22 ms·

Number of pubs in England and Wales falls to record low

173 points by samizdis 4y ago

WhyDoIThink 4y ago
More people are at their homes playing video games, using streaming platforms, and going online to shop for alcohol or food. Less people are wanting to leave their homes, especially during gas inflation and other things.
- cpursley 4y ago
  Gas inflation? Aren't most pubs in the UK walkable (vs say, US bars)?
  - Nux 4y ago
    Indeed many are and in the age of working from home I expect many neighbourhood pubs to do well. We're certainly going more often than before.
    - cpursley 4y ago
      It's also a great way to get to know your neighbors and build community.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - chmod775 4y ago
    A location only reachable by car would be a suboptimal choice for any establishment mainly selling alcoholic beverages.
    - standardUser 4y ago
      You just described America.
      - revscat 4y ago
        Suboptimal?
  - iasay 4y ago
    Not necessarily. In cities people tend to be disparately located so usually ends up via public transport. In small towns the local pub can be a 30 minute walk away or a 30 minute taxi away depending on how many of them have closed down and the spread of the car-focused structure of some towns. The petrol/gas inflation, plus the incursion of Uber, really screwed the prices of the taxis up as well.
  - walthamstow 4y ago
    They mean natural gas, the stuff you burn in the kitchen to heat a pot. Not gasoline.
- mshook 4y ago
  That's a good point. Not only people tend to drink less nowadays but also when people mention these kinds of development (like movie theater decline and so on), they forget to mention all of these are just different kinds of entertainment. And there has never been so many ways to entertain oneself so the competition is stiff.
phphphphp 4y ago
The record low is a part of a long term trend, the numbers have been falling year over year for the last few decades — this headline is somewhat misleading. The pandemic and changing economic environment may hasten their demise, but it has been long coming. https://www.statista.com/statistics/310723/total-number-of-pubs-in-the-united-kingdom/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/310723/total-number-of-p...
- mike_hock 4y ago
  Sounds like an extremely alarming trend! Why is no-one doing anything? Where are they gonna go to get hammered?
  - InCityDreams 4y ago
    Cannaboids.
  - guggleet 4y ago
    13% of the population is on opioids, 6% are on gabaergic/genics, and 17% are on monoamine reuptake inhibitors of some form. There is plenty of room to grow.
jamal-kumar 4y ago
One factor that's important not to overlook is that younger people, especially in developed nations, are drinking much less in recent years, even after the COVID-19 lockdown. [1] It's just not really fashionable anymore. Everyone I know under the age of 25 or so, and (A smaller amount of) older people I know as well who have grown out of thinking being drunk is fun, are looking at it more as a quick way to get fat and sad. [1] https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/sep/analysis-our-survey-shows-many-young-people-are-drinking-less-alcohol-lockdown https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/sep/analysis-our-survey-show...
- sergers 4y ago
  I have always looked at it as a social activity, than sole reason to be getting drunk. With my friends, if you wanted to get drunk, it w as s never at a pub, we were too cheap. We would just drink at home. In general, people are less outgoing, not specific to pubs. Look at restaurant closures in your area, retail stores etc... I bet the pub lines up with these
- baq 4y ago
  Personally, the primary reason is hangovers take waaaaay too much time after 30
  - standardUser 4y ago
    There's no reason hangovers should be any worse in your 30's or 40's. Hangovers are mostly the result of poor drinking habits.
    - robonerd 4y ago
      Ha, and what bad drinking habits would those be? The popular answer is "drink water", but I didn't do that when I was young and I didn't have hangovers then. These days if I drink two beers and even twice as much fresh water, I'll be miserable the morning after. Consequently, I don't go to bars anymore and I buy a sixpack at the grocery store maybe two or three times a year.
onion2k 4y ago
I'm trying my best to keep them going.
hintymad 4y ago
Eh... Good thing? As someone who does not have the genes to produce ADH2, I can never appreciate alcohol or the euphoria of getting tipsy. Employees in my previous startups in SF openly stocked and drank lots of liquor, which made me uneasy too. It was also very frustrating that engineers in Dropbox of early days used to socialize and design their systems in noisy bars over hard liquor.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- helloworld11 4y ago
  So, because you yourself get no joy from alcohol, it frustrates you and makes you "uneasy" to see any situation where others do? Consequently, anything that forces them to consume much less is a good thing? Why? Why should others' personal pleasure bother you in the first place? I comment because this is a sadly selfish attitude that's far too common among many people about many things.
  - hintymad 4y ago
    My bad. I was venting indeed
    - camtarn 4y ago
      The last point is fair though. I love a good night out at a nice pub, but I'd hate trying to design a system in one!
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    It's like someone born with no legs being upset and disturbed that people enjoy jogging.
morninglight 4y ago
I've been going to pubs in Wales and England since 1977. I've noticed the customers seem to be older during the last 10 years. I suspect it is related to much social interaction moving to the internet. In any case, I wonder how this change has affected the sale of beer & ale.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- richardwhiuk 4y ago
  Isn't that just you are getting older and thus more likely to go to pubs where people are older?
  - morninglight 4y ago
    Brilliant, but I already thought about that and doubt that it is the case. Furthermore, I refuse to admit that I am getting older. Cheers
    - CoastalCoder 4y ago
      > Furthermore, I refuse to admit that I am getting older. Cool! We don't get many undead on HN. Welcome!
krona 4y ago
I live in a semi-rural area and all the local pubs that serve food are overflowing on a weekend, and usually busy on a weeknight. However, they all have staffing problems, and some have to close part of the week because staff presumably find better work elsewhere. Couple that with sometimes extortionate business rates and many average pubs in remote areas are simply not viable.
- genocidicbunny 4y ago
  Sounds like they're not paying their staff enough. If they're not having trouble with staffing on busy nights, but are on quiet ones thats a pretty sure sign that they need to raise their pay. On busy nights staff might be okay with the lower pay thanks to tips, but otherwise its likely more profitable for them to go work somewhere else that pays better.
  - Dan_Sylveste 4y ago
    >tips Barstaff don't get tips in the UK It's more likely that on quiet nights/days it's simply not cost effective to open. During a weekday a small pub might literally have one or two customers. They're traditionally owner-operated for a reason, and the reason is because the margins don't allow for staff.
    - genocidicbunny 4y ago
      Fair point. I'm looking at this from an American point of view, and I forgot that wait staff in the UK get paid actual wages unlike in the US.
    - crtasm 4y ago
      > Barstaff don't get tips in the UK. At least when food comes into it they may do, quite a lot of tips where my brother worked a few years back (pooled and shared between bar & kitchen staff). Nothing like the US though indeed.
    - martinald 4y ago
      Definitely changing that though, esp over last 10 years. Many pubs in London (and increasingly other areas) will put an "optional" 12.5% for service for food, especially if they have a "dining area" off the main bar. It's also increasingly common for pubs to have people asking if you'd like another drink, and charging you 12.5% for the pleasure - this seems to be a lingering effect after covid where you couldn't go to the bar to order.
cletus 4y ago
People who've never spent significant time in the UK may not appreciate the significance that pbus have played in the UK culture and social structure. Pubs have for many eyars been a social nexus. You wouldn't even go to drink necessarily but just go by default because that's what everyone else was doing. These are quite typically "locals" rather than going somewhere to go to a pub in particular. So this is really a long term trend in the changing social structure of the UK. Pubs are becoming less important socially, probably conciding with the rise of Internet culture and online connectedness. But also real estate prices come into play. Pubs sit on some valuable land, particularly in London. Costs go up to the point where you might be paying 8 pounds for a pint. That gets really expensive. I haven't seen anything close to this in the US. Take something like the bar in How I Met Your Mother. Obviously this is all fictional and these characters spen da lot of time there but it's still portrayed as extremely intentional, meaning plans are made to meet there. UK pub culture doesn't tend to be that intentional about meeting particular people but rather hanging out where others may or may not show up.
- zimpenfish 4y ago
  > probably conciding with the rise of Internet culture and online connectedness Possibly also related to the greater ease of accessing, e.g., sports on TV compared with 10-15 years ago - now you don't need a satellite dish etc., you can just stream Sky Sports over the internet which cuts out the need to find a pub showing whatever match you wanted (assuming you're not doing it as a social activity.)
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  You should try visiting New Orleans.
- bencollier49 4y ago
  Pubs were closing long before the internet appeared, albeit in smaller numbers. The main driver, in my opinion, is specialisation. We've got a much more professional workforce these days, with more specialist skills, who for this reason often have to travel for some distance to get to their places of work. That means far less time to go to the pub. Combined with modern media, it's just easier to sit indoors. People have posted other points elsewhere on this thread - they're all contributing (plus drink driving laws and smoking bans). I mean, a lot of people used to stop working at lunchtime and spend the afternoon in the pub. Now, if home working holds up, and then inflation abates a bit, perhaps pubs might regain an advantage, but I fear we're now in a new "steady state", and it'd take more to change things back.
pcrh 4y ago
It would be interesting to compare the number of pubs with the total number of establishments that cater to eating and drinking, e.g. including cafes, restaurants, night clubs, etc.
genocidicbunny 4y ago
I wonder how much on an effect prices have in this. It's gotten more and more expensive to go out drinking, while the prices for alcohol haven't risen commensurately in my area. When you're paying almost the cost of a bottle of cheap rum for a single drink, suddenly drinking at home starts to make a lot more sense. Why spend $20 on a drink when you can for the same money buy a bottle of cheap alcohol, some mixers and snacks and have yourself and your friends a merry night? On a side note, this made me wonder why prices on alcohol haven't gone up all that much, despite the recent inflation. Most of the prices for alcohol at my nearby grocery store are the same as they were last year and the year before.
crmd 4y ago
I’m an American (New York city) and I originally met most of my friends at the neighborhood coffee shops and bars. Most people don’t go there specifically to caffeinate and get drunk, it’s just the third place (outside work and home) where people go to socialize.
- iasay 4y ago
  In the UK we have some serious social drinking issues unlike America where a couple of beers is perfectly fine. I prefer going to a bar in the US than a pub here because it's a decent social event.
mywacaday 4y ago
The reasons are multiple but here are the ones I've noticed are. Compared to my father's generation most women now work and men and more involved with the family, a hangover Saturday/Sunday morning doesn't work. Cost, mortgage/childcare require two salaries, hard to justify a large cost of pub sources alcohol. The cost of property, saving for a deposit creates a habit of no longer going to the pub. We no longer need to go to a social place toget most of our local news or gossip, Facebook/WhatsApp have filled the gap. Every generation seems to be more health focused than the previous.
- EUV071STR48 4y ago
  > Cost, mortgage/childcare require two salaries I'm not sure if that's healthier.
  - mywacaday 4y ago
    Most definitely not
nemo44x 4y ago
It’s amazing to hear these stats and then drive around England and be astonished how many pubs there are. On high streets, town centers, neighborhoods, etc. Just think how many there were! I love pub culture and always look forward to a bitter when traveling to the UK.
- rossriley 4y ago
  There is still even at current levels something like 1 pub for every 1,600 residents in the country.
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    There's a few states in the USA with similar numbers but most every state is far below. And if you were to take the entire country it would be far below the UK numbers. https://www.eater.com/2013/5/29/6428463/here-are-the-states-with-the-most-bars-per-capita https://www.eater.com/2013/5/29/6428463/here-are-the-states-...
odiroot 4y ago
Coming from a country with a huge alcoholism problem, I welcome any trend that shows decrease in alcohol consumption. Now living in England, I'm amazed how people just take their cars to a pub and drive back home like it's nothing. And considering how busy my local pub is, some do it on a daily basis.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  > I'm amazed how people just take their cars to a pub and drive back home like it's nothing In England and Wales people often take their children to pubs. So not everyone's drinking alcohol - many are having food or just non-alcoholic drinks. If you think someone going to a restaurant or café and driving home isn't madness, then neither is someone going to the pub in England or Wales.
  - prvit 4y ago
    I think I’d rather have slightly inebriated drivers than people letting their kids drive them home.
    - chrisseaton 4y ago
      I mean not all adults in pubs are drinking.
- pm90 4y ago
  Wait really? For some reason I thought the transit was great in Cities in England… that would seem like the better option, no?
  - rocgf 4y ago
    Public transport is pretty good in the UK, but not to the point of being able to live without a car for a large portion of the population. In London, there is the tube and driving in the city is quite dreadful, so I guess that is the exception, but I would say that the UK is pretty car-centric overall.
pm90 4y ago
Bars and Pubs are a very “boomer” sorta place imo. Personally I do like going to them sometimes, but the people there are generally older. The younger groups are either there with work buddies or for some event, or are tourists. Notable exception are clubs, which are still dominated by the young. The ones that do well today IMO are the ones that experiment with their food offerings. Instead of the standard fare (greasy fries, burgers etc) they offer legitimately good food and vegetarian/vegan options and salads/tacos. I think its fine. Beers/Ales are worse health wise than the more refined liquors. These establishments just need to change to reflect the tastes of their clientele.
ezekiel11 4y ago
The other day I was listening to Raoul speak on Real Vision, and apart from his weird angle that crypto will survive this cycle (it wont), he mentions demographic time bomb that is about to hit our Western economy. The basic gist is that baby boomers will drastically curtail their spending by 60% because of the retirement pension is broken. It is essentially a ponzi scheme that will not be able to pay out everybody without huge erosion to currency and its literally the last thing a world reserve currency like US is going to want (a hegemony is only as good as its status as a world reserve currency). so without a sound pension/retirement guarantee, the only way to hedge against future grey swan is to retain capital as much as possible by curtailing spending. This is similar to what happened to in Japan, they would drastically cut spending while increasing savings following the '89 asset bubble brust, followed by deflation. Now the situation is getting out of hand due to supply chain and energy supply issues but eventually the belief is that price inflation post-pandemic will not last. For example, the watch collectibles market appears to be showing signs of stress, as market values of previously inflated (on purpose?) watches have begun to come down in price as buyers tighten their wallets. The JM gold green dial daytona is a good example of the asset bubble. The first market usually to lead deflationary events is the luxury goods section, followed by mainstream consumer goods that simply cannot find enough buyers at the current inflated price. Taking this a bit further then, there is a huge looming crisis to all sectors of the consumer/leisure economy. Pubs I think are on the decline as a result of inflation and warning signs of further curtailment of spending. This is a very nasty situation to be in because in the past we've been able to swing out of crisis by simply printing money and keeping the consumption rate constant, central banks simply have exhausted their monetary velocity, and could easily stand to lose control of the situation leading to Japan's near 40 year stagnation. The common belief about grey/black swans is a zealous/elastic band like reaction the remotest idea that it could happen here. anti-fragile or not, a multi-decade change in consumption will set a country back for decades. Perhaps it is this weakness that Putin saw, and EU's reliance on it's energy/commodities, that he chose to gamble on what he saw as a looming demographic crisis on his end (number of young males available for conscript has peaked and is on the decline). Unlike technologically advanced militaries like EU/US which can absorb this demographic decline, Russia's security guarantees besides its nuclear deterence is largely on numbers. For this reason I believe that Xi is going to emulate Putin to a certain degree in the Taiwan strait. The US is in a better situation, but it also faces a decline in its population and must continue to increase immigration, one that it is increasingly unwilling to do as populism demand rise as cost of living increases. We are in unprecedented territory now and the content of this article reads familiar to what we've seen in previous downturns, except that we have a huge monetary excess debt from '08 money print frenzy. I am not convinced the US hegemony will go away any time soon but I am wary as to whether we are going through what South America did up until 90s, a series of populism that swung the country to authoritarianism and ugliness that rose from that. This is the connections I made after reading this article and looking at consumption trends in other sectors.
citrin_ru 4y ago
Many pubs in England are operating since XIII - XIV centuries. It's a living history. Would be sad to see them gone.
- 202206241203 4y ago
  It's only more visible than people being Airbnb-d out of their native towns.
- mdavis6890 4y ago
  We should impose mandatory-minimums for alcohol consumption. I think 10 drinks/wk should do it.
kawsper 4y ago
In pre-pandemic times I worked from home and to get out a bit during a day I would have a coffee and work from the local pub. Depending on the time of day I showed up there would always be the regular pensioners starting their first drink of the day around 11:00, then around 12:30-13:00 the lunch crowd from the nearby offices would show up and sometimes after that there would be a birthday event or a funeral wake, then it would quiten down again until 17:00-18:00 when families showed up for dinner, and later than that the drinking crowd would show up and it would become too lively to sit and code. Pubs in the UK works as family restaurants (with a bar) but they are a place of social gathering, and they cater to all sort of different types of business.
rrodgers 4y ago
I'd be curious if the loss of social cohesion/connection offsets the reduction of alcohol (if that really occurs) - does dementia rise in small villages that lose pubs - or does it fall?
- chippy 4y ago
  Curious too about trade off of increased health but wrt isolation: in small villages / rural areas, the community is more tight-knit generally - you get more social isolation in urban areas, particularly for older folks. There was a recent paper done on social isolation in the UK - but heres one for the usa: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30609155/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30609155/
varispeed 4y ago
In the younger generation, people are not so much interested in drinking alcohol. Many prefer to relax with cannabis, but it is illegal for "recreational" purposes. So going to pub, then going somewhere to smoke, then coming back to pub was just tedious and risky. Especially that police likes to harass people minding their own business and if they are from ethnic minorities. That combined with the cost of living crisis, means it's cheaper and more comfortable to meet at ones home or somewhere in the park.
s8s8discourse 4y ago
There isn't sufficient margin in drink to float a pub. The margin is in food (and to an extent, dispensed soft drinks). Because priority becomes food over drink, people are willing (and able) to drive further for a better pub. Competition increases and you don't need a 'local' for every village or part of town anymore. Less pubs can serve more people because rather than regulars "propping up the bar" 3-5 nights a week for an extended session, you get restaurant-esque table turnover. This is desirable for landlords - they often live above their pubs - profit from food service means you can shut earlier, you don't have regular fights or trouble from drunk customers and general toil is lower. But some publicans just won't (or can't) adapt. They won't or can't invest in kitchen and chef. They can't or won't learn how to market and attract new, younger customers. Inflation, energy pricing, COVID shutdowns et al have all just accelerated the demise of the "pub pub". The old "pub pub" crowd are now well served by the Wetherspoons, who have the advantage of controlling their margins in ways Brewery landlords can't compete with (mass purchasing, pre-prepared food, all their pubs are "new" buildings that don't have the insane maintenance and insurance overheads of a 200+ year old pub building etcetc). We may be at a record low, but I suspect we'll be setting new lows for some years to come yet. src: family of publicans from 193Xs ~> 200X. Tried to buy a pub at the 'end' of COVID restrictions.
- bavent 4y ago
  Wow, this is complete opposite of America. I have run several bars/restaurants and most of our money came from alcohol sales. Food was still profitable, but much tighter margins. A lot more labor goes into the food side of the business too, and we couldn't get away with marking things up 4x like you can with wine. I think as you get into Michelin-starred places, the name of the chef and the quality of the food is enough to allow you to charge more, and also to cheap out on labor - some of the top restaurants in Chicago collude to pay their cooks $10-12/hr, for example.
  - heavyset_go 4y ago
    I was under the impression that margins on alcohol were huge. At least where I am, proprietors trip over themselves to get alcohol licenses, and those licenses go for hefty premiums.
deleted 4y ago
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codeulike 4y ago
This is a trend that has been steadily continuing for at least 20 years https://www.statista.com/statistics/310723/total-number-of-pubs-in-the-united-kingdom/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/310723/total-number-of-p... Imho alcohol is historically way too prominent in UK culture so its a relief to learn that people are finally finding something else to do with their time edit: 30 year trend in this paper: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8591/CBP-8591.pdf https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-...
- lloydatkinson 4y ago
  I thought exactly the same as someone from the UK as well. Far too much literal dependency on alcohol and football.
  - spiralx 4y ago
    Yeah, part of the issue is that historically we were wildly over-saturated with pubs due to the drinking culture, and as that's changed (along with the related issue of taxes on alcohol having increased a lot) there's just far less demand for somewhere to drink. My parents used to occasionally visit a village near them in Essex famous for having a dozen pubs along the tiny high street... crazy. This is the country that upon being introduced to spirits for the first time promptly went into an alcoholic frenzy where people drunk themselves to death in large numbers. It is strange that England is the only country I can think of without any national spirits of its own though...
fleddr 4y ago
Another article I read called the pub "England's living room". It fits the stories my brother told as he used to work in England (we're from the Netherlands). He'd describe that workers would immediately continue to the pub after work, after which their wife would bring a home-cooked meal directly to the pub. And the children might visit for an hour or so too. Anyway, different times. Some trends I'm spotting in the Netherlands that I suspect would also apply to the UK: Young people drink far less than before. When they do drink, they may first home drink cheaply and only then attend a pub (or club) extremely late at night. Others rarely attend a pub at all and prefer infrequent big events like concerts, where often they pop a cheap XTC pill and drink two sodas. And yet another group are truly "digital natives", my nephew is one of them. Their idea of a great Saturday night is to play a multiplayer game online. They never go anywhere, they rarely ever meet new people. Still, it's not just young people. Over here middle-aged (and older) people also seem to come far less than before. I think this has to do with life being so damn fast and busy, it's much different compared to a few decades earlier. You can't really stop it, times change. Still it saddens me to see another socially important physical place go the way of the dodo.
- droidist2 4y ago
  So pubs weren't insanely expensive back then?
  - thombat 4y ago
    Seemingly not, from a hasty look for data. [1] shows the price of a pint of lager across 1973 - 2017 increasing from 17p to 358p while the Bank of England calculator [2] shows an increase in line with inflation would have been 138p. Of course pure inflation doesn't directly match changes in consumer spending ability, but crudely it suggests pub beer has become relatively more than twice as expensive, possibly because of tax increases (as with tobacco the govt can increase revenue and call it a health-improvement measure) [1] https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2018/01/average-uk-draught-beer-prices-1973-2017.html https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2018/01/average-uk-draug... [2] https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/in...
ggm 4y ago
There is a massive alcoholism, binge drinking, and future fatty liver disease problem building in Britain. Massive. It causes me great concern from afar, I am watching family and friends whose only social outlet is to go and get hammered in the pub. I loved my local (York, 1980s) and I loved being in the snug, and I love the friendlyness of a local, but you would have to be daft to ignore the massive, huge future cost/consequence of a culture which thinks socialising == booze Here in Australia its a smaller problem. The big one is buying booze from the bottle shop to drink at home. It hits some people very hard, but its not quite the same as promiscuous group/peer pressure drinking in the pub like in the UK. Youth binge drinking is a life-long consequence activity. Britain has been here before. Beer was watered down at the turn of the 19th century and Hogarth's "gin lane" is a parody of a real problem, the relatively cheap highly potent dutch jenever (gin) which was leaking into british society. Tax is now actively used as back pressure on alcohol consumption, just as for sugar. It's divisive of course. So was taxes on smoking. Preloading. Shooters. Happy hour. Last orders. This is going to be why kids die young in the next 40-50 years. Plus, the public spaces after closing time are a cesspit.
- indrora 4y ago
  Coming from the Younger Generation: A lot of my peers don't drink. If they do drink, it's very uncommon they have more than one or two drinks at a time, sparingly. There's a definite shift. Multiple of my peers have cited their parents' heavy drinking and the result as a reason why they're choosing to go sober, which I can respect at one level. That isn't to say I don't have binge drinking colleagues. Oh boy do I. I asked a longtime friend of mine how he handles his work (primarily onsite IT support) and he didn't drop a beat when he responded "Alcohol." Alcoholism has become the crutch to hold up some of the frontline support folks because of lack of staffing, lack of training, lack of everything.
  - ggm 4y ago
    Really glad to get this perspective. My ground position tends to "the kids are alright" but I have increasingly worried for this problem, it's not true.
jsiaajdsdaa 4y ago
It's almost as if tourists and workers are the lifeblood of a pub, and when you physically bar (hehe) those people from entering because of a peculiar collection of organic material going around, it is the pub that is squeezed to death between the landlord and the non-existent customer
- daveoc64 4y ago
  The decline in pubs began long before the pandemic.
rr808 4y ago
Meanwhile, a third of the fish and chip shops in Britain are expected to close as a result of price hikes and embargoes from Russia/Ukraine. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/02/ukraine-wars-collateral-damage-britains-beloved-fish-chip-shops/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/02/ukraine-wars... Its a sad time for the UK.
- sloucher 4y ago
  Not as sad as it is for Ukraine.
- schnitzelstoat 4y ago
  I don't really care for the pub. But if the chippy dies then that's a tragedy.
_carbyau_ 4y ago
I am decidedly middle aged and don't mind a drink but still see little reason to "hang out" at a pub as was once common. I don't stay at home all the time but when I go out it is for an experience and not "just chilling". And so the pub is again a long way down the list of things I'd rather be doing. The pub experience seems to not elevate itself enough to be worth leaving home for and yet, if it was a more "elevated experience" it wouldn't be classed as a pub anymore. Maybe pubs are simply becoming something else more entertaining to compete in the attention economy? EDIT: removed wordy pros/cons list that made little point
EnKopVand 4y ago
One of the things that have changed quite significantly in our life time is that you can’t drink or be drunk at work anymore. I worked a decade in the public sector, and some of my older coworkers (they are 55-60) now could tell stories from when the server room was genuinely used to take naps when people needed to sober up a little. And this was everyone from the craftsman workers to the mayor. It’s sort of how you see a picture from people sitting in a cinema in the 80ies with cigarettes lit, it’s so foreign to most of us that it’s crazy to think that this was the norm a few decades ago. Obviously more people are going to take their drinking home when the drinking doesn’t start at work, and now that we’ve been through a few lockdowns our habits have changed quite a bit as well.
- tragomaskhalos 4y ago
  In the eighties and nineties it was certainly the case that Friday lunchtime was nearly always spent in the pub - other days also, but less frequently so. In one particular project this effectively turned into a four and a half day week, and the expression 'going back to the office to log off / collect my coat' became a running joke. This was software development but in many other industries, particularly creative ones, this was very much the norm. In my experience this started to change mid-late nineties. As others have commented, the symbiotic bond with the boozer that was ingrained in the culture has largely vanished, and young people in the UK would rather hang out with their friends in other places and ways, and drink far less than their elders did/do.
  - secretsatan 4y ago
    Although it's the common explanation that young people just don't do that anymore. I think it's one of the symptoms of the fact that younger generations just don't have the disposable cash anymore to go out.
    - scottiebarnes 4y ago
      There are also competing activities ie. the growth of the fitness industry. People have made habits of working out at the gym after work. I could never imagine not having a fitness/athletic/martial arts hobby in my life, and thus I reduce drug/alcohol/bad food consumption to optimize for performance in those hobbies.
switch007 4y ago
Don’t the kids (edit: under 30s lol) drink at home, do some drugs, then go straight to the clubs, bypassing the pubs entirely?
- spiralx 4y ago
  Judging from all the youngsters at work a ton of them barely drink at all, let alone do anything beyond that apart from - maybe - the odd joint. They're all much less hedonistic than the older folks.
zasdffaa 4y ago
"...adding to the existing problems of price rises and waning consumer demand" Not remotely possible that people could be being put off by gouging prices, is it? My local pub/club used to do shots at £2.50 They are now £3.50[1] I walked in a couple of weeks ago, price of a pint was up from £5 to £5.50 - 10% instant jump, which is pretty bloody incredible. It does sadden me to watch good pubs being destroyed to build more houses. It's always houses innit. [1] you can get a full bottle of cheapo spirits for about £10 at the supermarket.
submeta 4y ago
It‘s the same here in Germany. Many „Kneipen“ have closed. I am thinking that low income people cannot afford to pay 3.50 Euros for a beer anymore. Thirty years ago low income meant you were able to go to a kneipe 2-3 times a week and drink a couple of beer. These days low income people who like to drink sit on benches in front of so called „Spätis“ (something like a mini supermarket) and get a cold beer for a Euro. These people cannot affort to spend 3x3.50 Euros a day. So first the low income jobs pay less, and then there are cheaper alternatives to German pubs.
throwaway22032 4y ago
The cost is just too high, simple as. A pint in most pubs is like 30 mins to an hour of work at minimum wage. You can drink it faster than you can earn it.
CaptainZapp 4y ago
Reminds me of those developers, which demolished a grade II listed pub without planning permission. Let's just say it didn't turn out well for them[1]. That, at least, was one pub, which could be saved. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlton_Tavern,_Kilburn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlton_Tavern,_Kilburn
JoeAltmaier 4y ago
In the TV series 'Escape to the Country', every episode it seems one of the houses is a converted pub. At the same time, each couple wants to live in a village with a pub. A romantic notion I'm sure, but it seems to signal that some folks at least still value them.
matt3210 4y ago
I’m sure mandatory shutdowns Accelerated this quite a bit.
JoeAltmaier 4y ago
Casual dining grew. I know its not the same. But its not like "nobody is going out any more".
tamade 4y ago
A big chunk of UK pubs are owned by global private equity shops. No surprise that with PE consolidation comes so-called synergies-- might explain why pub numbers are dwindling.

173 points by samizdis 4y ago

More people are at their homes playing video games, using streaming platforms, and going online to shop for alcohol or food. Less people are wanting to leave their homes, especially during gas inflation and other things.

cpursley 4y ago
Gas inflation? Aren't most pubs in the UK walkable (vs say, US bars)?
- Nux 4y ago
  Indeed many are and in the age of working from home I expect many neighbourhood pubs to do well. We're certainly going more often than before.
  - cpursley 4y ago
    It's also a great way to get to know your neighbors and build community.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- chmod775 4y ago
  A location only reachable by car would be a suboptimal choice for any establishment mainly selling alcoholic beverages.
  - standardUser 4y ago
    You just described America.
    - revscat 4y ago
      Suboptimal?
- iasay 4y ago
  Not necessarily. In cities people tend to be disparately located so usually ends up via public transport. In small towns the local pub can be a 30 minute walk away or a 30 minute taxi away depending on how many of them have closed down and the spread of the car-focused structure of some towns. The petrol/gas inflation, plus the incursion of Uber, really screwed the prices of the taxis up as well.
- walthamstow 4y ago
  They mean natural gas, the stuff you burn in the kitchen to heat a pot. Not gasoline.
mshook 4y ago
That's a good point. Not only people tend to drink less nowadays but also when people mention these kinds of development (like movie theater decline and so on), they forget to mention all of these are just different kinds of entertainment. And there has never been so many ways to entertain oneself so the competition is stiff.

phphphphp 4y ago

The record low is a part of a long term trend, the numbers have been falling year over year for the last few decades — this headline is somewhat misleading. The pandemic and changing economic environment may hasten their demise, but it has been long coming. https://www.statista.com/statistics/310723/total-number-of-pubs-in-the-united-kingdom/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/310723/total-number-of-p...

mike_hock 4y ago
Sounds like an extremely alarming trend! Why is no-one doing anything? Where are they gonna go to get hammered?
- InCityDreams 4y ago
  Cannaboids.
- guggleet 4y ago
  13% of the population is on opioids, 6% are on gabaergic/genics, and 17% are on monoamine reuptake inhibitors of some form. There is plenty of room to grow.

jamal-kumar 4y ago

One factor that's important not to overlook is that younger people, especially in developed nations, are drinking much less in recent years, even after the COVID-19 lockdown. [1] It's just not really fashionable anymore. Everyone I know under the age of 25 or so, and (A smaller amount of) older people I know as well who have grown out of thinking being drunk is fun, are looking at it more as a quick way to get fat and sad. [1] https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/sep/analysis-our-survey-shows-many-young-people-are-drinking-less-alcohol-lockdown https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/sep/analysis-our-survey-show...

sergers 4y ago
I have always looked at it as a social activity, than sole reason to be getting drunk. With my friends, if you wanted to get drunk, it w as s never at a pub, we were too cheap. We would just drink at home. In general, people are less outgoing, not specific to pubs. Look at restaurant closures in your area, retail stores etc... I bet the pub lines up with these
baq 4y ago
Personally, the primary reason is hangovers take waaaaay too much time after 30
- standardUser 4y ago
  There's no reason hangovers should be any worse in your 30's or 40's. Hangovers are mostly the result of poor drinking habits.
  - robonerd 4y ago
    Ha, and what bad drinking habits would those be? The popular answer is "drink water", but I didn't do that when I was young and I didn't have hangovers then. These days if I drink two beers and even twice as much fresh water, I'll be miserable the morning after. Consequently, I don't go to bars anymore and I buy a sixpack at the grocery store maybe two or three times a year.

onion2k 4y ago

I'm trying my best to keep them going.

hintymad 4y ago

Eh... Good thing? As someone who does not have the genes to produce ADH2, I can never appreciate alcohol or the euphoria of getting tipsy. Employees in my previous startups in SF openly stocked and drank lots of liquor, which made me uneasy too. It was also very frustrating that engineers in Dropbox of early days used to socialize and design their systems in noisy bars over hard liquor.

deleted 4y ago
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helloworld11 4y ago
So, because you yourself get no joy from alcohol, it frustrates you and makes you "uneasy" to see any situation where others do? Consequently, anything that forces them to consume much less is a good thing? Why? Why should others' personal pleasure bother you in the first place? I comment because this is a sadly selfish attitude that's far too common among many people about many things.
- hintymad 4y ago
  My bad. I was venting indeed
  - camtarn 4y ago
    The last point is fair though. I love a good night out at a nice pub, but I'd hate trying to design a system in one!
- pessimizer 4y ago
  It's like someone born with no legs being upset and disturbed that people enjoy jogging.

morninglight 4y ago

I've been going to pubs in Wales and England since 1977. I've noticed the customers seem to be older during the last 10 years. I suspect it is related to much social interaction moving to the internet. In any case, I wonder how this change has affected the sale of beer & ale.

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richardwhiuk 4y ago
Isn't that just you are getting older and thus more likely to go to pubs where people are older?
- morninglight 4y ago
  Brilliant, but I already thought about that and doubt that it is the case. Furthermore, I refuse to admit that I am getting older. Cheers
  - CoastalCoder 4y ago
    > Furthermore, I refuse to admit that I am getting older. Cool! We don't get many undead on HN. Welcome!

krona 4y ago

I live in a semi-rural area and all the local pubs that serve food are overflowing on a weekend, and usually busy on a weeknight. However, they all have staffing problems, and some have to close part of the week because staff presumably find better work elsewhere. Couple that with sometimes extortionate business rates and many average pubs in remote areas are simply not viable.

genocidicbunny 4y ago
Sounds like they're not paying their staff enough. If they're not having trouble with staffing on busy nights, but are on quiet ones thats a pretty sure sign that they need to raise their pay. On busy nights staff might be okay with the lower pay thanks to tips, but otherwise its likely more profitable for them to go work somewhere else that pays better.
- Dan_Sylveste 4y ago
  >tips Barstaff don't get tips in the UK It's more likely that on quiet nights/days it's simply not cost effective to open. During a weekday a small pub might literally have one or two customers. They're traditionally owner-operated for a reason, and the reason is because the margins don't allow for staff.
  - genocidicbunny 4y ago
    Fair point. I'm looking at this from an American point of view, and I forgot that wait staff in the UK get paid actual wages unlike in the US.
  - crtasm 4y ago
    > Barstaff don't get tips in the UK. At least when food comes into it they may do, quite a lot of tips where my brother worked a few years back (pooled and shared between bar & kitchen staff). Nothing like the US though indeed.
  - martinald 4y ago
    Definitely changing that though, esp over last 10 years. Many pubs in London (and increasingly other areas) will put an "optional" 12.5% for service for food, especially if they have a "dining area" off the main bar. It's also increasingly common for pubs to have people asking if you'd like another drink, and charging you 12.5% for the pleasure - this seems to be a lingering effect after covid where you couldn't go to the bar to order.

cletus 4y ago

People who've never spent significant time in the UK may not appreciate the significance that pbus have played in the UK culture and social structure. Pubs have for many eyars been a social nexus. You wouldn't even go to drink necessarily but just go by default because that's what everyone else was doing. These are quite typically "locals" rather than going somewhere to go to a pub in particular. So this is really a long term trend in the changing social structure of the UK. Pubs are becoming less important socially, probably conciding with the rise of Internet culture and online connectedness. But also real estate prices come into play. Pubs sit on some valuable land, particularly in London. Costs go up to the point where you might be paying 8 pounds for a pint. That gets really expensive. I haven't seen anything close to this in the US. Take something like the bar in How I Met Your Mother. Obviously this is all fictional and these characters spen da lot of time there but it's still portrayed as extremely intentional, meaning plans are made to meet there. UK pub culture doesn't tend to be that intentional about meeting particular people but rather hanging out where others may or may not show up.

zimpenfish 4y ago
> probably conciding with the rise of Internet culture and online connectedness Possibly also related to the greater ease of accessing, e.g., sports on TV compared with 10-15 years ago - now you don't need a satellite dish etc., you can just stream Sky Sports over the internet which cuts out the need to find a pub showing whatever match you wanted (assuming you're not doing it as a social activity.)
selimthegrim 4y ago
You should try visiting New Orleans.
bencollier49 4y ago
Pubs were closing long before the internet appeared, albeit in smaller numbers. The main driver, in my opinion, is specialisation. We've got a much more professional workforce these days, with more specialist skills, who for this reason often have to travel for some distance to get to their places of work. That means far less time to go to the pub. Combined with modern media, it's just easier to sit indoors. People have posted other points elsewhere on this thread - they're all contributing (plus drink driving laws and smoking bans). I mean, a lot of people used to stop working at lunchtime and spend the afternoon in the pub. Now, if home working holds up, and then inflation abates a bit, perhaps pubs might regain an advantage, but I fear we're now in a new "steady state", and it'd take more to change things back.

pcrh 4y ago

It would be interesting to compare the number of pubs with the total number of establishments that cater to eating and drinking, e.g. including cafes, restaurants, night clubs, etc.

genocidicbunny 4y ago

I wonder how much on an effect prices have in this. It's gotten more and more expensive to go out drinking, while the prices for alcohol haven't risen commensurately in my area. When you're paying almost the cost of a bottle of cheap rum for a single drink, suddenly drinking at home starts to make a lot more sense. Why spend $20 on a drink when you can for the same money buy a bottle of cheap alcohol, some mixers and snacks and have yourself and your friends a merry night? On a side note, this made me wonder why prices on alcohol haven't gone up all that much, despite the recent inflation. Most of the prices for alcohol at my nearby grocery store are the same as they were last year and the year before.

crmd 4y ago

I’m an American (New York city) and I originally met most of my friends at the neighborhood coffee shops and bars. Most people don’t go there specifically to caffeinate and get drunk, it’s just the third place (outside work and home) where people go to socialize.

iasay 4y ago
In the UK we have some serious social drinking issues unlike America where a couple of beers is perfectly fine. I prefer going to a bar in the US than a pub here because it's a decent social event.

mywacaday 4y ago

The reasons are multiple but here are the ones I've noticed are. Compared to my father's generation most women now work and men and more involved with the family, a hangover Saturday/Sunday morning doesn't work. Cost, mortgage/childcare require two salaries, hard to justify a large cost of pub sources alcohol. The cost of property, saving for a deposit creates a habit of no longer going to the pub. We no longer need to go to a social place toget most of our local news or gossip, Facebook/WhatsApp have filled the gap. Every generation seems to be more health focused than the previous.

EUV071STR48 4y ago
> Cost, mortgage/childcare require two salaries I'm not sure if that's healthier.
- mywacaday 4y ago
  Most definitely not

nemo44x 4y ago

It’s amazing to hear these stats and then drive around England and be astonished how many pubs there are. On high streets, town centers, neighborhoods, etc. Just think how many there were! I love pub culture and always look forward to a bitter when traveling to the UK.

rossriley 4y ago
There is still even at current levels something like 1 pub for every 1,600 residents in the country.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  There's a few states in the USA with similar numbers but most every state is far below. And if you were to take the entire country it would be far below the UK numbers. https://www.eater.com/2013/5/29/6428463/here-are-the-states-with-the-most-bars-per-capita https://www.eater.com/2013/5/29/6428463/here-are-the-states-...

odiroot 4y ago

Coming from a country with a huge alcoholism problem, I welcome any trend that shows decrease in alcohol consumption. Now living in England, I'm amazed how people just take their cars to a pub and drive back home like it's nothing. And considering how busy my local pub is, some do it on a daily basis.

chrisseaton 4y ago
> I'm amazed how people just take their cars to a pub and drive back home like it's nothing In England and Wales people often take their children to pubs. So not everyone's drinking alcohol - many are having food or just non-alcoholic drinks. If you think someone going to a restaurant or café and driving home isn't madness, then neither is someone going to the pub in England or Wales.
- prvit 4y ago
  I think I’d rather have slightly inebriated drivers than people letting their kids drive them home.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    I mean not all adults in pubs are drinking.
pm90 4y ago
Wait really? For some reason I thought the transit was great in Cities in England… that would seem like the better option, no?
- rocgf 4y ago
  Public transport is pretty good in the UK, but not to the point of being able to live without a car for a large portion of the population. In London, there is the tube and driving in the city is quite dreadful, so I guess that is the exception, but I would say that the UK is pretty car-centric overall.

pm90 4y ago

Bars and Pubs are a very “boomer” sorta place imo. Personally I do like going to them sometimes, but the people there are generally older. The younger groups are either there with work buddies or for some event, or are tourists. Notable exception are clubs, which are still dominated by the young. The ones that do well today IMO are the ones that experiment with their food offerings. Instead of the standard fare (greasy fries, burgers etc) they offer legitimately good food and vegetarian/vegan options and salads/tacos. I think its fine. Beers/Ales are worse health wise than the more refined liquors. These establishments just need to change to reflect the tastes of their clientele.

ezekiel11 4y ago

The other day I was listening to Raoul speak on Real Vision, and apart from his weird angle that crypto will survive this cycle (it wont), he mentions demographic time bomb that is about to hit our Western economy. The basic gist is that baby boomers will drastically curtail their spending by 60% because of the retirement pension is broken. It is essentially a ponzi scheme that will not be able to pay out everybody without huge erosion to currency and its literally the last thing a world reserve currency like US is going to want (a hegemony is only as good as its status as a world reserve currency). so without a sound pension/retirement guarantee, the only way to hedge against future grey swan is to retain capital as much as possible by curtailing spending. This is similar to what happened to in Japan, they would drastically cut spending while increasing savings following the '89 asset bubble brust, followed by deflation. Now the situation is getting out of hand due to supply chain and energy supply issues but eventually the belief is that price inflation post-pandemic will not last. For example, the watch collectibles market appears to be showing signs of stress, as market values of previously inflated (on purpose?) watches have begun to come down in price as buyers tighten their wallets. The JM gold green dial daytona is a good example of the asset bubble. The first market usually to lead deflationary events is the luxury goods section, followed by mainstream consumer goods that simply cannot find enough buyers at the current inflated price. Taking this a bit further then, there is a huge looming crisis to all sectors of the consumer/leisure economy. Pubs I think are on the decline as a result of inflation and warning signs of further curtailment of spending. This is a very nasty situation to be in because in the past we've been able to swing out of crisis by simply printing money and keeping the consumption rate constant, central banks simply have exhausted their monetary velocity, and could easily stand to lose control of the situation leading to Japan's near 40 year stagnation. The common belief about grey/black swans is a zealous/elastic band like reaction the remotest idea that it could happen here. anti-fragile or not, a multi-decade change in consumption will set a country back for decades. Perhaps it is this weakness that Putin saw, and EU's reliance on it's energy/commodities, that he chose to gamble on what he saw as a looming demographic crisis on his end (number of young males available for conscript has peaked and is on the decline). Unlike technologically advanced militaries like EU/US which can absorb this demographic decline, Russia's security guarantees besides its nuclear deterence is largely on numbers. For this reason I believe that Xi is going to emulate Putin to a certain degree in the Taiwan strait. The US is in a better situation, but it also faces a decline in its population and must continue to increase immigration, one that it is increasingly unwilling to do as populism demand rise as cost of living increases. We are in unprecedented territory now and the content of this article reads familiar to what we've seen in previous downturns, except that we have a huge monetary excess debt from '08 money print frenzy. I am not convinced the US hegemony will go away any time soon but I am wary as to whether we are going through what South America did up until 90s, a series of populism that swung the country to authoritarianism and ugliness that rose from that. This is the connections I made after reading this article and looking at consumption trends in other sectors.

citrin_ru 4y ago

Many pubs in England are operating since XIII - XIV centuries. It's a living history. Would be sad to see them gone.

202206241203 4y ago
It's only more visible than people being Airbnb-d out of their native towns.
mdavis6890 4y ago
We should impose mandatory-minimums for alcohol consumption. I think 10 drinks/wk should do it.

kawsper 4y ago

In pre-pandemic times I worked from home and to get out a bit during a day I would have a coffee and work from the local pub. Depending on the time of day I showed up there would always be the regular pensioners starting their first drink of the day around 11:00, then around 12:30-13:00 the lunch crowd from the nearby offices would show up and sometimes after that there would be a birthday event or a funeral wake, then it would quiten down again until 17:00-18:00 when families showed up for dinner, and later than that the drinking crowd would show up and it would become too lively to sit and code. Pubs in the UK works as family restaurants (with a bar) but they are a place of social gathering, and they cater to all sort of different types of business.

rrodgers 4y ago

I'd be curious if the loss of social cohesion/connection offsets the reduction of alcohol (if that really occurs) - does dementia rise in small villages that lose pubs - or does it fall?

chippy 4y ago
Curious too about trade off of increased health but wrt isolation: in small villages / rural areas, the community is more tight-knit generally - you get more social isolation in urban areas, particularly for older folks. There was a recent paper done on social isolation in the UK - but heres one for the usa: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30609155/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30609155/

varispeed 4y ago

In the younger generation, people are not so much interested in drinking alcohol. Many prefer to relax with cannabis, but it is illegal for "recreational" purposes. So going to pub, then going somewhere to smoke, then coming back to pub was just tedious and risky. Especially that police likes to harass people minding their own business and if they are from ethnic minorities. That combined with the cost of living crisis, means it's cheaper and more comfortable to meet at ones home or somewhere in the park.

s8s8discourse 4y ago

There isn't sufficient margin in drink to float a pub. The margin is in food (and to an extent, dispensed soft drinks). Because priority becomes food over drink, people are willing (and able) to drive further for a better pub. Competition increases and you don't need a 'local' for every village or part of town anymore. Less pubs can serve more people because rather than regulars "propping up the bar" 3-5 nights a week for an extended session, you get restaurant-esque table turnover. This is desirable for landlords - they often live above their pubs - profit from food service means you can shut earlier, you don't have regular fights or trouble from drunk customers and general toil is lower. But some publicans just won't (or can't) adapt. They won't or can't invest in kitchen and chef. They can't or won't learn how to market and attract new, younger customers. Inflation, energy pricing, COVID shutdowns et al have all just accelerated the demise of the "pub pub". The old "pub pub" crowd are now well served by the Wetherspoons, who have the advantage of controlling their margins in ways Brewery landlords can't compete with (mass purchasing, pre-prepared food, all their pubs are "new" buildings that don't have the insane maintenance and insurance overheads of a 200+ year old pub building etcetc). We may be at a record low, but I suspect we'll be setting new lows for some years to come yet. src: family of publicans from 193Xs ~> 200X. Tried to buy a pub at the 'end' of COVID restrictions.

bavent 4y ago
Wow, this is complete opposite of America. I have run several bars/restaurants and most of our money came from alcohol sales. Food was still profitable, but much tighter margins. A lot more labor goes into the food side of the business too, and we couldn't get away with marking things up 4x like you can with wine. I think as you get into Michelin-starred places, the name of the chef and the quality of the food is enough to allow you to charge more, and also to cheap out on labor - some of the top restaurants in Chicago collude to pay their cooks $10-12/hr, for example.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  I was under the impression that margins on alcohol were huge. At least where I am, proprietors trip over themselves to get alcohol licenses, and those licenses go for hefty premiums.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

codeulike 4y ago

This is a trend that has been steadily continuing for at least 20 years https://www.statista.com/statistics/310723/total-number-of-pubs-in-the-united-kingdom/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/310723/total-number-of-p... Imho alcohol is historically way too prominent in UK culture so its a relief to learn that people are finally finding something else to do with their time edit: 30 year trend in this paper: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8591/CBP-8591.pdf https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-...

lloydatkinson 4y ago
I thought exactly the same as someone from the UK as well. Far too much literal dependency on alcohol and football.
- spiralx 4y ago
  Yeah, part of the issue is that historically we were wildly over-saturated with pubs due to the drinking culture, and as that's changed (along with the related issue of taxes on alcohol having increased a lot) there's just far less demand for somewhere to drink. My parents used to occasionally visit a village near them in Essex famous for having a dozen pubs along the tiny high street... crazy. This is the country that upon being introduced to spirits for the first time promptly went into an alcoholic frenzy where people drunk themselves to death in large numbers. It is strange that England is the only country I can think of without any national spirits of its own though...

fleddr 4y ago

Another article I read called the pub "England's living room". It fits the stories my brother told as he used to work in England (we're from the Netherlands). He'd describe that workers would immediately continue to the pub after work, after which their wife would bring a home-cooked meal directly to the pub. And the children might visit for an hour or so too. Anyway, different times. Some trends I'm spotting in the Netherlands that I suspect would also apply to the UK: Young people drink far less than before. When they do drink, they may first home drink cheaply and only then attend a pub (or club) extremely late at night. Others rarely attend a pub at all and prefer infrequent big events like concerts, where often they pop a cheap XTC pill and drink two sodas. And yet another group are truly "digital natives", my nephew is one of them. Their idea of a great Saturday night is to play a multiplayer game online. They never go anywhere, they rarely ever meet new people. Still, it's not just young people. Over here middle-aged (and older) people also seem to come far less than before. I think this has to do with life being so damn fast and busy, it's much different compared to a few decades earlier. You can't really stop it, times change. Still it saddens me to see another socially important physical place go the way of the dodo.

droidist2 4y ago
So pubs weren't insanely expensive back then?
- thombat 4y ago
  Seemingly not, from a hasty look for data. [1] shows the price of a pint of lager across 1973 - 2017 increasing from 17p to 358p while the Bank of England calculator [2] shows an increase in line with inflation would have been 138p. Of course pure inflation doesn't directly match changes in consumer spending ability, but crudely it suggests pub beer has become relatively more than twice as expensive, possibly because of tax increases (as with tobacco the govt can increase revenue and call it a health-improvement measure) [1] https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2018/01/average-uk-draught-beer-prices-1973-2017.html https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2018/01/average-uk-draug... [2] https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/in...

ggm 4y ago

There is a massive alcoholism, binge drinking, and future fatty liver disease problem building in Britain. Massive. It causes me great concern from afar, I am watching family and friends whose only social outlet is to go and get hammered in the pub. I loved my local (York, 1980s) and I loved being in the snug, and I love the friendlyness of a local, but you would have to be daft to ignore the massive, huge future cost/consequence of a culture which thinks socialising == booze Here in Australia its a smaller problem. The big one is buying booze from the bottle shop to drink at home. It hits some people very hard, but its not quite the same as promiscuous group/peer pressure drinking in the pub like in the UK. Youth binge drinking is a life-long consequence activity. Britain has been here before. Beer was watered down at the turn of the 19th century and Hogarth's "gin lane" is a parody of a real problem, the relatively cheap highly potent dutch jenever (gin) which was leaking into british society. Tax is now actively used as back pressure on alcohol consumption, just as for sugar. It's divisive of course. So was taxes on smoking. Preloading. Shooters. Happy hour. Last orders. This is going to be why kids die young in the next 40-50 years. Plus, the public spaces after closing time are a cesspit.

indrora 4y ago
Coming from the Younger Generation: A lot of my peers don't drink. If they do drink, it's very uncommon they have more than one or two drinks at a time, sparingly. There's a definite shift. Multiple of my peers have cited their parents' heavy drinking and the result as a reason why they're choosing to go sober, which I can respect at one level. That isn't to say I don't have binge drinking colleagues. Oh boy do I. I asked a longtime friend of mine how he handles his work (primarily onsite IT support) and he didn't drop a beat when he responded "Alcohol." Alcoholism has become the crutch to hold up some of the frontline support folks because of lack of staffing, lack of training, lack of everything.
- ggm 4y ago
  Really glad to get this perspective. My ground position tends to "the kids are alright" but I have increasingly worried for this problem, it's not true.

jsiaajdsdaa 4y ago

It's almost as if tourists and workers are the lifeblood of a pub, and when you physically bar (hehe) those people from entering because of a peculiar collection of organic material going around, it is the pub that is squeezed to death between the landlord and the non-existent customer

daveoc64 4y ago
The decline in pubs began long before the pandemic.

rr808 4y ago

Meanwhile, a third of the fish and chip shops in Britain are expected to close as a result of price hikes and embargoes from Russia/Ukraine. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/02/ukraine-wars-collateral-damage-britains-beloved-fish-chip-shops/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/02/ukraine-wars... Its a sad time for the UK.

sloucher 4y ago
Not as sad as it is for Ukraine.
schnitzelstoat 4y ago
I don't really care for the pub. But if the chippy dies then that's a tragedy.

_carbyau_ 4y ago

I am decidedly middle aged and don't mind a drink but still see little reason to "hang out" at a pub as was once common. I don't stay at home all the time but when I go out it is for an experience and not "just chilling". And so the pub is again a long way down the list of things I'd rather be doing. The pub experience seems to not elevate itself enough to be worth leaving home for and yet, if it was a more "elevated experience" it wouldn't be classed as a pub anymore. Maybe pubs are simply becoming something else more entertaining to compete in the attention economy? EDIT: removed wordy pros/cons list that made little point

EnKopVand 4y ago

One of the things that have changed quite significantly in our life time is that you can’t drink or be drunk at work anymore. I worked a decade in the public sector, and some of my older coworkers (they are 55-60) now could tell stories from when the server room was genuinely used to take naps when people needed to sober up a little. And this was everyone from the craftsman workers to the mayor. It’s sort of how you see a picture from people sitting in a cinema in the 80ies with cigarettes lit, it’s so foreign to most of us that it’s crazy to think that this was the norm a few decades ago. Obviously more people are going to take their drinking home when the drinking doesn’t start at work, and now that we’ve been through a few lockdowns our habits have changed quite a bit as well.

tragomaskhalos 4y ago
In the eighties and nineties it was certainly the case that Friday lunchtime was nearly always spent in the pub - other days also, but less frequently so. In one particular project this effectively turned into a four and a half day week, and the expression 'going back to the office to log off / collect my coat' became a running joke. This was software development but in many other industries, particularly creative ones, this was very much the norm. In my experience this started to change mid-late nineties. As others have commented, the symbiotic bond with the boozer that was ingrained in the culture has largely vanished, and young people in the UK would rather hang out with their friends in other places and ways, and drink far less than their elders did/do.
- secretsatan 4y ago
  Although it's the common explanation that young people just don't do that anymore. I think it's one of the symptoms of the fact that younger generations just don't have the disposable cash anymore to go out.
  - scottiebarnes 4y ago
    There are also competing activities ie. the growth of the fitness industry. People have made habits of working out at the gym after work. I could never imagine not having a fitness/athletic/martial arts hobby in my life, and thus I reduce drug/alcohol/bad food consumption to optimize for performance in those hobbies.

switch007 4y ago

Don’t the kids (edit: under 30s lol) drink at home, do some drugs, then go straight to the clubs, bypassing the pubs entirely?

spiralx 4y ago
Judging from all the youngsters at work a ton of them barely drink at all, let alone do anything beyond that apart from - maybe - the odd joint. They're all much less hedonistic than the older folks.

zasdffaa 4y ago

"...adding to the existing problems of price rises and waning consumer demand" Not remotely possible that people could be being put off by gouging prices, is it? My local pub/club used to do shots at £2.50 They are now £3.50[1] I walked in a couple of weeks ago, price of a pint was up from £5 to £5.50 - 10% instant jump, which is pretty bloody incredible. It does sadden me to watch good pubs being destroyed to build more houses. It's always houses innit. [1] you can get a full bottle of cheapo spirits for about £10 at the supermarket.

submeta 4y ago

It‘s the same here in Germany. Many „Kneipen“ have closed. I am thinking that low income people cannot afford to pay 3.50 Euros for a beer anymore. Thirty years ago low income meant you were able to go to a kneipe 2-3 times a week and drink a couple of beer. These days low income people who like to drink sit on benches in front of so called „Spätis“ (something like a mini supermarket) and get a cold beer for a Euro. These people cannot affort to spend 3x3.50 Euros a day. So first the low income jobs pay less, and then there are cheaper alternatives to German pubs.

throwaway22032 4y ago

The cost is just too high, simple as. A pint in most pubs is like 30 mins to an hour of work at minimum wage. You can drink it faster than you can earn it.

CaptainZapp 4y ago

Reminds me of those developers, which demolished a grade II listed pub without planning permission. Let's just say it didn't turn out well for them[1]. That, at least, was one pub, which could be saved. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlton_Tavern,_Kilburn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlton_Tavern,_Kilburn

JoeAltmaier 4y ago

In the TV series 'Escape to the Country', every episode it seems one of the houses is a converted pub. At the same time, each couple wants to live in a village with a pub. A romantic notion I'm sure, but it seems to signal that some folks at least still value them.

matt3210 4y ago

I’m sure mandatory shutdowns Accelerated this quite a bit.

JoeAltmaier 4y ago

Casual dining grew. I know its not the same. But its not like "nobody is going out any more".

tamade 4y ago

A big chunk of UK pubs are owned by global private equity shops. No surprise that with PE consolidation comes so-called synergies-- might explain why pub numbers are dwindling.