The average price of a pint could rise to a new norm of £7, brewery bosses have warned - blaming soaring production costs and increasing inflation.
The cost of raw ingredients, including wheat and barley, is now rising more than the rate of inflation, with the war in Ukraine driving up costs continually.
Despite lockdown restrictions being lifted, the UK’s hospitality sector has been hit by energy price hikes and customers feeling the pinch amid the cost of living crisis.
“During lockdown, dyed-in-the-wool pub-goers, many for the first time, filled their fridges with supermarket beer – and it has proved to be a momentous challenge to persuade them to return to the more salubrious environment of the saloon bar,” Wetherspoons chairman Tim Martin said.
Mr Martin added that the expected post-lockdown boom had not happened and that pubs had experienced painstakingly slow recoveries coupled with inflated costs.
UK brewer Brewgooder has now called on the public and the government to support the pub trade amid their warning of £7 pints.
Alan Mahon, Brewgooder’s founder, said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had driven up ingredient costs.
“From what we are seeing, the pressures on the industry with cost price inflation challenges and the chancellor’s scrapping of the alcohol duty freeze might make a £7 pint the norm rather than the exception in many places – particularly in bigger cities,” said Mr Mahon.
“This is bound to make a pint a relative luxury for a lot of people, something we should all be concerned about and force us all to take stock of the challenges facing the beer industry.”
Mr Mahon said the cost of raw ingredients such as wheat and barley were rising well in excess of the inflation rate.
Inflation returned to a 40-year-high of 10.1 per cent in September, driven by rising food prices - the first time inflation has gone above 10 per cent since 1982.
Wheat and barley, two crucial components of brewing, he explains, are rising well in excess of the rate of inflation and other key ‘unseen’ materials such as energy and gas – have hit eye-watering levels, with carbon dioxide now costing a whopping 3,000 per cent more than it did this time last year.
