UK: Guinness accused of imposing unfair price rises

Guinness has been accused of imposing unfair price rises on pubs as demand from drinkers soars, Yahoo Finance reported on February 7.

Publicans said they were struggling to make a profit from selling Britain’s best-selling beer owing to consecutive price increases handed down by its maker, the drinks giant Diageo, which also supplies Johnnie Walker and Smirnoff.

At the same time, they allege they have been left struggling to get hold of branded glasses to sell the beer in.

Anthony Pender, founder of pub and restaurant group Yummy Collection, said the price he was being charged for a keg of Guinness had risen by around 37pc – or £81 – since the end of the pandemic.

He said: “My keg of Guinness now is £248 for 88 pints. It’s our worst GP (gross profit) item on the bar. It’s just denting our margins when we need decent margins to pay staff. They’re flogging the golden goose, in a way, by just radically increasing their pricing and killing our margins.”

Pauline Forster, owner of The George Tavern in London said: “They put the prices up all the time with no explanation, there is nobody to ring up and you can’t even get a reply on the website.”

It comes as the pub industry prepares for a weekend of strong sales as England plays France in the Six Nations rugby tournament.

Last weekend – the first of the competition – 16.7m pints of draught beer and cider were sold, according to marketing intelligence agency The Oxford Partnership. Stout sales were up 25pc on a year earlier.

Complaints from pub owners come amid a boom in demand for Guinness, which became the best-selling beer in Britain’s pubs in 2022, overtaking Carling. The brand now accounts for one in every ten pints sold across the UK, according to Diageo.

Bosses at the drinks giant have claimed the boom is thanks to a rising number of younger drinkers and women adopting Guinness as a drink of choice, helping it shake off its image as a drink for older men and “rugby lads”.

Clive Price, managing director of Barons Pub Company, said: “A few years ago Guinness was a very old fashioned drink, something you’d associate with old ladies who’d have a stout before bedtime. Now it’s the most trendy pint on the bar.

He added: “Diageo have been fairly aggressive for a few years with their price rises. They’ve been nudging it up more than anyone else for the last four to five years.”

Such is its current popularity that some pubs have even reportedly been left scrambling to get hold of the drink over recent months amid an alleged shortage that Diageo has blamed on excessive demand – although critics on social media have questioned the apparent shortage, suggesting it could be a marketing trick, which Diageo denies.

Supply issues have caused some pubs to seek out alternatives to Guinness. Simon Collinson, director of family-run Oak Taverns in Oxfordshire, turned to local breweries to supply an alternative stout for his pubs after finding it nearly impossible to get hold of Guinness.

He said: “We were out of stock completely in 25pc of our pubs and had to ration Guinness in all 16 of them.” Since Covid we have sold twice as much Guinness as we used to, it used to be just another beer on the bar and now it’s all people want.”

However, due to its current fame and the sheer level of demand for the drink, this is often not a simple switch for pub owners who worry about damaging their footfall if they cannot provide Guinness.

Mr Pender, who recently raised the price of a pint for customers above the £7 mark, said: “You’ve got the issue now that Guinness is Guinness. People don’t understand competitor brands at the moment.”

Diageo itself does not set the price that Guinness is sold at in the nation’s pubs, and insists that the average price of a pint of Guinness is cheaper than what pub-goers would pay for many premium lager brands.

One senior source at a large pub group, who did not wish to be named for fear of commercial reprisal, said: “[Diageo] are in a bit of a win-win situation. People’s hands are tied because Guinness seems to be getting ever more popular. Pubs want to put drinks on the bar that are going to appeal and draw people into the pub, which makes it very difficult to challenge Diageo.”

Adding to gripes is a struggle to get hold of Guinness-branded glasses in which to serve the beer. Brewers typically provide pubs with branded glasses for free to help promote their brands, and say drinkers are surprisingly insistent on having their beer served in the right glass.

Ms Forster added: “We used to get a lot of help from Guinness, now you can’t get a branded glass out of them for love nor money. When it was rationed we only had two days supply out of the week, and without Guinness you’re almost not a pub. I wish it wasn’t sold by Diageo.”

Mark Wrigley, the owner of Atlas Bar in Manchester, said: “It’s virtually impossible to get brand new glassware from them. It is like they are doing you a favour, whereas any other brand, no problem, they give you whatever you need.

He said: “I am actually contemplating introducing [rival stout] Murphy’s. It’s £30 a barrel cheaper, so I could sell it more cheaply. One, I’ll make more margin from it, and two, I’ve got less worries about pouring in the correct glass, because they’ll support me better.”

According to internal Diageo figures, it distributed 168,000 glasses to the pub trade in January and plans to match that number in February, with year-on-year quantities of glassware rising 50pc since July 2024.

A spokesman for Diageo said: “Guinness is priced very competitively in the marketplace and the average price of a pint in the UK is actually 15pc lower than the average for world premium lagers.

“We have invested significantly in building the brand and in delivering high quality pints in pubs across country, all of which has made Guinness a footfall generator for pubs and bars.”

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