Brewery boss warns of £27.50 pint if prices put up to match rising bills

UK ‘sleep-walking towards utter disaster for tens of thousands of businesses in UK’

A pint of Punk IPA beer would cost £27.50 if prices were put up in line with soaring energy bills, a brewery and pub chain boss claims.

BrewDog CEO James Watt also claimed that a burger and fries would set back diners “about £48.75” if prices matched those of rising energy costs.

Posting to LinkedIn, Mr Watt warned that chancellor Jeremy Hunt would only “make the situation worse when he rows back support for business energy bills from April”.

He said: “Businesses all over the UK are facing the crippling combination of the worst cost inflation for decades and squeezed consumer spending power.

“The sad reality is that there are many great businesses that simply will not survive 2023.”

Mr Watt continued: “This climate is incredibly challenging for BrewDog. Fortunately, we have the scale and backing to survive. Many smaller businesses aren’t so lucky.”

The brewery co-founder called for the government to cut business rates, reduce tax and give a year-long VAT holiday to hospitality.

The BrewDog co-founder warned that many businesses are unlikely to survive 2023 (Getty)

“If this means spending a bit more money to support business through this nightmare now, it’s better than spending the money on unemployment benefits if thousands of businesses go under.”

He concluded that, without more help from the government, the country would sleep-walk into an “utter disaster for the tens of thousands of businesses in the UK”.

It comes after new data revealed that spiralling energy and food costs caused pub and restaurant closures for 2022 to surpass pandemic-driven levels from the previous year.

The latest hospitality market monitor from AlixPartners and CGA showed a decline of 1,611 hospitality premises over the fourth quarter of 2022.

Experts said the mass closures were largely due to rampant cost inflation, particularly through rising energy bills.

The closures represented a 1.6 per cent contraction of the UK’s hospitality sector over the three-month period and were the equivalent of nearly 18 net closures each day.

Across the whole of 2022, hospitality recorded a drop of 4,809 premises, outstripping the fall seen in 2021 as venues were battered by pandemic restrictions.