Does hospitality have an alcohol problem? I ask after seeing businesses attempting to undermine Dry January this year, the worst offender being the bar marking January 17 — known as “quitter’s day”, supposedly because most people admit defeat then — with 17p pints of Asahi. Not far behind was a pub doing 99p pints for the same reason.
I can understand though why some businesses were so eager to tempt people off the wagon: for the vast majority of restaurants, alcohol accounts for so much of their profits that if people don't drink, they don't make money. But two recent news stories point to huge, and possibly permanent, shifts in behaviour which mean such businesses urgently need to rethink their dependency on booze.
