Weatherspoons might have introduced the 99p pint last week, but celebrity chef Marco Pierre White is having none of it as he introduces a plan to serve an eye-watering £5 pint at his pub in Newbury, Berkshire.
The opinionated chef is uninterested in addressing the economic meltdown that plagues the country when it comes to pricing up his food and drinks - outright refusing to entertain the idea of budgeting for the times - which makes his pub, the Yew Tree Inn, one of the priciest establishments to enjoy British real ale in the country.
Of course he has good reasons to take this view point, valuing quality above the recession, “I think most pubs undercharge. On the average price of a pint, with duty and VAT now topping 70p, plus the cost of buying the beer and all the other overheads, some publicans are left with less than 60p,” he told readers in the most recent edition of BEER, the Campaign for Real Ale’s membership magazine.
“When you have a pint, you’re not just paying for delicious beer, you’re paying for the place you drink it and the people who serve it. Just take a look at the costs in a pub.”
White knows the importance and true value of a good British ale, and they take presidence over his starters and £1,000 bottles of Mouton Rothschild on his menus. Indeed when it comes to beer he serves nothing but real ale - five to be exact, including Butts Berbus Berbus and Mr Chubb’s Lunchtime Bitter from West Berkshire’s microbrewery; Black Sheep Best Bitter, Taylor Landlord and Adnams.
“I don’t think lager fits well into a 17th-century pub at all,” White admitted.
He goes on to say that real ale is a gourmet hand crafted product and the price reflects all that has gone in to make it. In fact when held up against the fine wines served at the Yew Tree, £5 a pint does not seem too bad a deal after all.
Pubs across Britain are now charging an average of £3.20 for a pint of lager, but Weatherspoons, keen to keep up its traditions of budget busting booze, swept in and shocked us all with its 99p deal - the cheapest price for a pint in the last 20 years!
In a survey taken last October by the Good Pub Guide discovered that the average price for a pint of bitter in the UK is £2.41.
Also found in the results was the fact that the West Midlands was the cheapest place to go for a pint averaging £2.05 a go, while Surrey even knocked London out of the water as the most expensive, coming in at £2.69 for a pint of bitter compared to £2.67 in the capital. The West Midlands it is then…
