The pint tax we never asked for: Why are London drinkers are paying extra just to stand at the bar?
I’m not in the habit of ordering a beer at 8.30 am on a Tuesday, but this was a story that our breakfast audience had to hear, so I obliged.
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A new ‘stealth tax’ - or discretionary service charge - on pints ordered at the bar.
More specifically, at the Well & Boot on the balcony of Waterloo Station.
As someone who studied and spent my early 20s in Glasgow, where a pint of Tennent’s was rarely more than £3.50, I knew the move to London - and the inflation of the years that have passed - would see that cost increase.
But when we’re now adding 4% onto every order, even when we’ve carried it to our table ourselves, it is - to both me and to the people I spoke to this morning, a step too far.
“It’s disgraceful,” one man said to me on his way to work.
“Why should you pay a service charge on a pint when the pint is already taxed? It’s unacceptable, but it’s London, so you expect it, sadly.”
He said a pint he bought at the weekend in Chelsea was £9.10, telling me it was “the most expensive pint I’ve ever bought. I had it and left straight away.”
Another man agreed that the cost of going to the pub means he rarely does it now, just days after we heard an average of eight closed their doors every week in the first half of the year.
In the Well & Boot, at Waterloo, I was charged £7.75 for my early morning pint of Guinness.
It wasn’t until I got to the table and looked at my receipt that I realised 30p of that was a ‘discretionary’ service charge, which the bartender assured me, when I asked her, goes straight to the staff as a tip.
This isn’t America. We shouldn’t be forcing people to add tips to make up for low wages.
I admit, I don’t know what the staff in this pub are paid, but the minimum wage means we shouldn’t need to consider that when we’re having a few sociable jars, surely.
And it’s not just in pubs.
It’s the 12.5% (or 13.5% as I’m seeing more) service charge being added in restaurants, too.
We all want to see our pubs thrive, but when you’re charging me through the nose for a single drink, I’m not going to be able to support myself, never mind my local.
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Fraser Knight is an LBC Reporter.
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