From today, alcohol duty is increasing, sending the price of a pint in your local even higher.It will add about two pence to the cost of a pint. It might feel like a small sum, but it will have a knock-on effect for pubs whose profit margins have been hammered by successive tax grabs by Labour.
The slim profit they make on selling a pint is being further drained away by an onslaught of taxes and rising costs.At the same time, the price of a pint of beer is hovering around £7 in parts of London and south-east England, according to analysis by market research firm NIQ.
Tom Weller, the co-owner of Kite at The Red Hart in Hertfordshire, is used to customers occasionally baulking at prices in his pub, where a pint of Guinness costs £6.80.The 35-year-old understands why people might assume he was “raking it in” with these prices, but this is far from the truth. “I am just trying to keep my head above water,” he says.
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