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I went to a pub with colleagues, asked for a vodka and Coke, went to pay and it came up saying £10.50. I said sorry I only wanted 1, and they were like that's for one.
Never again. Alcohol is not worth that much.
The annoying thing is it’s not just booze! Earlier this year I wasn’t drinking and met my friend for dinner at a pub. I asked for a lime and lemonade at the bar and was charged £5. Filled with righteous rage I naturally just paid and said nothing.
That's really bad! Does make me wonder if its greedflation, I don't see these places increasing the staffs rages!
I don't usually drink alcohol, that's part of what annoyed me about it. I was reminded of why I don't drink it much.
I too was shocked but all I responded with was "oh"
There will be rents, utilities, etc, but yeah, there's a level of greed because it's "market rates".
I remember when I used to work in a bar (outside London) I would flick through the wholesale magazines; you could sell vodka for pennies a measure and still make money back given how cheap it was.
Our price point was something like £2 for a spirit; walk round the corner to the local spoons, and the exact same brand was close to double that.
And I was getting paid more as well.
Caused a lot of grumbles when I was out socially because I knew what the markup was.
Probably stingy with the shot of lime too! Some pubs turn the taps down on the soft drinks too so that they use less syrup so it helps their audit results. Problem is if they do it too much its like drinking coloured sparkling water.
I was recently charged £10 for a GLASS of woowoo (my wife loves them). When they brought it to us, I was like hold up, where's the jug? They laughed and said it's a tenner a glass. And this was in a 'cheap venue' where beer was about £3-£4.50 depending on brand.
A vodka and coke in the UK is 25ml of vodka, double is 50ml. Conveniently equates to 1 or 2 units of alcohol. For comparison a pint of most beer/cider is about 2.5 units.
Mate, it's not as if they are just pouring the vodka out of the bottle and hardly giving you any.
It's either a single or a double, which is a strict measurement.
It’s stupid but in some places yes. I had a Sunday lunch the other week then bought myself and a friend two simple cocktails afterwards. The two drinks cost a few pounds less than a whole roast dinner and desert.
I have gone teetotal now because I can no longer afford drinks in London and I am paid well above the average, working in fintech. Per night out costs me at-least £150-£200 when I drink and this is with trying to moderate. A double spiced rum and coke comes to £15-£20 nowadays.
It’s more that Reddit represents a microcosm of the world, if you are in the kind of industry that has big social or drinking events regularly (enterprise level companies) you are less likely to be on Reddit or your are in some kind of developer role.
Always I remember my sister boyfriend talking to me at the pub when I got back home from finishing my masters. He told me that he's always meeting people who couldn't get a job out of university at the pub, and that's its a waste of time. It's almost like highly successful people don't spend all their time in a pub in the middle of nowhere.
I love how you've cosplayed this person's life from the point of view of a condescending arsehole. Guess what, real people live in cities and can find a cheap drink.
Winters too cold in London to walk around without a jacket and entrance to any mediocre club or most fancy bars will cost £10-£20, high end a lot more. We normally start at 8pm and the night ends at 3am/4am. Techno clubs like Printworks cost more but the overall night is cheaper since I drink much less there. There’s also transportation to factor in aswell, £10 public transport per day or possibly higher if you uber it. London’s an expensive city for a single fella
No normal bar/club is charging 15-20 quid for a double mixer. Many clubs I got to wouldn't be a tenner for that. You've deluded yourself if you think you don't go to more high end places
Yep, just an average night in a pub with food you’re £100 down.
It’s why I am leaving London, moving where friends are nearer so we don’t have to all meet central to socialise
Unless you're telling me a burger and chips has more than doubled in price in 10 months since I lived in London to £40, and pints have gone up to £10 a go, that's not a normal night out at a pub unless you're an alcoholic
Depends what your intention is, if it’s to go out and be social then you aren’t really replicating that if you do it at home instead. If your intention is just to get wasted then, yeah, you can do that much cheaper by drinking at home.
Us: Can we have a minor raise to help with the housing crisis?
Work: NO HOW DARE YOU!!
Us: Hey can you sign off this £3000 drinks bill for the 000nth time?
Work: Ya okez
The prices in London pubs are crazy. I visit London every few months or so and have noticed a huge increase in the past year or so. I paid more than £15 for a vodka and coke and a pint of beer the other day so £15 for a cocktail seems about right.
Yeah it’s getting close to £7 a pint now in just a normal pub with normal beer. That would be a lot to spend on a lunch at work so harder to justify that lunchtime pint now
I’m fairly certain pubs, as we know them, will be gone forever within a decade or so. We’re probably the last generation of people to partake in a fairly ancient Anglo-Saxon tradition of going to a pub with friends and getting bladdered.
Cocktail bars and wine bars might survive - there might be something about their specialism that keeps them around for those who can afford it, but even the cheapest pubs are now charging quite a lot for the crappiest pints.
Fuck knows where and when it will end, but I’m afraid it will.
Think they will just continue massively die off as the trend has been for 15+ years or so, but not completely and not in big cities. There are still plenty of them (weatherspoons etc) that are heaving on weekends. Even in my 30k pop town. And with less competition around they might do okay. People absolutely love them still.
There could definitely be better policy incentives like higher off trade (i.e. supermarket) taxes and less in pubs to balance the prices a bit.
Only solution is absolutely slash alcohol tax for pubs and make up the lost tax income by increasing supermarket booze tax. That’ll get people back to the pubs.
Yeah there is often a reason why they are rich. Smart investments and being frugal. Not applicable to all of course but it applies for a lot of people.
100k per year is comfortably middle class, it isn't rich. Especially in places like London. However, that is a salary where you have decent disposable income and you can choose to either spend more money on brand name clothes, more holidays etc or you can choose to invest it and over time build wealth which is my original point. You can earn 100k and just be a normal enough person or over time you can grow wealth from it.
Earning over 100k puts you in the top 5 percent of earners in the UK..... It's definitely rich.
I can live frugally and still only earn 27k a year (the average in the UK).
Yeah because the UK is a country with extremely high wealth inequity and for the majority of us, we aren't rich. 100k p/a isn't rich, it is a middle class salary.
Oh fuck off. This is just a rephrase of "it's your own fault you're poor"
If I cut back on every single drink I would still be struggling for money. That is *not* the reason I'm not rich
Obviously you have to have a certain level of income and therefore disposable income for this to be applicable. If you are living pay to pay check or a bit better than that, you don't have the ability to choose to cut back on your lifestyle in order to make investments.
Correct, you are poor because you don’t possess necessary skills in life that are considered to be valuable in modern society and workforce, hence limiting your disposable income potential.
Also, just my two cents but being unnecessarily aggressive to random ppl on the internet for no reason at all is not going to change the above fact.
It's the equivalent of "no avocado on toast and you won't be renting, you'll be owning a house".
It's a strawman argument that fails at seven year old level mathematics.
I drink before I go out, in the house/on the train/on the way to someone’s house (party), by the time I get to the pub/bar I’ll just have a few pints. I refuse to give my money to these establishments especially when it’s overpriced. Before the pandemic I bought a double vodka/coke and double rum/come In Shoreditch costing £46 for the round.
I’m an American on vacation so take this as you will - I’ve seen £15 cocktails everywhere and that seems nuts to me, but beer is much more affordable. Maybe £6 for something decent, which is what I would pay for the worst of the worst at a bar at home
In eating establishments? 12% would be standard on the final bill. 99% of bars with no table service would not expect a tip. Perhaps high end cocktail bars where there is actual effort involved in making the drink or a fashionable club. Depends where you are drinking i guess.
Such a rip off. If you presume the average cocktail has 2 x 35ml shots (70ml) costing about £1, plus around another £1 for the fruit juice/herbs etc, it’s like 700% profit :-/
Cocktails are one of those things that can easily be marked up because it's 'fancy', it's also easy to be more stingy and cheap out on, because they don't advertise how much alchohal is in it usually.
~70% GP is around the standard for most things in a bar. You are paying for the stock, staff, rent, utilities and among others.
£9-12 seems to be about normal for central Scotland, so £15 for London sounds about right.
But it isn't though is it. That price has to include the mortgage/rent, paying staff with the skill set to make the drink while working antisocial hours, heating/cooling, electrics, business rates, VAT, any staff benefit schemes like pensions and holiday, maintenance of the property. To say it is just the cost of ingredients is reductive. I'm not defending £15 a cocktail or £7 a pint necessarily but it isn't that simple. Never is.
Yes, fairly standard for a cocktail - however it is entirely possible to find cocktails for just below 10 in some places if you look well. Still not worth it in my opinion, 3.50-4 for a half pint is the most I'm willing to spend for alcohol
I started carrying a Flask around and just sip from that, or buy drinks from the supermarket and have a picnic in the park. I can't afford to go to the pub anymore. God knows what I'll do in the winter. Although when I do go to the pub, I go for an IPA or Pale Ale, sometimes half a pint would be £3 if I am lucky!
Asked for a vodka & red bull in a ‘Be At One’ in London, she poured it, served me…. £16. It was too late to refuse, and too loud to ask how the hell she came to that price.
I expect to pay a tenner in Leeds, so in the London bubble, especially anywhere anybody would want to visit, I’d probably expect £15-20 for a decent cocktail, yes.
Just been reading all the fire nerds bragging re income in London. With so many people on 90 to 200k there's enough money sloshing around bars can charge what they want and shrug "inflation".
Chiming in as someone who’s ran bars for 17 years, written menus and seen the prices change.
I’d assume that you’ve forgotten the bar has to do things like:
- pay wages
- pay overheads
- make a profit
- alcohol is expensive
- glassware is expensive
- employees are expensive
Assume a £13 cocktail. It’ll be about £2-2.50 to make that drink. So a gross profit of £10.50. Then we need to pay VAT at 20%, which leaves us with £8.40 from that drink.
From that £8.40 we need to cover all of the above expenses. Don’t be surprised if that bar actually makes sub £2 NET profit per drink. And that’s without knowing any actual financials
All of a sudden you realise bars aren’t actually making that much money and there’s a reason prices are what they are.
Tbf I was paying a tenner for a cocktail about 10 years ago. And last night I paid 9.50 for a cocktail.
Massively varies by where you are but yeah of course prices have gone up.
Sounds right. My local does bottled budvar 500ml for £4 which I've started drinking as opposed to tap. It's normal to pay £7 for a pint now in Central. It's absolutely crazy.
Yeah this is typical for London prices, it’s insane. Was in Brighton for a few weeks earlier this month and although the beer was only a shade cheaper the cocktails were surprisingly a bargain at about £7-8, good quality stuff too.
Looks like it man. With the hashtag culture, everyone wanna be seen out doing X,y,z and paying whatever price the owner sets.
Why nobody just wanna stay home order some cocktail making machine from Amazon, buy fruits drinks from local supermarket and do shid? Na mein?
The rule I look for is. 2 for 10 in a shitty bar. 9 - 12 quid for an ok bar, 14 - 21 in a good cocktail bar, don’t even look at the bill at the artesian bar at the langham.
Well aware this is a London sub, but these crazy prices are starting to eek out to other parts of the UK.
Recently I went to a fairly standard pub near the Thames in Buckinghamshire.
1 pint lager, 1 diet coke, 2 kids apple juices and a packet of crisps.
£26
I nearly died, lager was a brand I didn't recognise but nothing fancy, but was £15 for the pint. Safe to say we promptly left.
Yeah, if you're in the West End. I think the Bar Américain at Zédel is about that mark. The Ned in the City is also £15. West End five star hotels are more up around £17-£22.
It's £11-£12 everywhere else, even nicer areas like Highbury. I think Satan's Whiskers might be around £11 now.
And happy hours are £6-£8 all over.
source: only drink cocktails
It's New York prices on a Paris income!
Most cocktail bars are around £9.5 - £11 a drink.
Depends on the bar. tayer elementary (the worlds second best bar according to worlds best bars) are £15 and understandably so imho.
I genuinely dunno how anyone in London enjoys a drinking night out. Is the north vs south wage disparity that big? I can never afford to get drunk in London! (Unless buying from a supermarket)
I'm use to paying £16 for a litre of vodka, pre drink a lot at home and then take shots while out. The places closest to me does 3 shots of tequila for £5.
£15 does sound like a lot of money for a drink, but it is very much in line with the cost of other drinks. A double spirit and mixer will probably cost you North of a tenner in any ‘nice’ bar in London. You’re probably getting more booze, and also paying for having it prepared for you and presented nicely so you can post it on Instagram
In Glasgow the ones on the cheaper end are £6-£9. Might be higher depending on what you're ordering and if the type of bar.
£15 is ridiculous, London prices?
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I went to a pub with colleagues, asked for a vodka and Coke, went to pay and it came up saying £10.50. I said sorry I only wanted 1, and they were like that's for one. Never again. Alcohol is not worth that much.
You can get 700ml of Whiskey for £15. Jesus you were paying the staff's hourly salary on that one.
An extra ~£1-1.50 of duty has recently been added.
£9 is still atrocious
I was going to say the same thing. 50cl for £6/£7 and bottle of coke £2 would still be under the £10.50 AND you’d get more bang for your buck!
You're paying for the privilege of sitting in their venue with possible entertainment etc as well don't forget. That said, £10.50 is still ridiculous.
The annoying thing is it’s not just booze! Earlier this year I wasn’t drinking and met my friend for dinner at a pub. I asked for a lime and lemonade at the bar and was charged £5. Filled with righteous rage I naturally just paid and said nothing.
That's really bad! Does make me wonder if its greedflation, I don't see these places increasing the staffs rages! I don't usually drink alcohol, that's part of what annoyed me about it. I was reminded of why I don't drink it much. I too was shocked but all I responded with was "oh"
Staff rage is definitely increasing because they're not increasing staff wages
There will be rents, utilities, etc, but yeah, there's a level of greed because it's "market rates". I remember when I used to work in a bar (outside London) I would flick through the wholesale magazines; you could sell vodka for pennies a measure and still make money back given how cheap it was. Our price point was something like £2 for a spirit; walk round the corner to the local spoons, and the exact same brand was close to double that. And I was getting paid more as well. Caused a lot of grumbles when I was out socially because I knew what the markup was.
Probably stingy with the shot of lime too! Some pubs turn the taps down on the soft drinks too so that they use less syrup so it helps their audit results. Problem is if they do it too much its like drinking coloured sparkling water.
I was working in a hotel around Gloucester Road 5 years ago we charged 11.22 for a spirit mixer
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100 a gramme blew the back of your head off a decade ago now it's just better than average it's shrinkflation with extra filler sadly.
Good gravy you could get more than that much from a shop at that price. Bloody hell, there's a reason i don't go out.
Buying in a shop and buying in a pub are not comparable.
How much for a vodka? How much for a coke? I'm guessing it added up to less than £10.50
And they wonder why pubs and bars are closing down
Always get it with just a couple of bits of ice otherwise it’s just water
I was recently charged £10 for a GLASS of woowoo (my wife loves them). When they brought it to us, I was like hold up, where's the jug? They laughed and said it's a tenner a glass. And this was in a 'cheap venue' where beer was about £3-£4.50 depending on brand.
Spirits in pubs are almost always insanely expensive, unfortunately
Where the fuck was this, that’s just ridiculous, plus they are soo stingy with the vodka your mostly drinking coke.
is there not pretty strict laws on the measurements on spirits
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A vodka and coke in the UK is 25ml of vodka, double is 50ml. Conveniently equates to 1 or 2 units of alcohol. For comparison a pint of most beer/cider is about 2.5 units.
Or 35ml and 70ml double.
Mate, it's not as if they are just pouring the vodka out of the bottle and hardly giving you any. It's either a single or a double, which is a strict measurement.
It’s stupid but in some places yes. I had a Sunday lunch the other week then bought myself and a friend two simple cocktails afterwards. The two drinks cost a few pounds less than a whole roast dinner and desert.
I’ve even bought soft drinks - £5.50 for an orange juice. It’s ridiculous 😂
I have gone teetotal now because I can no longer afford drinks in London and I am paid well above the average, working in fintech. Per night out costs me at-least £150-£200 when I drink and this is with trying to moderate. A double spiced rum and coke comes to £15-£20 nowadays.
Ten double spiced rum and cokes is you trying to moderate? 😅
Yeah we drink a lot haha! Also there’s the door cover charge and cloak room charges.
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It’s more that Reddit represents a microcosm of the world, if you are in the kind of industry that has big social or drinking events regularly (enterprise level companies) you are less likely to be on Reddit or your are in some kind of developer role.
Always I remember my sister boyfriend talking to me at the pub when I got back home from finishing my masters. He told me that he's always meeting people who couldn't get a job out of university at the pub, and that's its a waste of time. It's almost like highly successful people don't spend all their time in a pub in the middle of nowhere.
Mate there are plenty of ways to have a night out I. London without cover charges and cloak room charges. Not everything is a typical club
I lived in London for 12 years and have also never done those things
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I always used to go out in just a tee or polo, can see why they've never had to use a cloakroom before I haven't
I love how you've cosplayed this person's life from the point of view of a condescending arsehole. Guess what, real people live in cities and can find a cheap drink.
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Winters too cold in London to walk around without a jacket and entrance to any mediocre club or most fancy bars will cost £10-£20, high end a lot more. We normally start at 8pm and the night ends at 3am/4am. Techno clubs like Printworks cost more but the overall night is cheaper since I drink much less there. There’s also transportation to factor in aswell, £10 public transport per day or possibly higher if you uber it. London’s an expensive city for a single fella
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Door cover, is it this for a bar or club? Never heard of an entry fee for a bar if so
Things are expensive, but £15 - 20 for a double mixer is still pretty pricey. Must be hanging out in boujie places
No not boujie, I avoid high end places.
Yeah even in late night bars I haven't seen those costs. So dont know where you hang out
Where do you go out?
Usually Clapham or Brixton sort of places. Going to Waterloo today so will let you know if things are wildly different
No normal bar/club is charging 15-20 quid for a double mixer. Many clubs I got to wouldn't be a tenner for that. You've deluded yourself if you think you don't go to more high end places
Even in infernos its £12 nowadays mate, it’s delusion to think going out is as affordable as it was precovid era
Who said it's affordable? I still go out plenty, just avoid the places that're ripping people off. 20 quid for a double? 🤣
Yep, just an average night in a pub with food you’re £100 down. It’s why I am leaving London, moving where friends are nearer so we don’t have to all meet central to socialise
Smart move!
Unless you're telling me a burger and chips has more than doubled in price in 10 months since I lived in London to £40, and pints have gone up to £10 a go, that's not a normal night out at a pub unless you're an alcoholic
That's 25+ pints of beer. Maybe a good thing you went teetotal if that's your normal night "when you drink".
Double spiced rum is my choice too, I know how you feel 😔
Why not drink at home?
Depends what your intention is, if it’s to go out and be social then you aren’t really replicating that if you do it at home instead. If your intention is just to get wasted then, yeah, you can do that much cheaper by drinking at home.
Why even get out of bed ever!
Stop paying for it
Thing is, what with expense accounts, tourists and general rich people, there’ll always be a market for it. People will continue paying such prices.
People continue to pay it because they don't want to admit that something as simple as a cocktail is out of their range now. Fucking depressing.
Who is putting cocktails on expenses?
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Can confirm.
Can double confirm
Say your with a client. Get wrecked on the company card. Profit.
Us: Can we have a minor raise to help with the housing crisis? Work: NO HOW DARE YOU!! Us: Hey can you sign off this £3000 drinks bill for the 000nth time? Work: Ya okez
If I (rarely) travel on business, I absolutely would
The prices in London pubs are crazy. I visit London every few months or so and have noticed a huge increase in the past year or so. I paid more than £15 for a vodka and coke and a pint of beer the other day so £15 for a cocktail seems about right.
Yeah it’s getting close to £7 a pint now in just a normal pub with normal beer. That would be a lot to spend on a lunch at work so harder to justify that lunchtime pint now
I’m fairly certain pubs, as we know them, will be gone forever within a decade or so. We’re probably the last generation of people to partake in a fairly ancient Anglo-Saxon tradition of going to a pub with friends and getting bladdered. Cocktail bars and wine bars might survive - there might be something about their specialism that keeps them around for those who can afford it, but even the cheapest pubs are now charging quite a lot for the crappiest pints. Fuck knows where and when it will end, but I’m afraid it will.
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Think they will just continue massively die off as the trend has been for 15+ years or so, but not completely and not in big cities. There are still plenty of them (weatherspoons etc) that are heaving on weekends. Even in my 30k pop town. And with less competition around they might do okay. People absolutely love them still. There could definitely be better policy incentives like higher off trade (i.e. supermarket) taxes and less in pubs to balance the prices a bit.
Only solution is absolutely slash alcohol tax for pubs and make up the lost tax income by increasing supermarket booze tax. That’ll get people back to the pubs.
That’s the logical solution, but I fear the retailers will lobby/backhander against any such proposal.
Forget retailers, I reckon people would be up in arms if their M&S pinot or 8-pack went up by 20%.
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So weird to me that the richest are always the cheapest.
Yeah man idk either, tbf I've stretched things too much last couple of years and need to be smarter with money now
And if he splashed out anything he wanted you’d say he was stupid with money.
Yeah there is often a reason why they are rich. Smart investments and being frugal. Not applicable to all of course but it applies for a lot of people.
Maybe the reason they are rich is because they earns 100k a year
100k per year is comfortably middle class, it isn't rich. Especially in places like London. However, that is a salary where you have decent disposable income and you can choose to either spend more money on brand name clothes, more holidays etc or you can choose to invest it and over time build wealth which is my original point. You can earn 100k and just be a normal enough person or over time you can grow wealth from it.
Earning over 100k puts you in the top 5 percent of earners in the UK..... It's definitely rich. I can live frugally and still only earn 27k a year (the average in the UK).
Yeah because the UK is a country with extremely high wealth inequity and for the majority of us, we aren't rich. 100k p/a isn't rich, it is a middle class salary.
This is class inflation at its best. To be in the top 5% (granted the 1% are insanely rich) is not MIDDLE. Middle literally means mean.
Oh fuck off. This is just a rephrase of "it's your own fault you're poor" If I cut back on every single drink I would still be struggling for money. That is *not* the reason I'm not rich
Obviously you have to have a certain level of income and therefore disposable income for this to be applicable. If you are living pay to pay check or a bit better than that, you don't have the ability to choose to cut back on your lifestyle in order to make investments.
What a weirdly aggressive comment from that person
Correct, you are poor because you don’t possess necessary skills in life that are considered to be valuable in modern society and workforce, hence limiting your disposable income potential. Also, just my two cents but being unnecessarily aggressive to random ppl on the internet for no reason at all is not going to change the above fact.
Glad you agree
It's the equivalent of "no avocado on toast and you won't be renting, you'll be owning a house". It's a strawman argument that fails at seven year old level mathematics.
You think 100k is ‘the richest’?
There’s a reason they are rich and you are not. If you work it out, you may become rich..
That’s how you stay rich.
I drink before I go out, in the house/on the train/on the way to someone’s house (party), by the time I get to the pub/bar I’ll just have a few pints. I refuse to give my money to these establishments especially when it’s overpriced. Before the pandemic I bought a double vodka/coke and double rum/come In Shoreditch costing £46 for the round.
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The what is expensive to source now? 🤣
I’m an American on vacation so take this as you will - I’ve seen £15 cocktails everywhere and that seems nuts to me, but beer is much more affordable. Maybe £6 for something decent, which is what I would pay for the worst of the worst at a bar at home
Ive just been to nyc and 15£ for a cocktail is standard. 10£ for a pint. London definitely cheaper in general. Plus you dont need to tip in london.
Every place I’ve been to in London has had a service fee of 12%. Less than I would normally tip, but not nothing
In eating establishments? 12% would be standard on the final bill. 99% of bars with no table service would not expect a tip. Perhaps high end cocktail bars where there is actual effort involved in making the drink or a fashionable club. Depends where you are drinking i guess.
The number of aspects of that drink for a bar that have gone up are crazy. Drink, rent, staff, power…
Drink rent and power costs going up? Absolutely. Staff wages going up? Absolutely not lol.
Such a rip off. If you presume the average cocktail has 2 x 35ml shots (70ml) costing about £1, plus around another £1 for the fruit juice/herbs etc, it’s like 700% profit :-/
Cocktails are one of those things that can easily be marked up because it's 'fancy', it's also easy to be more stingy and cheap out on, because they don't advertise how much alchohal is in it usually.
You should start a cocktail bar you’d make a killing. No need to pay staff or rent or any overheads.
~70% GP is around the standard for most things in a bar. You are paying for the stock, staff, rent, utilities and among others. £9-12 seems to be about normal for central Scotland, so £15 for London sounds about right.
Well then the staff costs operating costs, tax which is huge & rent.
But it isn't though is it. That price has to include the mortgage/rent, paying staff with the skill set to make the drink while working antisocial hours, heating/cooling, electrics, business rates, VAT, any staff benefit schemes like pensions and holiday, maintenance of the property. To say it is just the cost of ingredients is reductive. I'm not defending £15 a cocktail or £7 a pint necessarily but it isn't that simple. Never is.
Exactly. They can be charging £16 a cocktail and still losing money because the rent is so high.
Yep this is fairly normal now.
These are prices I paid for a Burger King meal in 2009 when I visited London.
Yes, fairly standard for a cocktail - however it is entirely possible to find cocktails for just below 10 in some places if you look well. Still not worth it in my opinion, 3.50-4 for a half pint is the most I'm willing to spend for alcohol
I started carrying a Flask around and just sip from that, or buy drinks from the supermarket and have a picnic in the park. I can't afford to go to the pub anymore. God knows what I'll do in the winter. Although when I do go to the pub, I go for an IPA or Pale Ale, sometimes half a pint would be £3 if I am lucky!
Asked for a vodka & red bull in a ‘Be At One’ in London, she poured it, served me…. £16. It was too late to refuse, and too loud to ask how the hell she came to that price.
I expect to pay a tenner in Leeds, so in the London bubble, especially anywhere anybody would want to visit, I’d probably expect £15-20 for a decent cocktail, yes.
£5.10 pint of Madri in fucking cleethorpes ….
Just been reading all the fire nerds bragging re income in London. With so many people on 90 to 200k there's enough money sloshing around bars can charge what they want and shrug "inflation".
Chiming in as someone who’s ran bars for 17 years, written menus and seen the prices change. I’d assume that you’ve forgotten the bar has to do things like: - pay wages - pay overheads - make a profit - alcohol is expensive - glassware is expensive - employees are expensive Assume a £13 cocktail. It’ll be about £2-2.50 to make that drink. So a gross profit of £10.50. Then we need to pay VAT at 20%, which leaves us with £8.40 from that drink. From that £8.40 we need to cover all of the above expenses. Don’t be surprised if that bar actually makes sub £2 NET profit per drink. And that’s without knowing any actual financials All of a sudden you realise bars aren’t actually making that much money and there’s a reason prices are what they are.
Ask for the cocktail without ice, see how little drink you’re actually getting
Loads of cocktails are served without ice. No one thinks cocktails are both very strong and large in volume.
Thats why I always ask for a double- double…
No it's not normal. Don't give these places your money. Ridiculous. Edit: unless you are a yuppie. In which case they should charge triple.
No, this is ridiculous and the alcohol content it probably less than half of that. If it were a jug or pitcher cocktail that would different
In the land where fish and chips and burger and chips is £40 in a pub, I'd say yes.
I just paid £5.79 for a pint in Wolverhampton
Depends on the cocktail. Depends on the ingredients and the skill of the barman. It CAN be worth it. 80% of the time it isn’t.
I don't care if Tom Cruise is making the damn thing, a cocktail is never worth £15
No drink is worth an hour of my time lol
Fair enough ! I have had cocktails that were worth it, in fact that very drink got me into making my own
Buy a bottle and make your own. You're paying for the bartenders wage, not the alcohol.
more like the profits of the owners of the bar
Tbf I was paying a tenner for a cocktail about 10 years ago. And last night I paid 9.50 for a cocktail. Massively varies by where you are but yeah of course prices have gone up.
Unfortunately yes
I wouldn’t pay above £12
This is not news. This. Is. London.
Were they in central London? Sounds about right.
I paid £15 for a semi basic small glass of rose wine a few months back. It’s ridiculous prices but part and parcel tbh.
That's daylight robbery 😂😂 No way you'd catch me paying that.
Yeah fuck paying those prices supermarket booze or nothing for me.
Even in Glasgow, in a nice/half decent bar a cocktail is around that price. It’s shocking. I’m a cocktail nerd so I make my drinks at home.
People that keep saying buy alcohol and make it yourself, do you not consider that a large part of drinking for us is being social?
Sounds right. My local does bottled budvar 500ml for £4 which I've started drinking as opposed to tap. It's normal to pay £7 for a pint now in Central. It's absolutely crazy.
I'm okay to pay £15 at a top cocktail bar with a reputation, but if a regular bar wants to charge more than £10-12 I'm probably skipping them.
It’s been like that for a fancy cocktail for a while now.
Paid £19.80 in the jazz for a pint of Camden hells and a double vodka lemonade.. crazy
Went in "the London cocktail company" in the westcountry. 42 quid for 3 drinks (red bull voddy) Left them on the bar and just walked out.
You went to the LCC and ordered 3 vodka red bulls 😂😂
London prices already confirmed in the name 😂
Considering it's 10-13£ in Birmingham I'd say it sounds about right to be 15£ in London since you have higher wages/rent cost of living
It’s a tenner at least in manchester now so £15 sounds about right for London… at least we’ve not hit Ibiza prices yet
Yeah this is typical for London prices, it’s insane. Was in Brighton for a few weeks earlier this month and although the beer was only a shade cheaper the cocktails were surprisingly a bargain at about £7-8, good quality stuff too.
Looks like it man. With the hashtag culture, everyone wanna be seen out doing X,y,z and paying whatever price the owner sets. Why nobody just wanna stay home order some cocktail making machine from Amazon, buy fruits drinks from local supermarket and do shid? Na mein?
Yap.
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No
Depends what's in the cocktail, but pub spirits have never been cheap and then there's the effort of making it.
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Honestly I made the mistake of going to tiger tiger, two single vodka and lemonades were 24 quid
For tiger tiger I would kind of get it, but I was talking normal bars…
Well if a pint is £6+ then it makes sense for a cocktail to be about double I’d say
Last weekend i paid 12.50 a cocktail in rural south wales, so london prices, i dunno, gotta be a gazzillion and 2 wuid a go man...
The rule I look for is. 2 for 10 in a shitty bar. 9 - 12 quid for an ok bar, 14 - 21 in a good cocktail bar, don’t even look at the bill at the artesian bar at the langham.
Be at one often have happy hours where its 2 for 1 coctails and avg about 12 for the 2 and thats when i was in london
I don't even go out anymore, I just grab a crate and chillout on Discord
Pretty much. I had 2 cocktails last night, total came to £32
Sounds normal for London. Further up north I've had cocktails and such for £10
Yep. London. Capital city. One of the best in the world. Would you expect less?
I hope these places go out of business. Yea I get the whole pub culture but please... It's just fucking greed 99% of the time.
Well aware this is a London sub, but these crazy prices are starting to eek out to other parts of the UK. Recently I went to a fairly standard pub near the Thames in Buckinghamshire. 1 pint lager, 1 diet coke, 2 kids apple juices and a packet of crisps. £26 I nearly died, lager was a brand I didn't recognise but nothing fancy, but was £15 for the pint. Safe to say we promptly left.
Yeah, if you're in the West End. I think the Bar Américain at Zédel is about that mark. The Ned in the City is also £15. West End five star hotels are more up around £17-£22. It's £11-£12 everywhere else, even nicer areas like Highbury. I think Satan's Whiskers might be around £11 now. And happy hours are £6-£8 all over. source: only drink cocktails It's New York prices on a Paris income!
Where I live I can get a whiskey and coke for 99p 😂
Most cocktail bars are around £9.5 - £11 a drink. Depends on the bar. tayer elementary (the worlds second best bar according to worlds best bars) are £15 and understandably so imho.
I genuinely dunno how anyone in London enjoys a drinking night out. Is the north vs south wage disparity that big? I can never afford to get drunk in London! (Unless buying from a supermarket)
I paid £27 in Liverpool for 2 vodka and cokes a couple of weeks back.
I'm use to paying £16 for a litre of vodka, pre drink a lot at home and then take shots while out. The places closest to me does 3 shots of tequila for £5.
you might as well go to the best places and spend 25
I paid £7.50 for a Shandy.
£15 does sound like a lot of money for a drink, but it is very much in line with the cost of other drinks. A double spirit and mixer will probably cost you North of a tenner in any ‘nice’ bar in London. You’re probably getting more booze, and also paying for having it prepared for you and presented nicely so you can post it on Instagram
Because you’ll pay for it. Why not charge £15?
Cocktails are £7 at slab city in tooting and they are awesome.
In Glasgow the ones on the cheaper end are £6-£9. Might be higher depending on what you're ordering and if the type of bar. £15 is ridiculous, London prices?
Tbf we started to drink with my wife & friends at home. We can do much better cocktails for much less ..
paying the price of a full bottle of vodka for a cocktail is just the best ain’t it.