Bitter blow to U.K. drinking industry

Press, 29 March 1984, Page 28

Bitter blow to U.K. drinking industry

By

Joseph W. Grigg

of Cox News Service through NZPA London Britain's pubs are in hot water. Steep taxes on liquor have combined with the effects of the recession to knock the fizz out of the drinking industry. Britons are simply drinking less. Hundreds of hostelries are having to close. Hundreds of publicans are going broke.

“Fewer than 35,000 of the 50,000 traditional hostelries in Britain will remain by the early 19905,” says Peter Martin, editor of “Publican,” a trade magazine which represents the interests of pub keepers. The National Union of Licensed Victualers, the largest association of Britain’s publicans, says that “10,000 pubs must disappear by 1992 if the rest are to survive.”

The “Morning Advertiser,” the daily newspaper of Britain’s drinks trade, runs a record number of advertisements of pubs for sale.

In London’s traditionally hard-drinking Fleet Street area, where many newspaper offices are located, at least 15 pubs have closed in

the last 10 years. The surviving 30 or so Fleet Street inns are still crowded at lunch time and between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. when office workers head for home. But the rest of the time they are halfempty. In surburban areas, the big brewery companies, which own most of Britain’s pubs, are converting traditional old English pubs into American-style cocktail lounges. Pop groups and other live entertainment are being brought in to attract younger drinkers. Onearmed bandits and Space Invader-type electronic games are being installed for the same reason.

Last year, about 1000 British pubs went out of business and a record 400 pub keepers went bankrupt. Another 1000 may have to close this year, says Martin. Britain’s estimated 30 million pub regulars are drinking 3.5 million fewer pints of beer a day than five years ago. That represents a bitter 12 per cent slump in beer sales.

The main reason, publicans say, is the high cost of drinking these days. The tax on a pint of traditional English bitter has risen from about 23c in 1979 to

about 57c today. A pint of bitter, the regular drink of millions of British workers, costs more than $1.77 in most London pubs today compared with about $1.14 three years ago. “Eeople are still going to pubs. But they are going for a shorter time and are drinking less,” says Danny Trevelyan, president of the National Union of Licensed Victualers.

Some pub landlords are struggling to stay in business by starting up new lines of business they never dreamed of previously. Some pubs are now opening at 7.30 a.m. and serving bacon-and-egg breakfasts. One of these is the 300-year-old Old Cock Tavern in Fleet Street.

Some pubs, like the Holland Arms in London’s Kensington area, dispense mid-morning coffee and afternoon tea and cakes as an attraction for housewives out shopping. Others, like The Pepys bar near famed London Bridge, named after the great seventeenth century diarist, Samuel Pepys, started selling cold milk last year as well as beer. “It is selling well,” says the landlord, David Lock.