Kmflett's Blog

Journalists are often under pressure to file a number of stories each day whether or not they are worth filing. They fuel a ceaseless social media click bait war which where it works drives advertising revenue. A familiar story for example reads ‘three dead in rail crash’. Not great and not in the UK either but you have to click to find out.

So The Independent and quite a few other media outlets have filed the £10 London pint story again. It last appeared in the autumn of 2025. The Evening Standard even sent someone to try an £11 pint of Heineken at a roof top bar in Mayfair. The view looked good..

Of course the usual caveats apply. If you are in a beer and beard bar drinking an 8% double ipa you are probably not drinking a pint of it but if you were it would certainly be comfortably over a tenner. Alternatively if you are in Wetherspoons, even in their Central London pubs where prices are higher, particularly later in the week, you will not be paying a tenner for a pint or anything like it.

The Independent article quotes prices in hotel bars and high end eateries. Beer is expensive here and so is everything else.

The industry defence is that energy costs, business rates, alcohol taxes (compared to supermarkets) and staff costs put pressure on prices (I don’t by the last point btw. Bar staff should be earning at least a living wage and if the business can’t afford that, it might be time to look at the business model)

However a brief reality check.

Ive been in London over the last couple of days (where I’m meant to live and actually do a bit of the time). I enjoyed a pint of Bass for £5.40 in Stoke Newington and paid £7 for a pint of Boddingtons bitter in Islington. Pricey for a cask beer but then I was sitting in a cobbled courtyard watching the world go by on Islington Upper St.

Cask beers tend to be cheaper than keg (whether they should be is another matter) so I stuck my head into the venue known as Brewdog Seven Dials (actually Cambridge Circus, ho hum) where a pint of Punk was £7.95. I did not partake obviously but in a now small chain that has a reputation for being pricey in the centre of West End tourist world it was still nowhere near a tenner.

The story is almost assuming one of those London has fallen urban myths where if you venture into a bar in London you’ll be ripped off for a tenner a pint. Mostly you won’t be. There are plenty of independent bars where you can get a pint of cask beer for around a fiver. Keg beer and lager whether independent or global big beer will cost more, perhaps six or seven pounds but certainly not ten.

Is it an issue given a continuing and again increasing cost of living crisis? Yes, it is. If the pub is a community hub for many (including non drinkers) then a close eye from business and Government needs to be kept on it.

.Price of a pint crosses £10 in London for the first time | The Independent