Student Brewer - Minimum pricing in Supermarkets

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I'll warn you now, this is something I feel strongly about...

Today it's been announced that there is a minimum price on alcohol - mainly aimed at the supermarkets. The government had been asked, mainly (it would appear) by supporters of the on-trade (pubs) to ban 'below-cost selling'. Now to any sane person, below cost selling is selling a product for less than you bought it.

Not the supermarkets though. They have successfully campaigned and had 'cost' defined as Duty+VAT. No 'cost of production' involved.

As always with something they don't agree, CAMRA have managed to alienate people from the pub:



Government allow supermarkets to carry on selling cheap booze

Why am I so annoyed? Because they are just as bad as the Daily Mail. Click the link, and the last line is this:


So supermarkets can carry on selling beer below the cost of bottled water.


Which bottled water? And which beer? Peroni against ASDA smartprice water? Or Evian against ASDA smartprice 'lager'


But the main point I want to make is this. If Jack has £1 to spend on alcohol, at the moment he'd go to the supermarket. He can't afford the £3 in a pub. Put the prices up in the supermarket to £1.50 - he can't drink. But he still wouldn't be spending money in a pub - so how the hell does reducing disposable income of customers help pubs?


What it comes across as is 'We, champions of pubs, dictate that if we have to pay £3 a pint, so should everyone else.'


Bollocks - apart from anything else we're a completely different trade. Yes, both pubs and supermarkets sell alcohol. But that's where the comparison ends. We also sell a service, we sell drinks for immediate consumption, we provide clean drinking vessels and a clean, warm place to enjoy your drink. Beer should be more expensive in pubs than supermarkets.


I'd rather see all the effort of 'levelling the playing field' done to reduce the cost of beer in a pub. PBD has helped in regards to cask ale. Lets see a lower rate of VAT for on trade. As the simplest example I can think of - in a pub you pay VAT on a meal. On anything else, businesses can claim back the VAT on what they spend. But food isn't VATable - so nothing for the publican to claim back. Lets have a nod of appreciation for the responsible retailing that we do and cut something somewhere. Lets not raise the prices of everything else to be comparable with the on-trade. We won't win any support doing that.


And the other thing - let's get rid of the myths around binge drinking. But thats another blog post


Cheers!

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