United Kingdom

For me, the price difference between chain pub food and nice resturant food is now too small as a percentage.
If I'm going out, and the choice is £20 a head in a half decent local restaurant, or £17.50 for something mediocre in a pub full of sports fans, it's not a hard decision.

Same as happened with a lot of the fast food places: When you're approaching "proper food" money, people will spend a couple of quid extra for something nicer.

My local does decent cheap food, and does well because of it. (And in this comparison, it's the £12.50 option)

Man who undercut an entire industry, complains he's being undercut

On the whole the pub chains, or breweries as they were once known, have themselves to blame. The pursuit of bigger profits through increased rents & leases and drinks prices have led to them being a luxury item. This started back in the mid nineties at the latest.

I remember small pubs being bought out, closed for a million pound refurbishment, reopened with a fanfare and new prices to match putting off customers. The supermarkets saw this and took advantage.

I mean, the root cause here, if you look at the bigger picture, is that EVERYTHING is getting more expensive and EVERYONE is getting poorer.

Nobody would expect supermarket prices in a pub, it's obviously going to be more, and that's expected. It's not that people don't want to go out, it's that they can't afford to go out the amount they'd like, because the working class is broke.

I do agree that swapping the VAT around would be fair, because booze is only a component of a supermarket's business while it's a mainstay of a pub's business, but that's not the main reason people aren't going out anymore. People are drinking less and less even at home, too, especially younger generations.

Oh, Worzel Brexit is complaining again is he?

Tim Martin can fuck off, and he can fuck off while he's doing it.

the different tax treatment of alcohol bought in shops, which does not attract VAT, and drinks ordered in pubs, which does.

I had no idea alcohol didn't have VAT. I hate to agree with him but it absolutely should.

"prime ministers and other legislators, in the 45 years since Wetherspoon started trading, have been dinner party goers, rather than pub goers" yeah, ok, timmy, that's always been the case since forever. truth of the matter is timbo, shit is too expensive nowadays, it's cheaper (and healthier) to prepare food at home, and people have finally figured out alcohol is bad for them in anything but strict moderation. the worm has turned timbot, you're gonna need a different business model than selling ~~overpriced~~ pints.

It’s ‘fewer’, Tim, ‘fewer’.