Thursday 5 April 2012

Anyone else noticed this?

I've had an e-mail from a chap called Andrew who has noticed something strange happen at his local supermarket since minimum pricing was mooted.

I wonder whether you have noticed the drinks industry and supermarket profiteering which has gone on recently following the "minimum price per "alcohol unit" or we all die!" hysteria.

I went to Sainsburys weekend before last and noticed own brand cider had gone up fifty pence. So I left it and looked for alternatives elsewhere. ASDA/Walmart around the corner still sold for the same price.

This weekend I went to ASDA/Walmart and noticed the price of own brand cider had gone up by a third (!). It used to be just over £1.50 and is now £2 (Gordon Brown pushed it up from about £1.20 by a duty hike later reversed - though not in shops). So I left that, too and found the stronger stuff being only slightly more and went for that. Good work, people. Customers will now go for stronger booze because it does not cost much more.

Has any other readers had the same experience?

9 comments:

Jay said...

Aye. We saw a 4-pack of Tennent's for a tenner in our local supermarket -- not the off licence. We never buy it, but pretty sure it was selling for around 7.50 last time we looked a few weeks back.

Local ciders are going up by about 25 to 50p as well.

Curmudgeon said...

Can't say I have, but I don't tend to look at the cheapo cider section of the drinks aisle. I'll have a look next time I'm in. High Strength Beer Duty had already pushed Special Brew and Tennent's up to about £7.20 for 4 cans so a 40p minimum price will make no difference.

Incidentally, I saw a guy today wheeling a trolley out of Tesco containing 6 4-packs of "value lager" - the 2% piss. That must be some kind of party they're having!

Montycristo said...

I have noticed that Stella has been reduced to 4.8%, so that will be cheaper to produce and reduced duty then. Haven't seen the price go down though!

Thankfully Old Hooky has not bowed to the attentions of the bean counters and purists.

Barman said...

I'm halfway through my first forty pints of Woodforde's Wherry (not all in one session I hasten to add)...

It is sooo easy to make and at less than 60p per pint I can't see why I would ever buy beer in a shop (or pub) again....

dearieme said...

A young chum of mine works for a mid-market grog company: they have high hopes of the new law boosting sales.

Anonymous said...

It appears the manufacturers yielded to the government all by itself and raised prices. The same happens in america all the time when Big government leans on them they just roll over and succumb to whatever they are told!

Furor Teutonicus said...

Still less that a Euro per liter here. You need o find a REAL country to live in and leave that shithole off the coast of France. :-)))))

NJS said...

Shortly, even in Brasil (a place that,left to itself woiuld be quite big on personal freedom), the sale of flavoured tobaccos will be banned on the basis that flavouring tobacco makes it pleasant for some people!

Curmudgeon said...

I had a look in Morrison's today. Their own-brand dry cider at 5.3% ABV is £3.49 for a 3-litre PET bottle, which works out at 21.9p/unit. I think it's been that price for quite a while. A 2-litre bottle of Crumpton Oaks cider at 5.0% ABV was £2.79, which is 27.9p/unit. They don't have an ultra-cheap "value" cider like Tesco. So little evidence of this there, although following the budget there has been a marked shuffling upwards of prices of premium bottled ales.