Raise the prices / wages

[Howyoudoin]

If people are willing to pay £14 for 20 Benson and Hedges, they will surely pay £5.50 for a pint of lager.

I for one wouldn't pay anything, let alone £14, for cigarettes. This has no bearing whatsoever on what I would pay for lager or (in my case) real ale.

Tobacco is highly addictive - someone once offered me £5 for one cigarette (not that I had one). If the price of beer goes up, I will drink less of it.


Julian F. G. W.

Your post made complete sense until the final sentence.

The price of beer has been going up year on year since way before you were born, so what do you mean?

HYD

[AleisterCrowley]

Wages have been going up too , although not much in my case
It's the inflation adjusted cost - or how many pints can you buy with you take-home pay

[Mike4]

If the price of beer goes up, I will drink less of it.

If the price of beer goes up too much, I will make my own.

[jfgw]

Your post made complete sense until the final sentence.

The price of beer has been going up year on year since way before you were born, so what do you mean?

I am drinking less of it.

Realistically, if the price increases excessively, I will drink less of it.

I hope to get back in the pubs soon - it is the social aspect. Buying it from Sainsbury's is not the same.


Julian F. G. W.

[redsturgeon]

My daughter works in a high end hotel with multiple bars and restaurants in central London. About 95% of her fellow workers pre-Covid (and Brexit) were not British. That is still the case but they laid off most of their staff back in November and that was the final straw for many of the workers who then returned to Europe (mainly) and will not be coming back mostly because than cannot...they are no longer allowed to come here to work at a minimum wage job .

Her employers have struggled to find enough British workers who will/can do the job to a satisfactory level, the job is hard both physically and mentally and most do not seem up to the task. My daughter is tough, she is young and she can do a 13 hour shift in a very busy bar on her feet for the whole time. She is also mental agile and has a good memory so she can take a drinks and food order from a table of six and remember who ordered which drink on her return to the table while in the meantime she may also have served several other customers (there is a considerable time lag if a table orders six different cocktails and of course it may take half and hour for the food order to come.

At the moment they are completely booked up and tables are turned around ever two hours so that is an extra burden and they are operating with 50% of normal staffing. Several people have left since the reopening for better paid/less busy jobs. My daughter told the management that she would also be leaving if she was not given a 25% raise...after an attempt at negotiation they gave her what she asked for. She has also told them that they will be losing more staff if they do not pay everyone more money.

Beer certainly already costs more that £5.50 a pint where she works...nobody complains. The bill for two hours for a table of six is always over £100 and can be £500. There's a lot of money sloshing around in London! Once the initial novelty wears off it will be interesting to see who survives. Of course taking will continue to suffer while the foreign tourists are absent.

John

[GrahamPlatt]

At the moment they are completely booked up and tables are turned around ever two hours so that is an extra burden and they are operating with 50% of normal staffing... leaving if she was not given a 25% raise.

Sounds like a major productivity increase and a (perhaps temporary) win for management.

[swill453]

Beer certainly already costs more that £5.50 a pint where she works...nobody complains. The bill for two hours for a table of six is always over £100 and can be £500. There's a lot of money sloshing around in London! Once the initial novelty wears off it will be interesting to see who survives.

That's fine for an establishment that's always been table-service only, and priced accordingly.

A lot of pubs are only profitable with half their customers standing, or sitting at the bar, and while the Covid rules ban that and impose table-service, they'll be luck to break even.

(Booked a table for the first time at my local for tonight! It's so small that there will only be four or five tables, and the atmosphere will be crap, but I suppose it will be a start.)

Scott.

[redsturgeon]

At the moment they are completely booked up and tables are turned around ever two hours so that is an extra burden and they are operating with 50% of normal staffing... leaving if she was not given a 25% raise.

Sounds like a major productivity increase and a (perhaps temporary) win for management.

Indeed...temporary as you say. They are already losing staff and having to pay more to attract staff. And of course it will not be long before the customers notice that the service is not quite as good as they might expect for the prices they are paying. As I said, once the novelty tide goes out we will see who is paddling naked!

John

[bungeejumper]

I suggest this is a very regional issue, with London being different.

In more ways than one. Outside the big conurbations, where the night buses don't run and the taxi fares are eye-watering, the pubs are closing anyway because you can't drink three pints of anything and then drive home. For that matter, you're not well advised to have two.

So when the pubs are upping their prices by 10% and supermarkets are doing beer specials @ £1 a bottle, where do we suppose the punters are going to go? And how exactly will raising supermarket food prices make a difference to anything?

BJ

[swill453]

In more ways than one. Outside the big conurbations, where the night buses don't run and the taxi fares are eye-watering, the pubs are closing anyway because you can't drink three pints of anything and then drive home. For that matter, you're not well advised to have two.

With the lower limit in Scotland I won't even have one unless it's with a full meal.

Scott.

[Itsallaguess]

Her employers have struggled to find enough British workers who will/can do the job to a satisfactory level, the job is hard both physically and mentally and most do not seem up to the task.

My daughter is tough, she is young and she can do a 13 hour shift in a very busy bar on her feet for the whole time. She is also mental agile and has a good memory so she can take a drinks and food order from a table of six and remember who ordered which drink on her return to the table while in the meantime she may also have served several other customers (there is a considerable time lag if a table orders six different cocktails and of course it may take half and hour for the food order to come)

It sounds to me like some employers need to invest in better customer-facing IT systems then, so as to make the whole thing easier to run in terms of both staff and customers....

Expecting to employ the most talented mnemonists in the country and then pay them minimum wages seems to be a stark disparity in expectations on all sides...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[Wuffle]

I have form in both hospitality and logistics.
Both heavily subsidised for 20 years by cheap foreign labour.
Minimum wage hospitality jobs could usually be 'juiced' up to 20 or so an hour with flirting or fiddling depending on your raw materials.
Nobody tips hi-viz wearers so there is a right problem in that area at the moment. Fiddling is more taxing as well.
Even the classics like re-addressing parcels to yourself in distribution hubs is higher risk than it used to be with the tech advances.

W.

[redsturgeon]

Her employers have struggled to find enough British workers who will/can do the job to a satisfactory level, the job is hard both physically and mentally and most do not seem up to the task.

My daughter is tough, she is young and she can do a 13 hour shift in a very busy bar on her feet for the whole time. She is also mental agile and has a good memory so she can take a drinks and food order from a table of six and remember who ordered which drink on her return to the table while in the meantime she may also have served several other customers (there is a considerable time lag if a table orders six different cocktails and of course it may take half and hour for the food order to come)

It sounds to me like some employers need to invest in better customer-facing IT systems then, so as to make the whole thing easier to run in terms of both staff and customers....

Expecting to employ the most talented mnemonists in the country and then pay them minimum wages seems to be a stark disparity in expectations on all sides...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

I think you misunderstand the nuances of the best waitress service.

It is all very well having the best IT in the world but unless it actually tells you that the mai tai was ordered by the woman with the short bod, while the G and T with slimline was the older woman with a perm and the G and T with the ice but no lemon was the brunette with the glasses then it won't cut it. And yes you can try to do it clockwise from the window but then people change seats!

This is how you get a £50 tip for a couple of hours work!

John

[Itsallaguess]

It is all very well having the best IT in the world but unless it actually tells you that the mai tai was ordered by the woman with the short bod, while the G and T with slimline was the older woman with a perm and the G and T with the ice but no lemon was the brunette with the glasses then it won't cut it. And yes you can try to do it clockwise from the window but then people change seats!

Well if those are the sort of catastrophically crippling situations that are going to break some eating and drinking establishments, then to be honest it sounds like the whole sphere is ripe for a good clear out....

The market, as always, will find solutions.....

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[88V8]

I think you misunderstand the nuances of the best waitress service.
It is all very well having the best IT in the world but unless it actually tells you that the mai tai was ordered by the woman with the short bod, while the G and T with slimline was the older woman with a perm and the G and T with the ice but no lemon was the brunette with the glasses then it won't cut it. And yes you can try to do it clockwise from the window but then people change seats!
This is how you get a £50 tip for a couple of hours work!

Boston, 2003.
Eight Brits at an evening eatery, I forget the brand but it had an animatronic bear as greeter and talking heads on the walls.... and served bootiful steaks of Desperate Dan dimension...
Anyway, the Irish/American waitress took drinks and starter and mains orders... some people changed their minds as they went... and when we saw she was writing nothing down some people changed their order just to muddle her.

Then after somehow conveying the order to the kitchen - any IT in those days? - she went to other tables took other orders.
She came back to us with all the right notes, in the right order.
Never seen the like.

You bet she got a good tip.

If the price of beer goes up too much, I will make my own.

In the long ago my father had a passing enthusiasm for making his own beer. My father who scarcely drank beer...
From a kit, it went into a half gallon plastic bottle of some sort and into the fridge to ... mature or whatever (never made beer)... well, one time he must have put too much or too little something in it because overnight it exploded in the fridge.
And that was that.

V8

[Alaric]

A sizeable chunk of the price of a pint goes to the government. From memory our beer duty is one of the highest in Europe

Even so, a benchmark supermarket price for eighteen 440ml cans of 4% lager is £ 13.00 . I suppose in the distant past there had been a cross subsidy between the off sales price and the on sales (pub) price.

[AleisterCrowley]

A sizeable chunk of the price of a pint goes to the government. From memory our beer duty is one of the highest in Europe

Even so, a benchmark supermarket price for eighteen 440ml cans of 4% lager is £ 13.00 . I suppose in the distant past there had been a cross subsidy between the off sales price and the on sales (pub) price.

Third highest in Europe (after Finland, and just below Ireland)
https://taxfoundation.org/beer-taxes-eu ... 5%25%20abv.

Then add VAT...

[bungeejumper]

In the long ago my father had a passing enthusiasm for making his own beer. My father who scarcely drank beer...
From a kit, it went into a half gallon plastic bottle of some sort and into the fridge to ... mature or whatever (never made beer)... well, one time he must have put too much or too little something in it because overnight it exploded in the fridge.

Half a gallon? Did anybody tell him that you're supposed to add some water to the contents of that can?

I used to make beer in five-gallon batches, using a pressurised barrel or a beersphere. They had pressure release valves to prevent catastrophes - basically, a bit of rubber tubing over a pipe with a hole in it. And it was very good stuff too, if you went half and half with brown sugar and maybe added a bit of hop extract.

I only stopped in the end because the downside of making five gallons of beer was that you drank five gallons of beer.

BJ

[servodude]

A sizeable chunk of the price of a pint goes to the government. From memory our beer duty is one of the highest in Europe

Even so, a benchmark supermarket price for eighteen 440ml cans of 4% lager is £ 13.00 . I suppose in the distant past there had been a cross subsidy between the off sales price and the on sales (pub) price.

Third highest in Europe (after Finland, and just below Ireland)
https://taxfoundation.org/beer-taxes-eu ... 5%25%20abv.

Then add VAT...

But you've got to consider the taste

-sd

[AleisterCrowley]

Well, we do have the best real beer in my expert opinion (although I'm fond of Belgian beers, after a lot of exposure to them...)