Dawn of the £8 pint: London bar hits troubling benchmark with prices up 70% since 2008 crash – as industry fears customers will stop going to pubs if drinks are too expensive

• Drinkers paid £2.30 on average for a pint in 2008, but soaring ingredient costs pushed that to £3.95 this year – representing a 72% increase since 2008 crash 
• Pint of beer found for £8.06 in London, while the cheapest is £1.79 in Lancashire
• Industry fears that customers will stop going to pubs if drink prices rise too high

It’s enough to make you cry into your beer – the price of a pint has passed £8 for the first time.

Drinkers paid £2.30 on average for a pint in 2008, but soaring ingredient costs pushed that to £3.95 this year.

This represents a 72 per cent increase since the financial crash in 2008, according to hospitality industry consultancy CGA.

The highest price it found was £8.06 in London, while the cheapest cost just £1.79 in Lancashire. It did not name the venues, but this is the first time that CGA, which regularly analyses prices from random samples of the UK’s 90,000 bars and pubs, has seen the price of a pint pass £8.

The industry fears that customers will stop going to pubs if the price of a drink rises too high.

It’s enough to make you cry into your beer – the price of a pint has passed £8 for the first time (stock image)

Brewers and landlords are expecting a boost from the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, with the British Beer and Pub Association estimating more than 90million pints will be sold over the long weekend.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is a global supplier of wheat, has caused the cost of grain to rise, forcing pub companies to threaten further price rises.

Barley, one of the main ingredients of beer, has been badly affected. Analysts at the research firm Bernstein said this was a ‘big negative’ for brewers, estimating that ‘a realistic worst case would see malting barley inflation of 70 per cent’ this year.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Fernando Tennenbaum, chief financial officer at the world’s largest brewer, Anheuser-Busch InBev, which makes Budweiser and Corona, warned that although inflation had risen significantly, beer prices were still lagging behind, ‘and there is very strong demand’.

Clive Watson, chairman of City Pub Group, which operates 41 pubs in London and the South, said ingredient costs had risen by 10 per cent, ‘wage inflation is probably 7 per cent and electricity inflation is 100 per cent, so that blended cost price probably puts the price of a pint of beer up 12 to 13 per cent’.

Mr Watson claimed his company’s prices had increased by no more than 6 per cent in December because it was taking the increased costs ‘on the chin’.

He said it would hold its prices this year, adding: ‘We just want people to go back to the pub.’

The brewer Marston’s said it had increased its prices by roughly 8 per cent in March, while rival Greene King has put up the cost of beer by 5p a pint on average.

Mark Derry, executive chairman of Brasserie Bar Co, which runs 18 gastropubs, said it was trying not to charge more ‘because we are fighting for covers and guests’.

He added: ‘That sounds pious, but we are worried about the cost pressures on people.’ Mr Derry said the firm had increased the price of stout by 3.8 per cent to £5.50, even though the cost to the company had risen by 8.2 per cent.

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