You hear it all the time now.
“Four quid for a pint?”
“Five pounds?”
“That’s ridiculous.”
And I understand it.
Because from the customer side of the bar,
that price has crept up steadily over the years.
But from behind the bar…
it feels very different.
Looking at the numbers
Recently, I sat down with four years of accounts from our pub.
Nothing unusual.
No dramatic changes in how we run things.
Just a small independent pub, trading steadily.
But when you look at the numbers side by side,
a pattern becomes very clear.
Almost everything costs more than it did a few years ago.
Suppliers: the quiet rise
The first thing that stands out is supplier cost.
Beer.
Snacks.
Cleaning products.
Everything you need to run a pub.
Over four years, the money owed to suppliers has risen sharply —
not because we’re ordering more,
but because the same things simply cost more.
Cask beer alone has risen significantly.
Nothing dramatic in isolation.
But constant.
Taxes: the invisible slice
Then there’s tax — particularly VAT.
Every pint includes it.
The pub collects it and passes it on.
But when prices rise,
so does the amount going straight to HMRC.
It’s easy to forget that not all of a price increase stays in the pub.
A portion of every increase never even touches the business.
Staffing: the real cost of hospitality
Pubs are people businesses.
And rightly so — staff should be paid properly.
But over recent years,
minimum wage increases, National Insurance changes,
pensions, and holiday pay
have all pushed costs up.
Individually, they make sense.
Together, they reshape the economics of running a pub.
The squeeze
What’s interesting isn’t any single cost.
It’s all of them happening at once.
Suppliers up.
Staff up.
Tax up.
Energy, insurance, waste — all rising.
And when you look at the accounts as a whole,
the position tightens.
Not dramatically.
But steadily.
Why prices don’t rise immediately
One thing that often gets missed:
Pubs don’t put prices up the moment costs increase.
They absorb it.
For as long as they can.
Because no landlord enjoys increasing prices.
It’s one of the worst parts of the job.
But eventually,
there comes a point where the numbers stop working.
And that’s when the price moves.
What’s happening now
Right now, the pressure hasn’t eased.
Supplier increases continue.
Wages continue to rise.
Business rates, waste, and other costs are all moving upwards.
For us, that means another increase this spring.
Around 20p on a pint.
Not a decision taken lightly.
But one that reflects the reality of running the business.
A different way of seeing it
None of this is a complaint.
Pubs have always adapted.
And they still do.
But it is a reminder of something that often gets lost:
When the price of a pint rises,
it’s rarely about greed.
It’s about the cost of keeping the doors open.
Comments
Post a Comment