In the Blitz-like spirit of fellowship that enveloped the Olympic park in Stratford during the Olympics, we found ourselves sharing a tiny table at Tap East with a lovely, chatty middle-aged couple. Conversation turned, naturally, to pubs, at which point they dropped this bombshell:
“We were in a pub in Greenwich the other day where they’d put the price of Foster’s up to £5.90 a pint for the tourists.”
Astounding, spiv-like behaviour, if it’s true, but good to hear that punters refused to play along:
“They had to drop it again when there were complaints and they had no customers for two days.”
From what we observed, the places in London which were quietest during the Olympics were grotty, money-grubbing tourist traps. Everywhere else seemed to be doing a reasonable trade for the (soggy) dog-days of August.
13 replies on “How Much for a Pint of Foster’s!?”
Wow. £5.90 for a pint of Foster’s… that’s the summit of absurdity.
There’s a pub here in Norwich that sells Kronenbourg 1664 for £3.80 a pint… go across the road to the little arty tapas bar and you can buy a pint of Brooklyn lager for the same price. Can you guess where I drink?
This reminds me of Euro Cup in Warsaw in June. Beer prices in bars went into the roof then suddenly fell to normal level. That’s called greed, isn’t? Before Euro it was like 8-9, then 15-18 during first 2 days, then back to normal price. I guess they had no customers at all.
Tsk. It’s a very shortsighted tactic, especially in this age of online review websites and blogging. People go abroad knowing roughly what the price of a pint is and, unless money is no object, will tend to avoid anywhere charging way over the odds. The days of the tourist as complete mug have gone!
People who do ‘tourist prices’ are scum, plain and simple. Good to see the customers complaining about it. There can be no reasonable validation for charging one person one price and another person another price just because they’re not regulars! Awful human beings.
Are you sure it wasn’t craft Fosters they were talking about?
Well from the trial test it didn’t go according to plan by the looks at it… 😀
Presumably the price had been put up for all customers – it would be illegal anyway to charge different customers different prices for the same product on the same occasion.
Would it be illegal though?
It certainly goes on – there is one pub in Greenwich town centre, which I won’t name, which operated a “new, rip-off, price for tourists, same price as before if wek now you” policy throughout the Games. This is not the £5.90 for a pint of Fosters pub, by the way – I think I can guess which one that is, and I never go in there anyway.
Profiteering certainly went on in Greenwich during the Olympics, but £5.90/pint for dishwater like Fosters is extraordinary.
Not attempting to justify sharp practice, but pubs in greenwich are all reporting very poor trading during the Games (as are other local businesses) – spectators were marshalled into the stadium, saw the events, and were marshalled back to the station, with few stopping for a pint in Greenwich. Anybody who wasn’t going to the events stayed the hell away, thinking the place would be over-run.
Same as happens every London Marathon day.
Thanks for the insight, Rod. Hopefully those who saw Greenwich on telly, or while rushing through it to and from public transport, will come back for a proper visit in the coming weeks and months.
spectators were marshalled into the stadium, saw the events, and were marshalled back to the station, with few stopping for a pint in Greenwich
FWIW it was exactly the same at Excel – I couldn’t even tell you what part of London it’s in.
Illegal?
What about differential pricing for children and adults at the cinema, on the bus/train/plane? The same product, different price. Or is that OK because it’s ageism as opposed to nationality discrimination (“nationalism” doesn’t seem to fit there!).
Well, how about –
I walk into one of the electronics shops in the Tottenham Court Rd, where there is fierce competition, and buy, say, a camera for the asking price. Ten minutes later, someone else walks in and haggles (because he knows you can successfully haggle, due to the level of competition). He gets the self-same camera as me, but 10% cheaper.
Surely no law has been broken, has it, even in our horrendously over-regulated society?
Blimey, Fosters was only £4.50 inside the Hyde Park live site.