Cost of pint could soar to £20 as pubs battle to stay open amid rising energy bills

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

The cost of a pint would have to rise to “ridiculous” amounts to match the increase in running costs that landlords now face, according to a leading campaigner. Speaking to the Daily Star, Tom Stainer, the chief executive of the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) group, said thousands of pubs could be forced to close because it is not “viable” for landlords to raise the cost of a pint to £15 or 20 to cover their soaring energy bills.

He said some pubs were seeing bills go up by 500% to 600%. A Camra survey this summer also found that 50% of the British public think that the cost of a pint is already unaffordable, meaning customers were likely to be put off by a £15 or £20 pint.

Stainer told the paper: “What you can say with surety is you can’t possibly pass on these energy increases and you can’t increase the pint by 500%. It just isn’t viable for pubs to pass (price hikes this big) on to consumers because people wouldn’t come to drink at pubs anyway.

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“So thousands (of pubs) could be affected by this. And they can close – and the difference with (pubs compared to) other sorts of businesses is once a pub closes it very rarely comes back.”

Back in May, Sacha Lord, Manchester’s Night-time Economy Advisor, warned that pint prices could reach £4.25 by the summer. He said the average pint price could shoot up by 16 and 20p, while operators suggested that this could surge to as much as 70p by Christmas.

These estimations were based on increased costs, from grain to make beer, to energy to light and heat venues and fuel to power its deliveries. However, his comments were made when the rate of inflation stood at 6.2%, before it