Daten zeigen, dass England und Wales im ersten Halbjahr 2024 50 Pubs pro Monat verlieren

Transporting liquid is energy intensive

We’re trying to transition from abundance to scarcity

Don’t worry, another Pret/Greggs/Vape shop will take its place.

Not a surprise this place is becoming an increasingly miserable place.

Not surprising. I’m a higher rate tax payer and can’t afford to drink in my local any more. It’s nearly £7 a pint. I’m actually not paying higher rate anymore because I quit my job in June. I’d stopped calling in for a few points way before then though. Drinking in pubs, especially in cities, just isn’t affordable any more.

Pubs are a huge part of our culture and should be protected/use encouraged. They are a great social hub for smaller communities

Absolute travesty. This country needs more third spaces for people to socialise. And it isn’t even that pubs are unviable in a fair market place – they’re paying disproportionately high business rates (in England), getting held over barrel by greedy offshore PubCos, and getting ready to be hit again by nanny state intervention with duty rises and outdoor smoking bans. Nevermind all of the other factors, like rising costs, that they share with other businesses.

Any other country would try to support such an iconic industry (that contributes £34bn to the economy and employs 1million + people). But in Britain we seem to want to let them suffer.

We were chatting about this a few days ago (ironically while at the pub).

Over the past twenty years several pubs in my town have closed. But in that time several others have opened so now we have more than we did originally. The town has grown a fair bit in this time so you could argue that per head we have lost out. However thats not really the case.

Most of ones that closed were small, they were all old style ‘boozers’, did not serve food, were not historically significant in any way, a couple were flat roofed monstrosities and none of them were what you would call family friendly.

The new ones are generally much larger, all serve food, all are family friendly, we have gained lounge style bars, modern pub/restaurants and a sports pavilion. There is a lot more variety and we have more of a choice in what we can do.

I dont think the town we live in has lost out. In fact it has gained overall. But thats not the case everywhere. There is a village pub that we used to walk to a few times a year. It was always fairly busy when we visited but a couple of years ago it closed down and is now a house. That village no longer has a pub.

The government can’t let this keep happening. The fabric of our culture is eroding in so many aspects. For fuck’s sake don’t increase alcohol tax and let pubs decide what their policies are on smoking. This is only going to continue unless labour do more.

We can’t go on losing more and more and more third spaces for people to socialize and meet other people in.

Too many people are already too isolated and lonely and can’t afford to hang out at their local pubs and let their hair down with other human beings.

This is terrible for peoples’ social lives and there is seemingly just nothing replacing the places people would go to hang out.

Life is going to just get more and more miserable with things continuing down this route.

Drinking at home is far cheaper. You can smoke, food can be delivered, and streaming services are numerous. Gaming is huge. There’s no coked up dickheads, or violence. No cab fares and no waiting to be served. You don’t even need a shower or to change. You can always get a seat. It’s a no-brainer. We’re losing pubs for the same reasons we’re losing the high street. Cost, convenience, and choice. People can communicate and talk to their friends and family all the time. The day of the single landline and having to actually meet up is long gone. If you want to pull, there’s Tinder. The pub’s essential services have been superceded. It’s not all about cost, it’s just the pub is the Blockbuster of the hospitality industry. Cinemas are dead too.

Does somewhere have the data from the last 30 years? To see if this is unusual.

I thought restaurants, pubs, clubs, and bars had a notoriously high failure/turnover rate.

edit: Just google it and there are identical stories of this happening last year. Need to see the rate over time with a similar time frame showing opening of new pubs and bars.

This has nothing to do with smoking bans.

It’s got everything to do with people cutting back, not least younger generations who don’t really go out drinking as much.

Plus pints cost a fucking ridiculous amount.

I’m surprised there are any pubs left when you see stat headlines like this over the past few years. Then again it perhaps actually shows the sheer number of pubs we have..

It’s not just cost but it’s also people being healthier and societal change.

People don’t drink 5 pints a night, every night.

Men don’t leave their wife a children at home and go down the pub every night.

Younger generations don’t want the health problems that come with excessive drinking.

If you drink more than 8 units in a session you are a binge drinker. That’s 3 pints of 5% beer.

5 pints over the week puts you about the healthy drinking limit.

Without a drinking culture pubs shut.

Nothing to do with a smoking ban.

On a personal level I have cut my drinking way back.

In the 80 and 90s it was normal to have a pint a lunch, two on Friday, and go to the pub 4-5 nights a week.

So that’s 21+ pints a week or over 50 units.

I couldn’t imagine drinking that sort of ammount now.

Anecdotal experience but I went out at the beginning of August, Friday night, grabbed a Chinese meal and then went out with a group of 6 of us. The Chinese was full but the usually busy bars were dead. Yates, which used to be full with hundreds and a queue outside had 2 people in there. That’s not an exaggeration, at 10pm on a Friday, there was 2 people.

People just can’t afford it

I’m sure having less freedom in a pub at 10x the price of simply having a sesh at home is very appealing to people who are barely making money these days. Genius business strategy.