One factor that added to the decline of rural pubs not mentioned here was the drink-driving laws. Up to the 1980's driving to a pub was commonplace and pretty much accepted if not actually legal. There followed the introduction of breathalysers, and a public information campaign which successfully changed public perception that drinking and driving was not just a bit of irresponsible fun but a serious crime.
In my city, Nairobi, introduction of breathalysers led to closing down of most pubs and clubs in the central business district. It led to revellers choosing to go to their 'locals' instead of CBD establishments and catching Uber after
I think I can relate to that. When I was on a vacation in the UK in the 1990's in a pub, I accepted a ride to our camping. The driver (and me) were not sober. It was perfectly natural to drive like this. It was a very interesting drive over roads with natural stone walls both sides of the narrow road. (A bit like a computergame) We got home alright. But, in hindsight, this was not wise. (Neither of the driver nor from me.) I do not blame the driver. It was as much my fault to accept the drive as it was his to offer the drive being drunk.
I would of thought pub's were common before the car became popular, so relying on people who lived within walking distance would of been the main market. Perhaps some other social change occured which has caused this decline, such as the ability to buy a lot of beer and transport it to your home with you car? Another reason could be linked to workers from factories, which no longer existed?
@@peterfmodel Sure there were many other factors, such as the lower tax on 'off sales' - beer to take home, and the rise of supermarkets. But 'country pubs' in small villages were very popular. These had expanded to include restaurants (and large car parks), and could not be supported by pedestrian traffic alone, mainly relying on town people driving out for a drink. I'm sure the advent of the car hit small local pubs too, but at 72 I'm too young to remember that,
As Brit great video! Everyone always goes on about the death of the pub here, with many blaming higher prices which seems to be true. The issue it seems with breaking the monopoly was that it allowed foreign competitors to fill the market not allowing time for domestic build-up. You forgot to mention that pubs pay a higher tax selling beer than shops do which has contributed to higher prices for the consumer. Would love to see you talk about building societies in the UK! Though it might be outside your realm of knowledge (never expected pubs to be included in that though lol)
The taxes on beer are tiny compared to the £6+ they charge per pint in London pubs. Whatever the cause of these high prices its not tax as its only 30% of the cost (instead of 20% if just VAT). So that means a pint is £4 at a pub but only £1 in a supermarket, most of the additional cost is added by the Pub itself.
@@backgammonbaconit's a pass the blame game. Much easier to blame the government for the higher prices. Fact is, rent is expensive and operating costs are higher than ever. I'm sure there is some price gouging going on but overall they are just doing what they need to do to survive.
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What's wrong with 'foreign competitors'? When I go to a pub, I don't check the passport of the landlord.
One thing not mentioned- CAMRA (The Campaign for Real ale. They took on the+big breweries who were brewing bland beers. The big pub chains sell beer mainly from the international breweries. Hundreds of local bars are popping up, selling real ale and craft beers. The quality is so much better than the offerings at big chains.
Perhaps also look into the history and structure of Heineken. The thing Heineken really kicked off (asides from introducing refrigerated brewing processes from Czechoslovakia and hiring a student of Louis Pasteur to develop a proprietary yeast) was the introduction of a set of complicated financial instruments revolving around the typical Dutch bar (called "Bruin Café" in Dutch), where anyone with a license and a building (let's say, the house next to the windmill as farmers had to wait for a while until their grist was milled) could go to Heineken and not only do they provide the beer and the tap, but also the glasses, the furniture, the bar, the darts right up to the ashtrays. Which of course was a form of lease tied with the sale of beer. Around the time that bars started to run into financial problems (or without someone to take over the bar), Heineken again stepped up and bought the buildings as well. Eventually, Heineken became a large real estate owner and bar or club owners are merely the tenants who has to lease the building, the license and buy a minimum amount of beer and other beverages.
I was surprised the video didn't mention the meteoric rise during the 80's-00's of weatherspoons - a pub company based upon the premise of a wide choice and very cheap prices, that seemingly targeted the exact market the pub reforms were aimed at.
I was working at Spoons when they moved into Scotland. Punters were really confused by the words "Free House ' under the pub names. I used to tell them it meant English theme pub.
Oh man, I was definitely thinking of Wetherspoons. It's the kind of massive chain that would inevitably wind up imitating the tied house system simply based on the common chain practice of stocking the exact same products in every single location. The bottom line is that 'Spoons, through typical corporate capitalist practices, is still tying itself to specific brewers, but it so happens that it's tied to more than one.
I was employed in the brewery industry from 1979 to 2020 and was a free trade area manager from 1984 to 1988 and a tenancy area manager from 1988 to 2020. It was a rollercoaster after the beer orders were introduced. The big 4 generally looked after their tenants with affordable rents and generally reasonable support and repair spend. Post beer orders the pub cos took over and things became really difficult. Rents went up and repair spend generally went down and as a result the pubs declined and eventually many were sold for alternative use. The beer orders basically turned a well run industry into the wild west. Sad
I was with Scottish & Newcastle at the time. Well treated by the company but a lot of issues in and around the Courage merger. Things like having to change Becks , McEwans and Harp to Coors and Fosters.
This was not what I expected from Asianometry but I bloody love it, a topic close to my heart! Well done for covering such a broad range of topics, it really does make your channel a bit special. :)
@TheChodax If you asked for a half and a half what would you expect? Almost all of these comments are bot generated. Asianometry couldn't count their own noses. Can you answer my question? Otherwise it seems like only bots.
When I went to the UK in 1984 I did not understand what was meant by the "free house" sign above some pub doors. After a while it was explained to me that it indicates a pub that is not tied to a brewery chain.
This video stands to be THE definitive YT treatment of the topic for years to come. Detailed, rich in facts and necessary minutiae, and easy to follow. I was born ten yrs after this Beer Order. I will think of this each time now I step into my fave pub in North London, The Garden Gate .
Another factor was that the options available in tied pubs was limited, often consisting of bland keg bitters, and this led to the rise of CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale). Nowadays real ale in various forms is more widely available, and so their focus has expanded to other beer and pub related campaigns, such as cataloguing pubs, especially pub interiors, of historic interest.
I grew up in an English village. The pub was predominantly the domain of the working people, whose homes might have been less well suited for dinner parties and socialising than the upper and middle class homes were. For the last forty years, the worker share of productivity has been falling, with workers' wages barely keeping up with inflation. Meanwhile, rents and mortgage payments have increased exponentially. This all adds up to lower discretionary spending power, and TV / home entertainment have taken the place of pubs, not as a matter of cultural shift, but of economic necessity. Thus, neoliberal economics has done far more damage to 'pub culture' than brewers' monopolies, or government's ham-fisted attempts at breaking those monopolies ever did.
I'm a kid from Manchester and my parents ran a tied Pub in Middleton owned by Boddingtons in the 1970's. Opening hours also had an impact as the pub would open at 11:00 close at 15:00 then re-open 17:30 and close at 23:00. You could lose your licence and livelihood if found to be serving beer outside of these hours. It was legacy from laws passed during the war years to stop folk drinking and get them into the factories. This story is too big to tell in 20 mintues... But Thanks 🤓
@@althejazzman Yes - 'The Defence of the Realm Act' from 1914. People did work very long hours then - but after the Act you couldn't go out on the drink all day and skip work the next day. Like I do now 🤓
@@silasmartin5210 It was the Red Lion 1133 Rochdale Rd there was another Pub called the Goldern Lion round the back and looking at 'Street View' today they are both no longer Pubs 🤓
Lmao, this is true in some current fast food chains. Mcdonald is not a burger selling company but a property company. The vast majority of McDonald's earrings are franchise fees and especially rents, McDonald's own 99.99% of the properties that even a franchise may run. Then jack up the prices of factory produce frozen goods that franchisee must buy from McDonald's. Eff that just try on your own.
Tied houses were a thing here in the US as well. In the 19th and early 20th century, a large percentage of bars were similarly owned outright by a local brewery, or controlled via loans or lease deals. But Prohibition in the 1910s-30s* was the big wrench in the works. Brewers either closed down altogether, risked continuing illegally (especially under organized crime, with its own tied-house speakeasies), or turned to other businesses like soft drinks and malted milk. Bars either closed down, became illegal speakeasies, or converted to restaurants or cafés (which were sometimes tied houses to soda pop bottlers 🙂). After national Prohibition was repealed in 1933, regulations changed. All the states that re-legalized alcohol** ended the tied-house system: they mostly banned brewers from selling directly to the public, instead requiring a middleman distributor who'd resell to bars, restaurants, and liquor stores. Prohibition had led to a ton of brewer consolidation -- the bigger brewers tended to have more capital to change businesses until repeal -- but since bars had been illegal in the interim, it didn't consolidate bar ownership by any real stretch. Since then, the US had a ton more brewer consolidation in the 1950s-80s, as refrigeration, TV ads, and interstate highways led to national brewers growing and crowding out most of the remaining local and regional brewers. But countering this was the rise of craft brews from the 1970s on. Since bars weren't tied to specific brewers, they were free to carry as many of these new brews as they thought would sell. And states eventually started allowing breweries to sell to the public on-premises (as brewpubs and such). Meanwhile, bars have had much more limited consolidation. Locally-owned bars and restaurant-and-bars are common. There are a few big sports bar and restaurant-and-bar chains, but they don't really dominate beyond outer-suburb strip malls. And as for soft drinks, tied houses of a sort remain. Most restaurants -- chain _or_ independent -- carry mainly Coca-Cola products. Though some carry Pepsi products instead, and the occasional oddball carries RC Cola products. Even so, some regional sodas (like Moxie, or 1919 Draft Root Beer) and bottled craft sodas find their way into restaurants too. Whew, that came out longer than I planned! 😅 * Quite a few individual states banned alcohol during WW1, _before_ the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution started the national ban in 1920. ** eventually all 50, though a few like Alabama and Mississippi held out as late as the 1960s. And plenty of states still allow "dry counties" and "dry municipalities" where alcohol sales are prohibited.
I live in Burton on Trent and there are a few instances of pubs in close proximity to each other, away from the town centre. It's down to the tied houses and the fact Bass, Marston's and Allied would all have there own pub for the area. In my small suburb of around 8000 people, there were still 7 pubs when I started drinking legally in 2004. We are now down to 4 :(
Literally one of the best channels on this hellsite. I'd love to see you do a video on Indian snack giants like Haldiram's, Parle & now Balaji. It's a fascinating sector and your approach would clarify so many unanswered questions. I absolutely LOVED your vid on the Indian computing industry.
I do remember back in 1999, in Camberley, if I went on a pub crawl with my work mates we could drop in to half a dozen small pubs with very little walking required. Perhaps no more than 500 metres of walking would allow me to cover half a dozen small pubs. In 2010, about 10 years later, there was only two pubs I could go to. I have to admit the remaining pubs were larger and had reasonable dinning with very good bangers and mash. A pub crawl in 2010 consisted of only two pubs, unless I wanted to get in a car and drive around. It was a rather large social change which in retrospect I find rather amazing.
And throughout all of this, there will have been one old man who sat in the corner of each pub, near the fire, grumbling to himself while nursing a half pint - as is tradition.
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In the UK, it's uncommon for men to drink a half pint, isn't it? (Or at least, if they do, they get it in a pint glass half filled. Apparently half-pint glasses used to be seen as effeminate.)
Not yet done with the video, waiting to see if he somehow links this back to semiconductor manufacturing but I will be happy to have watched the video whether or not that happens. EDIT: After finishing the video, I'm left wondering why the UK government went with the forced divestment option instead of simply making it easier and cheaper to obtain and retain a pub license. It seems to me that the root issue in all of this was onerous and outdated regulation left over from the Temperance movement, surely a "low quality" pub will fail on its own, or else stay competitive by offering better prices and selection than the consolidated pubs.
as a consumer I prefered the pre 92 situation - the local brewery would be a landmark and a part of civic identity. The local brew is now made 'god knows where' and everywhere in the country is a little bit more homogenised. I think the old system was mean on the pub tenants who often lived above the pub in virtual poverty despite the often huge turnover... don't know if things have improved there. (source I worked removals in the early 90's and moved some of these people's possessions out of the pubs - they didn't have much)
The problem with tenant pubs like those run by the pub cos is that in many ways they care less about the pub as a way to sell product and rather simply as a property. I worked with one and we would go through those pubs as just line by line items - effectively they knew many of the pubs weren't viable and it became about extracting "value" from the tenant until they could no longer make it work.
Look at the state now of the British beer industry. The main breweries are owned by the same 4 who are producing fizzy yellow water that almost all taste the same. The worst thing to happen to us was ABinbev & Molson Coors buying breweries and pubs. I hope the craft beer revolution will help but deep down I know that the big four will just hijack that and produce shite
As soon as any single 'craft' brand gets big enough, it usually gets bought out by one of the major companies. At least here in London, most pubs(at least decent ones) do seem good about offering a pretty nice variety of craft options. At the prices they charge though, it's hardly surprising that many will stick to lower priced 'major' brands, though.
I found this and the regional Chinese alcohol videos extremely interesting! Perhaps you could do a video on Scottish Highlands Scotch and Irish Whiskey next?
The Temperance Movement that you mentioned was also very large and rather powerful here in Australia too (it should be noted that as this period, Britain and Australia were essentially one country. If you were Australian, then you were also a British citizen). There are still areas of Australian cities where local by-laws mean you cannot open a licensed establishment, although it's usually just an area of a few blocks, and certainly not whole neighbourhoods. The laws are still around today as something of a curiosity, and not many people nor councillors even realise these temperance areas still exist.
"Bundaberg rum, and it's overproof rum, Will tan your inside and grow hair on your bum. Let the blue ribbon beat on his empty old drum Or his waterlogged belly, we'll stick to our rum." - Bill Scott, sailor, poet. Born: Bundaberg. Died: Warwick.
We had some of these temperance areas in America, too. There was a whole neighborhood in my city that, as part of it's condition for merging into said city, mandated that it's dry laws be grandfathered in.
Thank you for this. As a Briton who has not lived in Britain for a couple of decades but who has visited a few times, I am shocked to shit at the rise in beer prices. I have (had) no idea whose fault this is, if anyone's. Sadly here in the east it's lager or.... lager. Not a very good choice for a guy who always preferred bitter, mild, ale or stout. You can get those things here, but a pint is silly, silly money.
A major competitor to the traditional pub were all the political party, trade union and charity social clubs. And many work places had their own on site social club selling beer. The American bank I worked at in the 1980's had it's own social club on the 3rd floor. The bar was open at 10 minutes past 5 o'clock Monday to Friday. My local government building had it's own pub for staff. Hotels also have bars open to the public. Beer wasn't sold in supermarkets. The Off Licence was the only shop able to sell alcohol.
No mention of CAMRA Campsign for real ale. I was driving hire cars in London. Some of my customers were a group of newspaper journalists. They worked to publicize small breweries and get them into Pubs as guest beers. This became quite a movement.
As a first time traveler to England in 1995, I was puzzled by a self-proclaimed "free pub." Sadly, the beer was anything but free. Thanks for filling in the back story.
I would be very curious to see what the pub and coffeehouse per capita numbers are over time, and if coffeehouses are possibly filing the place of pubs for an increasing segment of the population. There was a BIG to do over chocolate/coffee houses back in the 17 & 18th centuries and their effect on pubs/taverns (in the UK and across Europe broadly). From an outsider's perspective, it seems worrying over the fate of the local alcohol-dispensing-public-space has been a British pastime since before the UK was even a thing!
Tranditionally pub had their "public bar" (bare floorboards, cheaper prices and welcoming to working men - women not forbidden but not welcomed) and they had their "lounge bar" (drinks more expensive, carpets on the floor, tables and chairs for men and women to drink together).
The lounge bar is presumably synonomous with the 'select' that pubs traditionally had. They also traditionally had a 'snug' which was a small partitioned off area that (or separate room) that was more comfortable, where the drinks were slightly cheaper than the public, and which could only be used by unaccompanied women (typically older widows, but potentially also young unmarried 'spinsters') who were expected to drink there to protect them from the men in the public. Some pubs had signs up at the bar saying 'no unaccompanied women in the public bar'.
@ Indeed I am, the smokers smoked and drank at home after the ban reducing the number of pub customers, non smokers didn't replace them and drank less whilst the pubs fixed costs stayed the same. Result was more expensive pints and fewer pubs. Simple economics.
@@christianweibrecht6555 Some of them. Though much fewer than they used to. Just like in the US. Approximately everyone used to be a smoker back in the day.
I first went to England in the early 1970s. Most of the pubs were either Watney's or Whitbread. The beer was not very good, and I often opted for Stella Artois. Then in the late 1980s I was back again. At this time there was a movement, the Campaign for Real Ale (CMARA). The in the early 2000s I moved to England to work for a few years. By that time, independent pubs and small batch ales were all the rage. I used to frequent one pub which made their own beer. This was in the Winchester area. I was living in Winchester. The water for the beer came from a well which was accessed through a grate behind the bar. It was wonderful. I went there to dine with an employee of mine who was based in Newcastle who would stay at the pub. Actually, he stayed in a stable block that had been converted to accommodations. Six rooms, if I recall correctly. We would arrange these meetings around curry nights. A couple from South Asia who worked for another tech firm in the area did this as a sideline at the pub. Often there were a group of Morris Dancers practicing outside at the same time. It was magical.
When you have the big six brewers (out of 220 operating) it's not a monopoly. What existed was vertical integration. This is no different than a filling station. Pubs comprised a majority of the asset value because this is real property, often in desirable retail areas. If not for pubs, the majority of asset value would be breweries, equipment, lorries, and goodwill. If the tied house system worked against the public interest by reducing competition, how did the commission explain the other 214 brewers and the 25% of pubs not tied to the big six? Beer prices in the UK are high because of tax. Was then and is still. For beer with 3.5% to 8.4% ABV the tax is £21.01 for each litre of pure alcohol in the product. Atop that is another 20% VAT. BTW, pubs are given a leg up over shops because the tax paid on draught drinks in pubs is up to 11 pence lower than what drinkers pay at the shops. This is stacking the deck. It certainly isn't aiding consumers. The outcome was replacing the handful of 200 pound gorillas with fewer 800 pound gorillas. The price of beer increasing higher than the rate of average inflation (of all goods) is due to many causes - supply chain issues, staffing shortages, soaring energy costs, lingering pandemic-era debts, poor grain harvests, and the sky high cost of inputs like fertiliser.
Great post. After all this most pubs are still effectively tied, but now to pubcos - essentially property companies who charge high rents and control what the tenants can stock and who they have to buy through. I assume these are the 800 pound gorillas to which you refer
Some pubs closed as a result of complaints from people who lived in newly built flats nearby. The pubs had been there for hundreds of years and yet the pubs ended up closing. eg. The Cooperage, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
I lived in a rental above a square with a pub... the problem is that drunk people talk very loud, laugh very hard, and can stay there for hours sometimes instead of going home, because they can't just leave each other, they have to keep socializing and sharing their ebriety...
@@Zharkov1969A The building with the pub is hundred(s) of years older than the housing, but I can't say if the pub was already there when they built the housing. Pubs are not a local tradition here, maybe it was some kind of tavern or restaurant, but there is a reformed church/temple on this square too, and they were not really party people at this time... Anyway, a tragic mix of traditional architecture and ~1970's style development!
Unix wars to British Beer Industry! What a channel 😄. The only bit I did not understand was "beer is not an essential industry"? Coming from a long line of agricultural labourers, that does not compute 😂
It’s a crying shame what’s happened to the pubs. It’s also I imagine a big part of the increase in loneliness & isolation leading to the depression and male suicide on such an increase over here.
It is worth highlighting the reason for pubs being popular establishments to spend your evenings. Firstly, water was not really safe to drink due to excrement contamination. Beer production kills off the pathogens. Secondly, they were warm in winter. Beer was also consumed buy workers during the day. This was “light beer” (less than 2% alcohol). It again, was pathogen free and therefore safe.
I remember when Gales Ales in horndean was bought out in the 2000s with the usual lies of continuing to maintain the ancient brewery in horndean. It was, of course, closed, sold and the label moved to London a year later. The building is posh flats now.
When I was a kid, and this was in the 80s, I remember the gales dray delivering beer to the Rising Sun pub in clanfield. All because some business boys decided so. Bastards.
a piece of advice - if youre interested in traditional English pubs, get out of London and check out many towns and cities in the midlands and North that have a great deal more unaltered pubs than you'll find in London.
One of the biggest problems is, you can buy four cans (around 3 1/2 pints) in a supermarket for the same price as one pint in a pub, and that's the governments Tory and Labour's fault. Another was the smoking ban, that closed a lot of pubs. While I smoke I can understand those that don't don't want to smell other people smoke. There was a way to mitigate this by having a smoking and non smoking bar (if the pub is big enough). Short term profits for the companies was more important than long term income. If 'you' want to know about pubs ask me, only cost a pint an answer!
There’s good evidence out there suggesting the indoor smoking ban had a significant positive impact on public health. Particularly in bar workers and other staff that previously where exposed to very high levels of second hand smoke. I don’t doubt that smokers would prefer if they didn’t have to stand outside to smoke but personally as a non-smoker I don’t have very much sympathy for them.
@@tallthinkevI would be curious how true that is, I haven’t looked at any statistics or reports based around that assumption. I think it’s worth considering market trends, there’s been a marked change in drinking habits particularly in younger generations. They’re drinking significantly less than previous generations. I’m sure there’s a number of socioeconomic factors at play there but considering many younger people of drinking age have never experienced a “pre smoking ban Britain” I doubt it’s a significant factor.
You may be interested to know that the owners of the tied houses also had possession of the best bill boards for marketing. They traditionally 'lent' these to the Conservative party during elections. Thus, they felt especially betrayed by Lord Young's policies.
In the mid 1980's I could go down to my local grocer and buy all the big English beers plus many European beers. I would buy one bottle of several countries to make a six pack. A beer Mackelson I think the name was, a similar brew to Guinness beer a favorite. Then some good micros were made and some of us started making our own. I do miss finding a Euro beer like Orval Trappist ale or Old Peculiar in the store. Those days are long gone.
@@capitalb5889 Not in my region. Once every supermarket had them. Where did you buy old peculiar? Maybe in the big wine/beer superstore. How about Lowenbrau from Zurich, dark was amazing?
I'd be interested to see the full statistic about 80+% of consumed beer is still sold in pubs. Is it just referring to draught "real ales" excluding tinned lager etc? In short it doesn't match my lived experience. During my lifetime alcohol consumption has moved from being almost entirely in pubs to the opposite. Alignment of taxation to European norms, changes in pricing due to sales in supermarkets, changes in licensing hours for pubs and relaxation of controls in other retail outlets, most of these mitigated against pubs. (Cheaper alcohol has been said to be the main benefit(?) of EU membership. British tourists didn't just flock to the Spanish and Greek resorts for guaranteed summer sunshine: They could also get hammered for next to nothing all day long and on Sundays too.) Essentially, cost, availability, and convenience has led to the decline in pubs able to justify the rent on the land they occupy. Hence their resort to trying to sell food at better margins. The large brewers just attempted to keep some control of their market by vertical integration. Other than that, I regard the tied/non-tied argument as just a side show concerning the minority, those who care most about the quality of the beer they drink. The decline of the pub as a social institution is just one more slightly sad sign of the times we live in. I don't think anybody really foresaw what would happen by the changes that have been made.
In Northern Ireland, an artificial cap has been imposed on the number of pubs since the early 1900s. The ‘surrender principle’ requires any new pub to hand in the licence of a previously closed bar, thereby limiting the number of licences available. As a result, licences are now privately traded for six-figure sums. While most pubs here are owner-operated, beer ties (in the form of loans) continue to be very common, with breweries allegedly pressuring owners to take off competitive taps. The result? The price of a pint in NI is on a par with London, despite average wages being far lower. As the video alludes to, the issue isn’t necessarily the ties themselves, but a lack of competition that can push down the breweries pricing. Here’s hoping that sensible reforms can be introduced soon!
Great video! Thanks. Both breweries and vending machine operators bought liquor licenses in the US and leased them to bar owners under exclusive contracts for beer or vending machines.
My first trip to London was in 1997. I was really disappointed at the lack of variety. You could get Stella Artois or Carlsberg, prices were high, and staff rude, and pubs closed early. I was living in the USA in Boston and the pubs there were far superior in every way. When I next came to London in 2005, the situation was slightly better. But this is not to say that things area great in the US; prices are higher than every, and everything is either sweeet or hoppy, which I hate. That being said, my small Maine town of 680 has three pubs, but none of them are open more than 4 days per week during winter, and none are open Monday or Tuesday.
I went to the states for the first time last spring, to Norfolk Virginia. I expected terrible beer. I was very wrong: I found a vibrant craft brewing scene, with delicious beers available all over the town. A very different situation to the terrible selection available back home in most of London.
Isn't it fascinating how things are? 😊 Anyone from mainland Europe would call you nuts close a pub or Cafe that early. People usually start to go in around 9-10pm or much later for the more southern warmer countries. Often lasts till 2am or early in the morning. Even the smallest of towns have a little café, bar or other place that's often packed.
I went to San Francisco in about 2009 and found a really varied selection of beer compared to London, which was still stuck in a mass product lager phase. Within a couple of years that changed with loads of microbreweries opening up. The US really helped Britain rediscover beer. However, like in the US, a lot of the beers are overly hopped to cover a lack of real flavour.
I have seen in my hometown pub after pub close over the years. There are many reasons im sure but one thing i hear over and over is landlords being charged for beer and rent more than the pub itself can generate. I see some pubs that were once a thriving business in my youth changing hands over and over with each new landlord throwing in the towel for the same old reason. The brewery wanting all the profit and leaving no insentive for those doing all the work.
10:02 I assume you mean cider (pronounced like side ur)? It's a drink typically made from apples. Cedar to my knowledge only refers to a species of tree and its wood.
It saddens me tbh with how many pubs close I was told by my grandad that there's so many pubs in his town and how he navigated and now its just witherspoon
Huh, Denmark is similar today to how it was in the UK before. A few companies bought up all the smaller breweries and bars can only afford to use one supplier
@davidcovington901 "Licensed premise". That made me question. At what point do I have to wonder how reliable this is? Bravo to you. People stopped listening.
The biggest factor killing pubs now is the current pub companies ripping off their tennants. Most local village pubs are the centre of the community. Always busy enough to sustain the business. The pub company evaluates the value of income from the pub as a pub versus it's value as a property. Now a busy village pub will take a long time to earn enough to cover that value. So they decide to sell it off as a property and realise huge value in 5 mins. This has led to thousands of pubs closing and changing use to residential or a local supermarket etc. Locals are furious at this going on and have tried their best to stop it. Tennants pay huges sums to the pub companies. They have to pay excessive leases just to walk through the door with all sorts of extras. Not happy with that revenue, the tennant is tied to buy the alcohol from them too. Remember, the pub company has thousands of outlets so is able to negotiate huge discounts for the beer. Great, the pub gets cheap beer. No, they charge the pub "full whack", in other words, they're putting on a high margin on the beer making even more money from the tennant and obviously making the price at the pumps even higher. There needs to be a total overhaul of the industry, one that breaks the pub company concept and removes that whole, unnecessary level of expense from the business. As an example, a keg of beer is 11g or 88 pints or 50L. Firkins of real ale are 9g or 72 pint. A small village pub would hope to sell between 3 and 6 kegs a week. Maybe more, maybe less. Even if the small village pub sold 3 a week, buying them from a wholesaler would save them £300 or more across the 3. Just 3 kegs, each £100 ex vat cheaper over the year would earn that pub an extra £15600. Now that's huge for a small pub, a life saver. Unless this is addressed, the decline and demise of the village / town pub will continue daily.
The breaking of the monopoly of a few big brewers of beer in the U.K. resulted in the proliferation of countless regional and micro brewery's, l have been to many beer festivals in Kent and Sussex, each one having a huge selection of fine and interesting beers and ales and stouts. I reckon it would take more than anyone's lifetime drink 1 pint of every beer brewed in the British Isles 🍺🍻🍺
This video is a great surprise as subscriber of several months, I been waiting for a video about this very subject for sometime, and so glad you brought this to the table. Not a fan of the Tories (or any other party for that matter) but I believe the 1989 orders were written in good faith, unfortunately they lacked the foresight that you pointed out. The likes of Greene King, Enterprise Inns and Punch really have a lot to answer for over the last 20 years.
A couple of small points - smoking inside pubs was banned in 2007, but was allowed outside. Pubs catering to smokers usually have gazeboes in the garden, not an option open to all. Untied pubs before all this were called a Free House. I remember my dad searching for them when we were on holiday in Hampshire (Mann's I think was the usual beer there?) Running alongside this was The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) which somehow morphed from a small bunch of bearded morris dancers into a serious lobbying movement, improving the variety of lower scale 'real' ales, for which there are defined standards. In the 1980s there was a move away from bitter to lager, CAMRA kinda shifted the balance back. Also in the '90s, ish the disruptor Wetherspoons grew, with quirky buildings and very cheap beer and food. It is not tied, just aggressively buys. Like the company or loathe it, it had a significant effect on the market. Another strand came from The Eagle on Farringdon Road (1991) credited usually as the first gastro-pub, pubs that are more like relatively informal restaurants. Those are now quite common, and also shook the market. Beer is fascinating, we've been brewing it since at least Egyptian times.
Another reason for closing of pubs is the rapid change in demographics in which a large swath of new immigrants have pushed out the older neighbors from their new enclaves and pubs rot on the vine as the regular punters are no longer there and the new neighbors consider alcohol evil. This is especially so in Bradford, Leeds, Manchester, Telford, Rochdale, etc..
I just want to applaud the brilliant photos used at around 12:50 or so talking about how the brewers were arguing for how they invested in the facilities. lol
I have had the pleasure of the pub monopolies in 1990-1 my rent was going from £9000pa to £24000 on a full repairing lease,3 story building no money spent on it for years so the only option move on to another brewery.I built the barrelage from 110 to 460 barrels in 18 months but no way I could substain this increase,all day opening ment you had to be around all the day in case of idiots,drink driving,smoking ban and the rotation of tenants and managers has killed the industry and all for greed by the pub co's and breweries.Food over the last few years has kept a few pubs afloat but you still need the core drinkers,nothing worse than going into a pub thats empty you need atmostphere a good mine host who greats his customers takes the mick and a laugh be firm and fair,not walk in get served and staff just ignore you.The breweries and pub co's had an industry that was envied throughout the world and they have lost it like my father said it takes a lifetime to build something but you can lose it overnight.
A study found that people don't care about the price of beer? 🤣 I kept catching myself: he's saying nineteen-seventies, eighties... not seventeen-... 😳 - We have a saying in the US: "The system isn't broken. It was built this way." The rich get richer.
Just as an aside that Germany also had a similar system until the EU broke it up. When I was young(er), it was still very common to have the sign for the tied brewery hung up and you would have a sort of Ford Model T choice: you could have any beer you liked as long as it came from the brewery.
A very comprehensive and balanced study of what went wrong with the Beer Orders. Classic case of unexpected consequences. Allowing supermarkets to sell so much beer, so cheaply didn’t help either.
The shot at 11:05 is a wine cellar, not a brewery. Probably Chateau Peyfaures in Bordeaux though I can't be certain of that. The clue is the marc doors on the fermenters: you don't need to remove marc from a beer fermenter. Source: nearly forty years running breweries and wineries.
A subject close to my heart! From the comments it seems we're very spoilt in Brighton, there's pubs absolutely everywhere! I pass more than 10 on the 20 minute walk to work and that's ignoring the 330 others in the city!
An interesting complication is the composition of "beer". For hundreds of years leading up until the beer orders came out in 1989, the overwhelming majority of beer consumed in the UK was ale. Within a decade following, the market flipped and lager was the overwhelming majority. There was a 21st century backlash via CAMRA but lager remains dominant.
In the late nineties, smoking tapered off for people in their thirties. As smoking fell out of fashion the government pushed limiting smoking in buildings and in 2006 banned smoking in pubs. Many people credit the ban for a beneficial change in pubs to more food and social focus which was good for overall business. People brought children to pubs for dinner.
Also worth noting that up until the around 1990, the general quality of beer available to buy to consume at home was of very poor quality and also not much cheaper than the much better quality available in pubs. Then it got good quality with plenty of variety and healthy competition. Meanwhile, the cost to drink in a pub steadily increased whilst the at home product hardly increased.
There's a Machiavellian concept that you never trust a politician's stated goals, but assume the outcomes of their policies were they goals all along (for lots of very good reasons). So it wouldn't surprise me that those involved were warned that this all would happen. That those who were consulted in this had vested interests and that things were designed to get these results, and that this isn't a failure in policy.
Another reason for closing of pubs are that workers are stressed about work and work later, bosses reaching employees after hours on their cellphones to do things and bring home work with them and then have to get home to make dinner as the wife is rushing home from work too and has to help with all the banal school projects put on kids to do at home for hours. And dome workers just are sick of being around their coworkers and don't want to socialize with them. Also, unless you are able to walk to work, you have to spend 30-90 minutes in your tin can driving home in overcrowded towns.
Very interesting. The UK seems to be a basketcase of good intentions leading to unforseen consequences. Disastrously. Your take on Brexit is eagerly awaited.
Having stopped by last year I must say the price of a pint was a bit shocking. I had visited a few times in "the before time" and though far from cheap it was tolerable. Now it's at another level. Brexit really managed to kick things off the rails.
@@MichaelT_123Nobody wants to hear you whine, complaining should be done as a "it's ridiculous isn't it" but the stoicism of the nation mustn't be effected by it. Stiff upper lip and all that.
i was a landlord fromm88 -94 & breaking the tied house system was a disaster, the main reason was , which wasnt mentioned on here was the sky high rent rise to cover the loss of beer sales
One factor that added to the decline of rural pubs not mentioned here was the drink-driving laws. Up to the 1980's driving to a pub was commonplace and pretty much accepted if not actually legal. There followed the introduction of breathalysers, and a public information campaign which successfully changed public perception that drinking and driving was not just a bit of irresponsible fun but a serious crime.
In my city, Nairobi, introduction of breathalysers led to closing down of most pubs and clubs in the central business district. It led to revellers choosing to go to their 'locals' instead of CBD establishments and catching Uber after
I think I can relate to that. When I was on a vacation in the UK in the 1990's in a pub, I accepted a ride to our camping. The driver (and me) were not sober. It was perfectly natural to drive like this. It was a very interesting drive over roads with natural stone walls both sides of the narrow road. (A bit like a computergame) We got home alright. But, in hindsight, this was not wise. (Neither of the driver nor from me.) I do not blame the driver. It was as much my fault to accept the drive as it was his to offer the drive being drunk.
The government campaign in the 70s was don't take that 5th pint if you drive!
I would of thought pub's were common before the car became popular, so relying on people who lived within walking distance would of been the main market. Perhaps some other social change occured which has caused this decline, such as the ability to buy a lot of beer and transport it to your home with you car? Another reason could be linked to workers from factories, which no longer existed?
@@peterfmodel Sure there were many other factors, such as the lower tax on 'off sales' - beer to take home, and the rise of supermarkets. But 'country pubs' in small villages were very popular. These had expanded to include restaurants (and large car parks), and could not be supported by pedestrian traffic alone, mainly relying on town people driving out for a drink. I'm sure the advent of the car hit small local pubs too, but at 72 I'm too young to remember that,
As Brit great video! Everyone always goes on about the death of the pub here, with many blaming higher prices which seems to be true. The issue it seems with breaking the monopoly was that it allowed foreign competitors to fill the market not allowing time for domestic build-up. You forgot to mention that pubs pay a higher tax selling beer than shops do which has contributed to higher prices for the consumer. Would love to see you talk about building societies in the UK! Though it might be outside your realm of knowledge (never expected pubs to be included in that though lol)
Seconded! Building societies or anything to do with mortgages and the planning system would fantastic
Seems to me that the tax structure is backwards from what politicians say is their desired outcome, then
The taxes on beer are tiny compared to the £6+ they charge per pint in London pubs. Whatever the cause of these high prices its not tax as its only 30% of the cost (instead of 20% if just VAT). So that means a pint is £4 at a pub but only £1 in a supermarket, most of the additional cost is added by the Pub itself.
@@backgammonbaconit's a pass the blame game. Much easier to blame the government for the higher prices. Fact is, rent is expensive and operating costs are higher than ever. I'm sure there is some price gouging going on but overall they are just doing what they need to do to survive.
What's wrong with 'foreign competitors'? When I go to a pub, I don't check the passport of the landlord.
Imagine my surprise when my local pub appears in the first two minutes. I’m in shock.
You mean "public house", governor.😊
You may have doxxed yourself
He showed a pub in my home city too!❤
Our planet is so smoll now :)
@@kayakMike1000 That's what pub is short for
One thing not mentioned- CAMRA (The Campaign for Real ale. They took on the+big breweries who were brewing bland beers. The big pub chains sell beer mainly from the international breweries. Hundreds of local bars are popping up, selling real ale and craft beers. The quality is so much better than the offerings at big chains.
Not just bland. Essentially undrinkable. Without CAMRA, things would have gone really bad.
even wetherspoons has good ones
Perhaps also look into the history and structure of Heineken. The thing Heineken really kicked off (asides from introducing refrigerated brewing processes from Czechoslovakia and hiring a student of Louis Pasteur to develop a proprietary yeast) was the introduction of a set of complicated financial instruments revolving around the typical Dutch bar (called "Bruin Café" in Dutch), where anyone with a license and a building (let's say, the house next to the windmill as farmers had to wait for a while until their grist was milled) could go to Heineken and not only do they provide the beer and the tap, but also the glasses, the furniture, the bar, the darts right up to the ashtrays. Which of course was a form of lease tied with the sale of beer. Around the time that bars started to run into financial problems (or without someone to take over the bar), Heineken again stepped up and bought the buildings as well. Eventually, Heineken became a large real estate owner and bar or club owners are merely the tenants who has to lease the building, the license and buy a minimum amount of beer and other beverages.
That sounds like the vertical integration that McDonalds uses, too. Owning the property allows strict enforcement of franchise standards.
Wait so... Heineken is beer McDonald's??!
This kind of vertical integration was also characteristic of the big US brewers prior to Prohibition, so it’s not a particularly unique feature.
I was surprised the video didn't mention the meteoric rise during the 80's-00's of weatherspoons - a pub company based upon the premise of a wide choice and very cheap prices, that seemingly targeted the exact market the pub reforms were aimed at.
Tim Martin and 'Spoons could probably be it's own video
I was working at Spoons when they moved into Scotland. Punters were really confused by the words "Free House ' under the pub names. I used to tell them it meant English theme pub.
@@Epidianlol
Spoons is class.. 1.77 a pint for some and 2.55 for guest ales.
Oh man, I was definitely thinking of Wetherspoons. It's the kind of massive chain that would inevitably wind up imitating the tied house system simply based on the common chain practice of stocking the exact same products in every single location. The bottom line is that 'Spoons, through typical corporate capitalist practices, is still tying itself to specific brewers, but it so happens that it's tied to more than one.
I was employed in the brewery industry from 1979 to 2020 and was a free trade area manager from 1984 to 1988 and a tenancy area manager from 1988 to 2020. It was a rollercoaster after the beer orders were introduced. The big 4 generally looked after their tenants with affordable rents and generally reasonable support and repair spend. Post beer orders the pub cos took over and things became really difficult. Rents went up and repair spend generally went down and as a result the pubs declined and eventually many were sold for alternative use. The beer orders basically turned a well run industry into the wild west. Sad
I was with Scottish & Newcastle at the time. Well treated by the company but a lot of issues in and around the Courage merger. Things like having to change Becks , McEwans and Harp to Coors and Fosters.
This was not what I expected from Asianometry but I bloody love it, a topic close to my heart! Well done for covering such a broad range of topics, it really does make your channel a bit special. :)
@TheChodax If you asked for a half and a half what would you expect? Almost all of these comments are bot generated. Asianometry couldn't count their own noses. Can you answer my question? Otherwise it seems like only bots.
@@brianbrian1769 Dude you are crazy. WTF?
When I went to the UK in 1984 I did not understand what was meant by the "free house" sign above some pub doors. After a while it was explained to me that it indicates a pub that is not tied to a brewery chain.
This video stands to be THE definitive YT treatment of the topic for years to come. Detailed, rich in facts and necessary minutiae, and easy to follow. I was born ten yrs after this Beer Order. I will think of this each time now I step into my fave pub in North London, The Garden Gate .
Another factor was that the options available in tied pubs was limited, often consisting of bland keg bitters, and this led to the rise of CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale). Nowadays real ale in various forms is more widely available, and so their focus has expanded to other beer and pub related campaigns, such as cataloguing pubs, especially pub interiors, of historic interest.
As an electronic engineer I already loved this channel but as an Englishman who loves the pub this is easily your best content 😁
I grew up in an English village. The pub was predominantly the domain of the working people, whose homes might have been less well suited for dinner parties and socialising than the upper and middle class homes were. For the last forty years, the worker share of productivity has been falling, with workers' wages barely keeping up with inflation. Meanwhile, rents and mortgage payments have increased exponentially. This all adds up to lower discretionary spending power, and TV / home entertainment have taken the place of pubs, not as a matter of cultural shift, but of economic necessity.
Thus, neoliberal economics has done far more damage to 'pub culture' than brewers' monopolies, or government's ham-fisted attempts at breaking those monopolies ever did.
I'm a kid from Manchester and my parents ran a tied Pub in Middleton owned by Boddingtons in the 1970's. Opening hours also had an impact as the pub would open at 11:00 close at 15:00 then re-open 17:30 and close at 23:00. You could lose your licence and livelihood if found to be serving beer outside of these hours. It was legacy from laws passed during the war years to stop folk drinking and get them into the factories. This story is too big to tell in 20 mintues... But Thanks 🤓
I didn't know that's what traditional pub opening hours stemmed from. So this only forced people to work from 9:00-11:00, and from 15:00-17:30 then!
@@althejazzman Yes - 'The Defence of the Realm Act' from 1914. People did work very long hours then - but after the Act you couldn't go out on the drink all day and skip work the next day. Like I do now 🤓
@@fosterb247 haha! Posted from a free pub wifi hotspot?
I’m from Middleton. Was it one of the pubs on Langley that shut or is it still open?
@@silasmartin5210 It was the Red Lion 1133 Rochdale Rd there was another Pub called the Goldern Lion round the back and looking at 'Street View' today they are both no longer Pubs 🤓
Lmao, this is true in some current fast food chains. Mcdonald is not a burger selling company but a property company. The vast majority of McDonald's earrings are franchise fees and especially rents, McDonald's own 99.99% of the properties that even a franchise may run.
Then jack up the prices of factory produce frozen goods that franchisee must buy from McDonald's.
Eff that just try on your own.
Another factor that lead to a drop in beer consumption in the 1800’s was the the roll out of widely available clean drinking water.
Tied houses were a thing here in the US as well. In the 19th and early 20th century, a large percentage of bars were similarly owned outright by a local brewery, or controlled via loans or lease deals.
But Prohibition in the 1910s-30s* was the big wrench in the works. Brewers either closed down altogether, risked continuing illegally (especially under organized crime, with its own tied-house speakeasies), or turned to other businesses like soft drinks and malted milk. Bars either closed down, became illegal speakeasies, or converted to restaurants or cafés (which were sometimes tied houses to soda pop bottlers 🙂).
After national Prohibition was repealed in 1933, regulations changed. All the states that re-legalized alcohol** ended the tied-house system: they mostly banned brewers from selling directly to the public, instead requiring a middleman distributor who'd resell to bars, restaurants, and liquor stores. Prohibition had led to a ton of brewer consolidation -- the bigger brewers tended to have more capital to change businesses until repeal -- but since bars had been illegal in the interim, it didn't consolidate bar ownership by any real stretch.
Since then, the US had a ton more brewer consolidation in the 1950s-80s, as refrigeration, TV ads, and interstate highways led to national brewers growing and crowding out most of the remaining local and regional brewers. But countering this was the rise of craft brews from the 1970s on. Since bars weren't tied to specific brewers, they were free to carry as many of these new brews as they thought would sell. And states eventually started allowing breweries to sell to the public on-premises (as brewpubs and such).
Meanwhile, bars have had much more limited consolidation. Locally-owned bars and restaurant-and-bars are common. There are a few big sports bar and restaurant-and-bar chains, but they don't really dominate beyond outer-suburb strip malls.
And as for soft drinks, tied houses of a sort remain. Most restaurants -- chain _or_ independent -- carry mainly Coca-Cola products. Though some carry Pepsi products instead, and the occasional oddball carries RC Cola products. Even so, some regional sodas (like Moxie, or 1919 Draft Root Beer) and bottled craft sodas find their way into restaurants too.
Whew, that came out longer than I planned! 😅
* Quite a few individual states banned alcohol during WW1, _before_ the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution started the national ban in 1920.
** eventually all 50, though a few like Alabama and Mississippi held out as late as the 1960s. And plenty of states still allow "dry counties" and "dry municipalities" where alcohol sales are prohibited.
I live in Burton on Trent and there are a few instances of pubs in close proximity to each other, away from the town centre. It's down to the tied houses and the fact Bass, Marston's and Allied would all have there own pub for the area.
In my small suburb of around 8000 people, there were still 7 pubs when I started drinking legally in 2004. We are now down to 4 :(
Literally one of the best channels on this hellsite. I'd love to see you do a video on Indian snack giants like Haldiram's, Parle & now Balaji. It's a fascinating sector and your approach would clarify so many unanswered questions. I absolutely LOVED your vid on the Indian computing industry.
I do remember back in 1999, in Camberley, if I went on a pub crawl with my work mates we could drop in to half a dozen small pubs with very little walking required. Perhaps no more than 500 metres of walking would allow me to cover half a dozen small pubs. In 2010, about 10 years later, there was only two pubs I could go to. I have to admit the remaining pubs were larger and had reasonable dinning with very good bangers and mash. A pub crawl in 2010 consisted of only two pubs, unless I wanted to get in a car and drive around. It was a rather large social change which in retrospect I find rather amazing.
And throughout all of this, there will have been one old man who sat in the corner of each pub, near the fire, grumbling to himself while nursing a half pint - as is tradition.
In the UK, it's uncommon for men to drink a half pint, isn't it? (Or at least, if they do, they get it in a pint glass half filled. Apparently half-pint glasses used to be seen as effeminate.)
@Same in Ireland pints are preferred
I have slowly become that man.
Bah! Humbug! Leave me in peace! 👴
a half is for the lady
Not yet done with the video, waiting to see if he somehow links this back to semiconductor manufacturing but I will be happy to have watched the video whether or not that happens.
EDIT: After finishing the video, I'm left wondering why the UK government went with the forced divestment option instead of simply making it easier and cheaper to obtain and retain a pub license. It seems to me that the root issue in all of this was onerous and outdated regulation left over from the Temperance movement, surely a "low quality" pub will fail on its own, or else stay competitive by offering better prices and selection than the consolidated pubs.
Mate you've not seen my local
as a consumer I prefered the pre 92 situation - the local brewery would be a landmark and a part of civic identity. The local brew is now made 'god knows where' and everywhere in the country is a little bit more homogenised.
I think the old system was mean on the pub tenants who often lived above the pub in virtual poverty despite the often huge turnover... don't know if things have improved there. (source I worked removals in the early 90's and moved some of these people's possessions out of the pubs - they didn't have much)
The problem with tenant pubs like those run by the pub cos is that in many ways they care less about the pub as a way to sell product and rather simply as a property. I worked with one and we would go through those pubs as just line by line items - effectively they knew many of the pubs weren't viable and it became about extracting "value" from the tenant until they could no longer make it work.
Look at the state now of the British beer industry. The main breweries are owned by the same 4 who are producing fizzy yellow water that almost all taste the same. The worst thing to happen to us was ABinbev & Molson Coors buying breweries and pubs. I hope the craft beer revolution will help but deep down I know that the big four will just hijack that and produce shite
As soon as any single 'craft' brand gets big enough, it usually gets bought out by one of the major companies. At least here in London, most pubs(at least decent ones) do seem good about offering a pretty nice variety of craft options. At the prices they charge though, it's hardly surprising that many will stick to lower priced 'major' brands, though.
I found this and the regional Chinese alcohol videos extremely interesting!
Perhaps you could do a video on Scottish Highlands Scotch and Irish Whiskey next?
One thing I love about his channel is the attention to detail. Aside from transcript, the description would def benefit from a sources list. Cheers!
The Temperance Movement that you mentioned was also very large and rather powerful here in Australia too (it should be noted that as this period, Britain and Australia were essentially one country. If you were Australian, then you were also a British citizen). There are still areas of Australian cities where local by-laws mean you cannot open a licensed establishment, although it's usually just an area of a few blocks, and certainly not whole neighbourhoods. The laws are still around today as something of a curiosity, and not many people nor councillors even realise these temperance areas still exist.
Yes, but South Australia is still stuck in the 1950s! (I kid! I kid! I'm from Vic 😹😆)
"Bundaberg rum, and it's overproof rum,
Will tan your inside and grow hair on your bum.
Let the blue ribbon beat on his empty old drum
Or his waterlogged belly, we'll stick to our rum."
- Bill Scott, sailor, poet. Born: Bundaberg. Died: Warwick.
We had some of these temperance areas in America, too. There was a whole neighborhood in my city that, as part of it's condition for merging into said city, mandated that it's dry laws be grandfathered in.
@@Veylonthere's a neighborhood in Toronto, The Junction, that was dry until the year 2000.
Thank you for this.
As a Briton who has not lived in Britain for a couple of decades but who has visited a few times, I am shocked to shit at the rise in beer prices.
I have (had) no idea whose fault this is, if anyone's.
Sadly here in the east it's lager or.... lager.
Not a very good choice for a guy who always preferred bitter, mild, ale or stout.
You can get those things here, but a pint is silly, silly money.
I'm in China and there are plenty of IPAs available online now
A major competitor to the traditional pub were all the political party, trade union and charity social clubs. And many work places had their own on site social club selling beer. The American bank I worked at in the 1980's had it's own social club on the 3rd floor. The bar was open at 10 minutes past 5 o'clock Monday to Friday. My local government building had it's own pub for staff. Hotels also have bars open to the public. Beer wasn't sold in supermarkets. The Off Licence was the only shop able to sell alcohol.
No mention of CAMRA Campsign for real ale. I was driving hire cars in London. Some of my customers were a group of newspaper journalists. They worked to publicize small breweries and get them into
Pubs as guest beers. This became quite a movement.
What an excellent production. Extremely informative, well written and very well presented,. Bravo!
As a first time traveler to England in 1995, I was puzzled by a self-proclaimed "free pub." Sadly, the beer was anything but free. Thanks for filling in the back story.
I would be very curious to see what the pub and coffeehouse per capita numbers are over time, and if coffeehouses are possibly filing the place of pubs for an increasing segment of the population.
There was a BIG to do over chocolate/coffee houses back in the 17 & 18th centuries and their effect on pubs/taverns (in the UK and across Europe broadly). From an outsider's perspective, it seems worrying over the fate of the local alcohol-dispensing-public-space has been a British pastime since before the UK was even a thing!
The fact that Whitbread owned Costa for many years seems to be indicative of where they thought the direction of travel was.
Costa owned by whitbreads
from lithography to beer, did not see that coming
And yet, it somehow works on this channel. lol
@@davidlericainit does indeed. The Venn diagram of people interested in both would have a very wide overlapping region.
Tranditionally pub had their "public bar" (bare floorboards, cheaper prices and welcoming to working men - women not forbidden but not welcomed) and they had their "lounge bar" (drinks more expensive, carpets on the floor, tables and chairs for men and women to drink together).
The lounge bar is presumably synonomous with the 'select' that pubs traditionally had. They also traditionally had a 'snug' which was a small partitioned off area that (or separate room) that was more comfortable, where the drinks were slightly cheaper than the public, and which could only be used by unaccompanied women (typically older widows, but potentially also young unmarried 'spinsters') who were expected to drink there to protect them from the men in the public. Some pubs had signs up at the bar saying 'no unaccompanied women in the public bar'.
This video should be shown in every freshman economics class. Excellent story and very informative! Keep up the good work and the diversity of videos!
I'm sure the 1997 figure of 38% of villages not having their own pub plummeted pre-pandemic, although I wouldn't be surprised if it's even larger now.
VAT, smoking bans, cheap supermarket booze and council tax have led to 5 pound + pints and the closure of very many pubs
Just a small jump away youll have to pay 7 euro for a guinness, for reference those same places were 4.50 a pint not so long ago
Are you suggesting that smoking bans and cheap competition have increased the cost of a pint?
@ Indeed I am, the smokers smoked and drank at home after the ban reducing the number of pub customers, non smokers didn't replace them and drank less whilst the pubs fixed costs stayed the same. Result was more expensive pints and fewer pubs. Simple economics.
@ Europeans love cigarettes
@@christianweibrecht6555 Some of them. Though much fewer than they used to. Just like in the US. Approximately everyone used to be a smoker back in the day.
Where I used to live in Penge there were 6/7 pubs in Maple Road all really good, sadly only one is left.
I first went to England in the early 1970s. Most of the pubs were either Watney's or Whitbread. The beer was not very good, and I often opted for Stella Artois. Then in the late 1980s I was back again. At this time there was a movement, the Campaign for Real Ale (CMARA). The in the early 2000s I moved to England to work for a few years. By that time, independent pubs and small batch ales were all the rage.
I used to frequent one pub which made their own beer. This was in the Winchester area. I was living in Winchester. The water for the beer came from a well which was accessed through a grate behind the bar. It was wonderful. I went there to dine with an employee of mine who was based in Newcastle who would stay at the pub. Actually, he stayed in a stable block that had been converted to accommodations. Six rooms, if I recall correctly. We would arrange these meetings around curry nights. A couple from South Asia who worked for another tech firm in the area did this as a sideline at the pub. Often there were a group of Morris Dancers practicing outside at the same time. It was magical.
When you have the big six brewers (out of 220 operating) it's not a monopoly. What existed was vertical integration. This is no different than a filling station. Pubs comprised a majority of the asset value because this is real property, often in desirable retail areas. If not for pubs, the majority of asset value would be breweries, equipment, lorries, and goodwill. If the tied house system worked against the public interest by reducing competition, how did the commission explain the other 214 brewers and the 25% of pubs not tied to the big six? Beer prices in the UK are high because of tax. Was then and is still. For beer with 3.5% to 8.4% ABV the tax is £21.01 for each litre of pure alcohol in the product. Atop that is another 20% VAT. BTW, pubs are given a leg up over shops because the tax paid on draught drinks in pubs is up to 11 pence lower than what drinkers pay at the shops. This is stacking the deck. It certainly isn't aiding consumers.
The outcome was replacing the handful of 200 pound gorillas with fewer 800 pound gorillas.
The price of beer increasing higher than the rate of average inflation (of all goods) is due to many causes - supply chain issues, staffing shortages, soaring energy costs, lingering pandemic-era debts, poor grain harvests, and the sky high cost of inputs like fertiliser.
Great post. After all this most pubs are still effectively tied, but now to pubcos - essentially property companies who charge high rents and control what the tenants can stock and who they have to buy through. I assume these are the 800 pound gorillas to which you refer
@@russellcarduk Cheers. The 800 lb gorilla is the international brewers like Carlsberg who purchased Allied, a 200 pound gorilla.
Some pubs closed as a result of complaints from people who lived in newly built flats nearby. The pubs had been there for hundreds of years and yet the pubs ended up closing. eg. The Cooperage, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
I lived in a rental above a square with a pub... the problem is that drunk people talk very loud, laugh very hard, and can stay there for hours sometimes instead of going home, because they can't just leave each other, they have to keep socializing and sharing their ebriety...
@@DR_1_1 was the pub there before you moved in?
@@Zharkov1969A The building with the pub is hundred(s) of years older than the housing, but I can't say if the pub was already there when they built the housing. Pubs are not a local tradition here, maybe it was some kind of tavern or restaurant, but there is a reformed church/temple on this square too, and they were not really party people at this time...
Anyway, a tragic mix of traditional architecture and ~1970's style development!
I suddenly realize that the pub named “The Tide House” on the Jersey Shore was a clever pun!
Unix wars to British Beer Industry! What a channel 😄. The only bit I did not understand was "beer is not an essential industry"? Coming from a long line of agricultural labourers, that does not compute 😂
It’s a crying shame what’s happened to the pubs. It’s also I imagine a big part of the increase in loneliness & isolation leading to the depression and male suicide on such an increase over here.
It is worth highlighting the reason for pubs being popular establishments to spend your evenings.
Firstly, water was not really safe to drink due to excrement contamination. Beer production kills off the pathogens.
Secondly, they were warm in winter.
Beer was also consumed buy workers during the day. This was “light beer” (less than 2% alcohol). It again, was pathogen free and therefore safe.
Yours is the most consistently interesting channel that I'm subscribed to. Great selection of topics and great research. Cheers
I remember when Gales Ales in horndean was bought out in the 2000s with the usual lies of continuing to maintain the ancient brewery in horndean.
It was, of course, closed, sold and the label moved to London a year later.
The building is posh flats now.
When I was a kid, and this was in the 80s, I remember the gales dray delivering beer to the Rising Sun pub in clanfield.
All because some business boys decided so.
Bastards.
The one with a listed tower, yes ?
@@DrumToTheBassWoop
If it is then I didn't know it was listed.
@@MostlyPennyCat were talking about the brewery on the corner, as you approach the roundabout??
a piece of advice - if youre interested in traditional English pubs, get out of London and check out many towns and cities in the midlands and North that have a great deal more unaltered pubs than you'll find in London.
Cask IPA served at room temperature is the goods.
😂😂😂😂😂😂
No mention of the Real Ale movement which must have had an impact on these changes too.
One of the biggest problems is, you can buy four cans (around 3 1/2 pints) in a supermarket for the same price as one pint in a pub, and that's the governments Tory and Labour's fault. Another was the smoking ban, that closed a lot of pubs. While I smoke I can understand those that don't don't want to smell other people smoke. There was a way to mitigate this by having a smoking and non smoking bar (if the pub is big enough). Short term profits for the companies was more important than long term income. If 'you' want to know about pubs ask me, only cost a pint an answer!
There’s good evidence out there suggesting the indoor smoking ban had a significant positive impact on public health. Particularly in bar workers and other staff that previously where exposed to very high levels of second hand smoke. I don’t doubt that smokers would prefer if they didn’t have to stand outside to smoke but personally as a non-smoker I don’t have very much sympathy for them.
@@minermortal1997You're not wrong, yet the ban has had lead to a goodly number of pubs shutting and people losing their jobs
@@tallthinkevI would be curious how true that is, I haven’t looked at any statistics or reports based around that assumption. I think it’s worth considering market trends, there’s been a marked change in drinking habits particularly in younger generations. They’re drinking significantly less than previous generations. I’m sure there’s a number of socioeconomic factors at play there but considering many younger people of drinking age have never experienced a “pre smoking ban Britain” I doubt it’s a significant factor.
@@minermortal1997 The ban was in 2007, so it can't be compared to today
You may be interested to know that the owners of the tied houses also had possession of the best bill boards for marketing. They traditionally 'lent' these to the Conservative party during elections. Thus, they felt especially betrayed by Lord Young's policies.
In the mid 1980's I could go down to my local grocer and buy all the big English beers plus many European beers. I would buy one bottle of several countries to make a six pack. A beer Mackelson I think the name was, a similar brew to Guinness beer a favorite. Then some good micros were made and some of us started making our own. I do miss finding a Euro beer like Orval Trappist ale or Old Peculiar in the store. Those days are long gone.
Mackeson Stout, a tad bit sweeter than Guiness but still a great pint.
I think it’s still quite easy to pick these up. Perhaps not the Trappist one, but the others are quite standard.
@@capitalb5889 Not in my region. Once every supermarket had them. Where did you buy old peculiar? Maybe in the big wine/beer superstore. How about Lowenbrau from Zurich, dark was amazing?
@@billykuan of you're talking about Theakstons Old Peculiar, it is sold in Sainsbury's and Tesco.
I think Lowenbrau lager is just in Tesco.
I' in the USA@@capitalb5889
I'd be interested to see the full statistic about 80+% of consumed beer is still sold in pubs. Is it just referring to draught "real ales" excluding tinned lager etc? In short it doesn't match my lived experience.
During my lifetime alcohol consumption has moved from being almost entirely in pubs to the opposite. Alignment of taxation to European norms, changes in pricing due to sales in supermarkets, changes in licensing hours for pubs and relaxation of controls in other retail outlets, most of these mitigated against pubs. (Cheaper alcohol has been said to be the main benefit(?) of EU membership. British tourists didn't just flock to the Spanish and Greek resorts for guaranteed summer sunshine: They could also get hammered for next to nothing all day long and on Sundays too.)
Essentially, cost, availability, and convenience has led to the decline in pubs able to justify the rent on the land they occupy. Hence their resort to trying to sell food at better margins. The large brewers just attempted to keep some control of their market by vertical integration.
Other than that, I regard the tied/non-tied argument as just a side show concerning the minority, those who care most about the quality of the beer they drink. The decline of the pub as a social institution is just one more slightly sad sign of the times we live in. I don't think anybody really foresaw what would happen by the changes that have been made.
I'm English and I've learned a lot today, thanks, I often wondered why so many breweries went bust after the 80s
In Northern Ireland, an artificial cap has been imposed on the number of pubs since the early 1900s. The ‘surrender principle’ requires any new pub to hand in the licence of a previously closed bar, thereby limiting the number of licences available. As a result, licences are now privately traded for six-figure sums.
While most pubs here are owner-operated, beer ties (in the form of loans) continue to be very common, with breweries allegedly pressuring owners to take off competitive taps.
The result? The price of a pint in NI is on a par with London, despite average wages being far lower. As the video alludes to, the issue isn’t necessarily the ties themselves, but a lack of competition that can push down the breweries pricing. Here’s hoping that sensible reforms can be introduced soon!
Great video! Thanks. Both breweries and vending machine operators bought liquor licenses in the US and leased them to bar owners under exclusive contracts for beer or vending machines.
Very interesting. Thank you. If you are ever in Norwich, Norfolk, I recommend a visit to the Fat Cat in Nelson Street. The best beer pub in Britain.
My first trip to London was in 1997. I was really disappointed at the lack of variety. You could get Stella Artois or Carlsberg, prices were high, and staff rude, and pubs closed early. I was living in the USA in Boston and the pubs there were far superior in every way. When I next came to London in 2005, the situation was slightly better. But this is not to say that things area great in the US; prices are higher than every, and everything is either sweeet or hoppy, which I hate. That being said, my small Maine town of 680 has three pubs, but none of them are open more than 4 days per week during winter, and none are open Monday or Tuesday.
I went to the states for the first time last spring, to Norfolk Virginia. I expected terrible beer. I was very wrong: I found a vibrant craft brewing scene, with delicious beers available all over the town. A very different situation to the terrible selection available back home in most of London.
Isn't it fascinating how things are? 😊
Anyone from mainland Europe would call you nuts close a pub or Cafe that early. People usually start to go in around 9-10pm or much later for the more southern warmer countries. Often lasts till 2am or early in the morning.
Even the smallest of towns have a little café, bar or other place that's often packed.
I went to San Francisco in about 2009 and found a really varied selection of beer compared to London, which was still stuck in a mass product lager phase.
Within a couple of years that changed with loads of microbreweries opening up. The US really helped Britain rediscover beer.
However, like in the US, a lot of the beers are overly hopped to cover a lack of real flavour.
I have seen in my hometown pub after pub close over the years. There are many reasons im sure but one thing i hear over and over is landlords being charged for beer and rent more than the pub itself can generate. I see some pubs that were once a thriving business in my youth changing hands over and over with each new landlord throwing in the towel for the same old reason. The brewery wanting all the profit and leaving no insentive for those doing all the work.
10:02 I assume you mean cider (pronounced like side ur)? It's a drink typically made from apples. Cedar to my knowledge only refers to a species of tree and its wood.
It saddens me tbh with how many pubs close I was told by my grandad that there's so many pubs in his town and how he navigated and now its just witherspoon
Huh, Denmark is similar today to how it was in the UK before. A few companies bought up all the smaller breweries and bars can only afford to use one supplier
6:17 Something very similar is happening with supermarkets.
Securing locations, to the point of buying land just so your competitors can't.
10:02 "Spending on beer, wine and cedar tripled." This was spoken very clearly, so something new here.
@davidcovington901 "Licensed premise". That made me question.
At what point do I have to wonder how reliable this is? Bravo to you.
People stopped listening.
6:30 This *_Old brewery building_* became an engineering factory making automotive parts. I had the misfortune to work there. 😎
Interesting! But you forgot to mention the Real Ale movement and the gastro pub boom!
The biggest factor killing pubs now is the current pub companies ripping off their tennants.
Most local village pubs are the centre of the community. Always busy enough to sustain the business.
The pub company evaluates the value of income from the pub as a pub versus it's value as a property. Now a busy village pub will take a long time to earn enough to cover that value. So they decide to sell it off as a property and realise huge value in 5 mins. This has led to thousands of pubs closing and changing use to residential or a local supermarket etc.
Locals are furious at this going on and have tried their best to stop it.
Tennants pay huges sums to the pub companies. They have to pay excessive leases just to walk through the door with all sorts of extras. Not happy with that revenue, the tennant is tied to buy the alcohol from them too. Remember, the pub company has thousands of outlets so is able to negotiate huge discounts for the beer. Great, the pub gets cheap beer. No, they charge the pub "full whack", in other words, they're putting on a high margin on the beer making even more money from the tennant and obviously making the price at the pumps even higher.
There needs to be a total overhaul of the industry, one that breaks the pub company concept and removes that whole, unnecessary level of expense from the business.
As an example, a keg of beer is 11g or 88 pints or 50L. Firkins of real ale are 9g or 72 pint. A small village pub would hope to sell between 3 and 6 kegs a week. Maybe more, maybe less. Even if the small village pub sold 3 a week, buying them from a wholesaler would save them £300 or more across the 3.
Just 3 kegs, each £100 ex vat cheaper over the year would earn that pub an extra £15600. Now that's huge for a small pub, a life saver.
Unless this is addressed, the decline and demise of the village / town pub will continue daily.
The breaking of the monopoly of a few big brewers of beer in the U.K. resulted in the proliferation of countless regional and micro brewery's, l have been to many beer festivals in Kent and Sussex, each one having a huge selection of fine and interesting beers and ales and stouts. I reckon it would take more than anyone's lifetime drink 1 pint of every beer brewed in the British Isles 🍺🍻🍺
This video is a great surprise as subscriber of several months, I been waiting for a video about this very subject for sometime, and so glad you brought this to the table.
Not a fan of the Tories (or any other party for that matter) but I believe the 1989 orders were written in good faith, unfortunately they lacked the foresight that you pointed out.
The likes of Greene King, Enterprise Inns and Punch really have a lot to answer for over the last 20 years.
A couple of small points - smoking inside pubs was banned in 2007, but was allowed outside. Pubs catering to smokers usually have gazeboes in the garden, not an option open to all.
Untied pubs before all this were called a Free House. I remember my dad searching for them when we were on holiday in Hampshire (Mann's I think was the usual beer there?)
Running alongside this was The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) which somehow morphed from a small bunch of bearded morris dancers into a serious lobbying movement, improving the variety of lower scale 'real' ales, for which there are defined standards. In the 1980s there was a move away from bitter to lager, CAMRA kinda shifted the balance back.
Also in the '90s, ish the disruptor Wetherspoons grew, with quirky buildings and very cheap beer and food. It is not tied, just aggressively buys. Like the company or loathe it, it had a significant effect on the market.
Another strand came from The Eagle on Farringdon Road (1991) credited usually as the first gastro-pub, pubs that are more like relatively informal restaurants. Those are now quite common, and also shook the market.
Beer is fascinating, we've been brewing it since at least Egyptian times.
Another reason for closing of pubs is the rapid change in demographics in which a large swath of new immigrants have pushed out the older neighbors from their new enclaves and pubs rot on the vine as the regular punters are no longer there and the new neighbors consider alcohol evil. This is especially so in Bradford, Leeds, Manchester, Telford, Rochdale, etc..
I just want to applaud the brilliant photos used at around 12:50 or so talking about how the brewers were arguing for how they invested in the facilities. lol
10:00 the Brits do love those cedar trees. 😃 Although I suspect the script said Cider.
Astute and accurate commentary. Think the accent is a put on mate 😎
I have had the pleasure of the pub monopolies in 1990-1 my rent was going from £9000pa to £24000 on a full repairing lease,3 story building no money spent on it for years so the only option move on to another brewery.I built the barrelage from 110 to 460 barrels in 18 months but no way I could substain this increase,all day opening ment you had to be around all the day in case of idiots,drink driving,smoking ban and the rotation of tenants and managers has killed the industry and all for greed by the pub co's and breweries.Food over the last few years has kept a few pubs afloat but you still need the core drinkers,nothing worse than going into a pub thats empty you need atmostphere a good mine host who greats his customers takes the mick and a laugh be firm and fair,not walk in get served and staff just ignore you.The breweries and pub co's had an industry that was envied throughout the world and they have lost it like my father said it takes a lifetime to build something but you can lose it overnight.
A study found that people don't care about the price of beer? 🤣
I kept catching myself: he's saying nineteen-seventies, eighties... not seventeen-... 😳
- We have a saying in the US: "The system isn't broken. It was built this way."
The rich get richer.
Just as an aside that Germany also had a similar system until the EU broke it up. When I was young(er), it was still very common to have the sign for the tied brewery hung up and you would have a sort of Ford Model T choice: you could have any beer you liked as long as it came from the brewery.
The Netherlands was very similar is my guess.
Okay but German beer is fire
A very comprehensive and balanced study of what went wrong with the Beer Orders. Classic case of unexpected consequences.
Allowing supermarkets to sell so much beer, so cheaply didn’t help either.
The shot at 11:05 is a wine cellar, not a brewery. Probably Chateau Peyfaures in Bordeaux though I can't be certain of that. The clue is the marc doors on the fermenters: you don't need to remove marc from a beer fermenter.
Source: nearly forty years running breweries and wineries.
A subject close to my heart! From the comments it seems we're very spoilt in Brighton, there's pubs absolutely everywhere! I pass more than 10 on the 20 minute walk to work and that's ignoring the 330 others in the city!
Diving deeper to UK you should definitely tell about Margaret Tetcher flats giveaway.
I'd like to buy you a Pint at the Flying Horse. Excellent work good man
6:18 Guinness went public
An interesting complication is the composition of "beer". For hundreds of years leading up until the beer orders came out in 1989, the overwhelming majority of beer consumed in the UK was ale. Within a decade following, the market flipped and lager was the overwhelming majority. There was a 21st century backlash via CAMRA but lager remains dominant.
In the late nineties, smoking tapered off for people in their thirties. As smoking fell out of fashion the government pushed limiting smoking in buildings and in 2006 banned smoking in pubs. Many people credit the ban for a beneficial change in pubs to more food and social focus which was good for overall business. People brought children to pubs for dinner.
The post war british governments have been the most corrosive actor inflicting grievous harm on british industries and social fabric.
Also worth noting that up until the around 1990, the general quality of beer available to buy to consume at home was of very poor quality and also not much cheaper than the much better quality available in pubs. Then it got good quality with plenty of variety and healthy competition. Meanwhile, the cost to drink in a pub steadily increased whilst the at home product hardly increased.
Property speculation and greedy rentiers destroyed pubs.
“Cider” is pronounced “Sy-der” not “See-der”.
Australia breweries produce one of the world best ciders
@@bkhelen Yes. "one of" notably being because the west country produces the actual best ciders. xD
@@serenacula3256we sure do. I do love thatchers gold and rattlers lol
There's a Machiavellian concept that you never trust a politician's stated goals, but assume the outcomes of their policies were they goals all along (for lots of very good reasons).
So it wouldn't surprise me that those involved were warned that this all would happen. That those who were consulted in this had vested interests and that things were designed to get these results, and that this isn't a failure in policy.
Thats kind of assuming ultra competency and that everytjing always goes as planned
Another reason for closing of pubs are that workers are stressed about work and work later, bosses reaching employees after hours on their cellphones to do things and bring home work with them and then have to get home to make dinner as the wife is rushing home from work too and has to help with all the banal school projects put on kids to do at home for hours. And dome workers just are sick of being around their coworkers and don't want to socialize with them. Also, unless you are able to walk to work, you have to spend 30-90 minutes in your tin can driving home in overcrowded towns.
They call them cars these days grandad
Minor detail: Hamilton's shown at 12:22 is in Geashill, County Offaly, in the Republic of Ireland so not a British Pub!
I always wondered where they kept the string in a tied house. Thanks!
Very interesting. The UK seems to be a basketcase of good intentions leading to unforseen consequences. Disastrously. Your take on Brexit is eagerly awaited.
Finally took on my favorite pastime :)
Cheers !
As a Brit, I can tell you this, complaining about the price of things/the weather/public transport/other Brits is a national passtime....
Having stopped by last year I must say the price of a pint was a bit shocking. I had visited a few times in "the before time" and though far from cheap it was tolerable. Now it's at another level. Brexit really managed to kick things off the rails.
So, why the answer to the question "How are you?" ... is it always on a positive note?
@@MichaelT_123 Unconscious reactions.
@@MichaelT_123Nobody wants to hear you whine, complaining should be done as a "it's ridiculous isn't it" but the stoicism of the nation mustn't be effected by it. Stiff upper lip and all that.
i was a landlord fromm88 -94 & breaking the tied house system was a disaster, the main reason was , which wasnt mentioned on here was the sky high rent rise to cover the loss of beer sales