He said he hoped the policy would fall flat
because of the difficulty in implementing it.; like our beer.
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Seeing the can, I instantly felt a tingly wave of toxic green flavor wash over my tongue. Tastes like middle school in the 90s.
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“Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded” - Yogi Berra
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It shows how far hospitality businesses will go to disguise how high their real prices are. They could have just set higher prices and marketed this as a progressive happy hour. They would have gotten much better press.
Sadly, it probably was a rational business decision not to do so, in the same way it is a rational business decision for most food service counters to harangue customers for tips on the credit card terminal. Everyone says they would prefer fixed prices including service, but somehow they keep patronizing the places that demand tips.
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“Customers have become accustomed to surge pricing across various industries, including retail and travel.”
Speak for yourself there, Rockefeller.
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Happy hour in the uk means prices go down not up thou, so this is def an unhappy hour, but what they forget is that there are like 30 or 40 pubs in every major town, there are many other places to go and drink, and that’s all that people will do, and those places wont surge price, cos they are not idiots, I live on the edge of medium town and there 7 pubs within a 15 min walk of my house, and that’s just the ones that come to mind, and the end of my road is farmers fields and forestry park…
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The company that’s proposing this runs a chain of crappy pubs that are hardly at the top of anyone’s list of places to be. Surge pricing works in situations where people don’t have a choice to go elsewhere, so this is likely just to drive people away.
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Thank you for clearing this up for me; as a Brit, I was confused by prices going up in Happy Hours rather than going down. It seems that America can be like the Bizzaroverse sometimes.
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Um. Happy Hour in America also means prices go down (apologies if you knew that, I feel like I might be misunderstanding here). It’s the same thing in the USA and UK, as far as I know. I think people are just saying that if a pub wants to do something like this, it makes more business sense to raise prices across the board and point to a Happy Hour “discount” that is actually just the original drink prices (thus invisibly “surge pricing” any time that isn’t Happy Hour, if you can call most of the day a “surge”) rather than having an “Unhappy Hour” where drinks are surge priced in a more obvious, limited and visible way.
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Thank you for clearing that up for me, I got the totally wrong end of the stick. America am not Bizarro, me am Bizarro.
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Yeah, S&L has shit beer even in the middle of Shoreditch, but I guess all those wankers from the banks can afford to pay more for their pints anyhow.
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There’s a pub near me whose sign advertises Happy Hour as “Buy two drinks and pay for both of them”
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Used to be a bar in DC near the Nationals Park that did a progressive happy hour that was similar.
At like 4 PM, it was $4, 5 PM was $5, etc. until 7 when it went to normal prices. High alcohol craft beer wasn’t on there but plenty of other craft stuff was there along with the macros.
But yeah, this place is not doing it right.
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True, but that supposes that consumers notice the price gouge. I never look at the price when ordering at a bar (if it’s even shown anywhere) and if buying a round it would be very easy to miss the fact that the price has changed. I guess that’s what the pubs are banking on.
Also, when I saw the headline and “biggest pub chain” I assumed this would be Wetherspoons.
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I all ways check, but I suppose it depends on how much you have drunk… with tap and pay they hand you a machine saying how much, so its up to people to check.
Yeah, and it really shouldn’t be. According to this non-paywalled article, “Stonegate said customers would be alerted to the price increases through notices in their pubs” but I wonder how obvious it’ll be and whether bar staff will tell customers as they order.
That article also says that pints will cost 20p more which isn’t too bad, but it’s still a horrible idea.
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Yep, they will be alerted by the little screen on the till 
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UK pubs have to display a tariff of the drinks on offer and prices, but it’s usually an A5 bit of paper tacked up somewhere obscure. Also, the Trading Standards Authority has been gutted by 13 years of Tory rule, so good luck with any complaints.
Slug & Lettuce is a drinking barn for students.
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An I.T. consultant and blogger seemed an odd choice for a quote. Still it was nice of the paper to offer a translation for quid.
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