Wetherspoons - 99p a pint

I'm staggered by the out and out lie that "prices across the industry were already 65 percent lower in real terms than in 1980" (quote from BBC website and also heard on BBC TV news tonight).

Well, I was drinking beer in 1980 and I have a pretty good memory of what it cost back then, typically 50p-54p a pint for best bitter. The Retail Prices Index has gone up by some 250 percent since then. If the price of beer in a pub had followed RPI, it would now cost around GBP

A more typical price "across the industry" is now about GBP 2.40 though. And if the price of a pint had actually come down by 65 percent in real terms, then we would be looking at just a pound a pint.

I can't understand why no-one at the BBC even queries these mad statements.

-- Pat Ricroft, City of Salford, UK ===============================

For those of us who enjoy drinking in pubs rather than characterless Wetherbarns this is a disaster. This will not get people back into pubs, it will encourage more drinkers out of pubs and into Wetherspoon's. More, not less pubs will close as a result, and I for one am not looking forward to the day when my only choice for real ale or cider is to drink in a Wetherspoon. The effect of a Wetherspoon opening near to my local pubs has already been felt, this will simply increase the exodus.

IMO nobody (including supermarkets) should be allowed to sell a pint of beer at 99p, tennanted pubs and freehouses in particular do not have the option of discounting to compete with this obscene price, and Wetherspoon are effectively using their purchasing muscle and the ability to sell a loss leader (critics of supermarket policy will find this a familiar theme) to undercut and extinguish the oposition.

I suspect that Mr Martin has taken this decision for two reasons: Huge publicity for his grim pub chain (it worked), and a great big two fingers up to the incumbent government who refuse to do anything about the deap discounting of the supermarkets. Unfortunately by joining the supermarkets in their discounting game Mr Martin loses any moral high- ground he may have had, and in so doing makes the whole licensed trade look like a bunch of money-grabbing gangsters determined to protect their industry at practically any cost.

Wake up! Tim Martin is the alcoholics friend, and one of the pub and brewing industrie's biggest villains.

Mark

When I visit Wetherspoon's pubs I always choose one of the real ales or sometimes all of them. However, in this last week I have drunk Greene King IPA exclusively, except for one pint of Growler and one pint of Abbott Reserve (a bit too strong at 6.5%).

Ninety-nine pee is just too good to be ignored! And I don't think I am the only one.

I feel a bit sorry for the real ale breweries who sometimes rely on JDW sales; surely their sales must drop?

Alan

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They are a proverbial Curates egg - good in parts - the Brighouse one has seemed pretty good to me in the past, but the Halifax one is on the town centre "circuit" at Bull Green and often seems to have no real ale on at all.

In London they're handy when you get sick of paying £3 a pint.

And I had an awful breakfast in Keighley a couple of months ago - though the Local camra branch likes the place.

Offramp a écrit :

Not necessarily, but they're certainly under a very heavy pressue to reduce their prices, and some may end up selling beer at too low a profit, if not at a loss. I semm to remember some breweries actually went under over the past ten years because of the huge quantities they were flogging at no profit at all to pubcos...

Cheers !

Laurent

we are finding this a big drawback . . .

So much of the real ale that is being sold at our spoons is GK IPA that the guest beers are reduced to two and they are not being changed very quickly. Friday night's two, which I didn't like, were still on tonight.

:o(((

I hope they stop this silly offer soon!

In article , Chris de Cordova writes

I had several pints of SA Gold at 1.99 GBP this evening which were most enjoyable, and tried GK IPA at 99p/pint, which was not. In short you are not compelled to drink the urine, so why complain if it is cheap, mot people were not drinking to price.

I am not compelled to drink the IPA - I am complaining that there is less choice because it is on the bar and cheap.

In article , Chris de Cordova writes

They had IPA on the bar before reducing it to 99p, and the choice was no less than some of the times before it was reduced. If my local Wetherspoons had nothing of interest (as sometimes happens) I would have chosen to go to another pub (Fuller's, Shepherd Neame, Timothy Taylor, White Horse, Young's, etc.), where depends on how little drinking time is available.

We hardly ever had GK IPA on the bar; being so close to Scotland we had Deuchars IPA instead, Now we have GK IPA on FIVE handpumps!!! Whereat one time we used to have FIVE guest beers. (10 guests altogether)

Your local pubs must be pretty dire if the Wetherspoon is your 'first' choice...

Mark

In article , Mark writes

It is the closest taking about seven minutes to walk to, others take fifteen to thirty minutes with waiting time for bus or underground. Since I sometimes do not go out until 21:30 on a Sunday I go to the closest, although some of the others are open much latter (I enjoyed a few pints of SA gold last Sunday). As such this is in part being lazy, and part not wanting to be too late getting home. This said I have walked into the Wetherspoons at 21:30, looked at the choice (e.g. Itchen Valley, Itchen Valley, etc.) and walked back out to get the underground to the White Horse on Parsons Green. I shall probably go there tomorrow evening.

"Dire", sir! You dare to write "Dire"!

Oh ye of little vestribulation!

For such as you, who neer do venture oft-times within such lusty portals, methinks 'tis not your province to eschew opinion, sir!

Craic!?! God I hate that word! The are plenty of Gaelic words for a good time but the unenlightened choose to use an English word!

Sadly, the ancestry hereabouts is mostly of Irish Extraction and that is the word and spelling they use! It is not about a good time - more about good conversation.

The valley that contains the small town in which I work is referred to as 'Little Ireland'! Green and lush, reminding them of their home country, when they all swarmed here during the potato famine.

Forget Wikipedia:

"the Crack is good in Cricklewood"

eveything else is just a bastardisation!

KW

No problems with that at all!!

Apparently the end is nigh.

Told by our Spoons regional manager (who drinks in our pub): GK cannot keep up with the demand. The offer is finishingin March and it will goo back up to £1.29 or £1.49 - can;t remember which. And we won't be getting it any more - we will get Theakston's Best (worst) Bitter instead.

Tiny improvement.