot give stuff away, no matter what it is.

Electric Sheep

superscouse wrote: »

What else can you buy in a pub that cost 8 euro for four pints?

Coca cola? I work that out to be just under 3 200ml bottles at maybe 2.50 each. Thats 7 euro a pint. 4 pints would be 28 euro.

Heineken? Thats about 4.50 a pint. 4 pints would be 18 euro.

To be profitable and to cover its costs, margins in pubs are large.

You cannot give stuff away, no matter what it is.

Yes you can - in other countries they recognize that the bottomless coffee cup and free soda refills leads to higher food sales.

Maccers55

I can't get over the amount of debate this has caused. As a poster previously mentioned it comes down to expectation and common practice.

As I pointed out I had no issue paying for the pint of cordial. Did I expect and is it common practice to get charged €2 for a pint of cordial? In my and many others opinion on here the answer is no.

When I had just spent €50 on a meal this just compounded my surprise at the charge.

And as a matter of interest this was a substitute for a pint of water not a soft drink nor an alcoholic drink. If I had known the extra cost I wouldn't have got a dash of cordial in my water.

So based on my previous experience I deemed this a rip-off and thus gave people forewarning in case they ended up unexpectedly getting stung like I did.

If you think this is a good and fair price and are happy to pay it then you can just ignore my post.

However, it would appear that many do deem this charge to be excessive so I'm glad I've highlighted this so they can avoid making the same mistake I did.

Augmerson

Maccers55 wrote: »

Was in the dropping well pub in milltown this evening for a bite to eat. We ordered 2 pints of mi-wadi orange and got 2 refills during our meal.

When we got the bill we saw an 8 euro charge for drinks. when i queried the charge with the waitress she said it was 2 euro per pint of mi-wadi which I thought was a bit ridiculous.

2 euro for what is essentially a dash of cordial seems like a bit of a rip-off. So just a heads up for anyone that might be in there in future. I won't make the same mistake again anyway!!

You didn't order a dash of cordial. You ordered a pint of Mi-Wadi.

petethebrick

Wow what a lot of debate for a small issue.
I've worked in many pubs. Mi-wadi or similar in every pub I worked in came free from the suppliers - not bought from Tesco.

If people are eating or drinking with paying customers there is no justification at all for charging them anything for it.

If on the other hand a person/people are sitting in the pub watching a match etc and only order mi-wadi then a charge of €1 is acceptable, no more - even if your pub is located in temple bar. So yes the dropping well can be classified as a rip off this time round.

Discussion closed??

senordingdong

Return to the pub and bring your own bottle of mi wadi.

Order the exact same meals and a few pints of water.