THE real price of a pint of beer should be £10 a pint if all costs were passed on to consumers, a brewing boss has said.
Charlene Lyons, chief executive of Black Sheep Brewery, told GB News: “To be absolutely clear, we are not putting our prices up so that it will be £10 a pint to pay. But if we were to pass on all costs to the consumer, that’s what the cost would be. People will not pay £10 a pint, nor would we expect them to.”
In a discussion during Breakfast with Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster, she said: “We are in a really difficult position trying to absorb as much of the cost as we can, whilst at the same time protecting our customers.
“Our prices vary depending on the outlet, but the price of our product is actually set by the publicans, not by us, unless it’s in our own retail estate.
“And the prices vary depending on the cask or the keg product or the bottle product which means it can be between £4 to £4.20 a pint.
“But our prices have risen from between 15% to 18% to hundreds of percent if you’re looking at energy and fuel and we’re clearly not putting all of those costs through to the consumers.”
Asked about how the firm can make money, she added: “It’s very difficult. We’re trying to look at things very differently.
“We’re the same as every other brewery and every other manufacturing industry in the UK right now, it’s the same – energy and fuel is absolutely crippling.
“The recent support package from the Government is significantly less than the one that’s currently in place.
“So, we’re all trying to think differently, and strategically, about how we operate differently and it’s not easy.
“We’ve also got the Covid overhang, which you know, is very much there. We’ve got the cost-of-living crisis. We’ve got the macroeconomic pressures; we’ve got the war in Europe.
“It’s a perfect storm and we’re all trying to work collaboratively together to come up with plans and strategies that work.”
