UK mulls plain cigarette packs to cut smoking

[dellzeqq]

the trade appears to blame duty

but aren't we balancing the duty paid on beer and wine these days? And isn't beer a bit old people?

looks to me like alcohol consumption is about even, and people are homing in on duty or cigarette bans, when it's simply a cultural shift, as Zimmers suggests.

 

[zimzum42]

Check the figures for wine and cider...

Interesting


(and yes, it's mostly to do with cultural shift - another thing to add into the mix - many pubs are simply in the wrong place. The workforce has changed and moved. Pubs failed to move with this)

 

[zimzum42]

The company we were just working for are finally catching on - they tasked us to investigate coffee shops, gyms, a whole host of other venues to see what they can learn from them.

A lot of people think that marketing makes people change their behaviour. This is so massively wrong - marketing departments are constantly and desperately trying to keep up with trends, they don't make them.

 

[MontyVeda]

When i lived out in the sticks in darkest Cumbria, our village had one pub. It was great... a lock in every night, karaoke on tap, a slate when you run out of beer money. This was 1999-2002 and the locals were still blaming the breathalyser for killing the country pub!

 

[rollinstok]

Google " pub trade suffering from smoking ban "
This will give you the low down on what happened immediately after the ban
There was a sea change at the time that the licensing trade has struggled to recover from ever since
Yes, there are many reasons why pubs are on the floor but it was the smoking ban which gave them the initial kick in the balls to get them down

 

[rollinstok]

In 2007 I had to go to Barcelona twice in the space of 3 months ( I know.. lifes a bitch )
All the bars at the time could display a green sticker on the entrance which allowed smoking, or a red sticker which didnt allow it
I,ll give you one guess which bars were enjoying ( by far ) the biggest crowds
On my 2nd visit there was quite unsurprisingly a growth in the amount of bars with green stickers

 

[srw]

I do not think it is the smoking ban that is causing pubs to close but the excessive price that is charged for alcohol due to tax or whatever. I[...] I mean I really do not want to pay £3.50 for a pint of decent lager when I can get a 500ml can of half decent stuff from Aldi for 72p.

Isn't the tax on beer the same whether it's bought from a pub or a shop?

 

[asterix]

In 2007 I had to go to Barcelona twice in the space of 3 months ( I know.. lifes a bitch )
All the bars at the time could display a green sticker on the entrance which allowed smoking, or a red sticker which didnt allow it
I,ll give you one guess which bars were enjoying ( by far ) the biggest crowds
On my 2nd visit there was quite unsurprisingly a growth in the amount of bars with green stickers

When I have gone to pubs prior to the banning, if there was a smoker in the group we tended to go to the smoking area to keep us out of their misery.

 

[Cletus Van Damme]

Isn't the tax on beer the same whether it's bought from a pub or a shop?

Somebody with more knowledge about pubs and cheap supermarket beer would have to explain why a similar or the same product is vastly cheaper in a supermarket as I have no idea. I guess that there are quite a lot of other costs to be considered regarding alcohol in pubs/hotels etc.

 

[ASC1951]

Somebody with more knowledge about pubs and cheap supermarket beer would have to explain why a similar or the same product is vastly cheaper in a supermarket as I have no idea. I guess that there are quite a lot of other costs to be considered regarding alcohol in pubs/hotels etc.

Blindingly obvious, I would have thought -
- the cheapest alcohol is often sold at cost by supermarkets to get the punters in the door
- Aldi are just providing a 5000 square foot shed and you can't even drink your beer there. Pubs are expensive places to staff and run.

You might as well complain that a restaurant is charging you twenty quid for a meal when the ingredients would only cost you a fiver to buy on the market. A restaurant isn't just selling you the food.

 

[dellzeqq]

it is, however, really galling that tenant publicans could buy all the beer they need from supermarkets at a lower price than they are charged by the pubcos - if their tenancies allowed them to do so. We would be better off if pubcos were forced to rent the premises as premises rather than have an overarching deal tying the pubs to their product, which they appear to be able to charge whatever they want for. And...again, the pubcos don't care if they run out of tenants willing to burn their savings on a pub - they can turn round to the planners and say 'we tried, they came, they failed, it's had it, give us permission for residential - which will, as you can imagine, be welcomed by the neighbours.

 

[dellzeqq]

This could make an excellent personal ticker.

along the lines of 'lifetime pints yet to be consumed'?

 

[slowmotion]

A lot of people claim that supermarkets sell grog as a loss-leader but I'm not so sure. There are plenty of off-licences in urban areas that sell booze at or below the prices charged by the local supermarkets. If they were doing that as a loss-leader they would be out of business pretty sharpish.

 

[zimzum42]

If you look at those bargains, you'll often see they are very close to the sell by date - those guys buy up stuff that's been sent back by the big supermarkets a lot of the time

 

[slowmotion]

If you look at those bargains, you'll often see they are very close to the sell by date - those guys buy up stuff that's been sent back by the big supermarkets a lot of the time

I'll do an extensive survey tonight and report back.