Daily Star’s large British pub survey – queuing, children, pint prices and what you need again

SURVEY: Let us know what you think about the health of the British pub industry, where it’s going, what you’d like to see and tell us about how your own relationship with it looks these days

Brits love a good pub, but that hasn’t stopped more than 20,000 of them closing down since the turn of the millennium.

They’re upheld as a pillar of our society, a living room for the community on every street corner and the envy of drinkers from countries around the world.

But how are they doing, really? And how have Brit’s relationships with them changed in recent years?

But pubs have come through wars and financial crashes, Covid and Leicester winning the Premier League, so there’s good reason to assume they will be able to take on the tides of change, too.

Pubs face a lot of challenges. As JD Wetherspoon boss Sir Tim Martin pointed out in the bargain chain’s January trading update, “As previously highlighted, supermarkets pay no VAT in respect of food sales, whereas pubs pay 20%. This tax advantage allows supermarkets to subsidise the price of beer they sell.”

“A direct consequence, as Morgan Stanley have recently calculated (please see appendix 2), is that beer volumes in the on-trade (mainly pubs, clubs and restaurants) have decreased by an incredible 52% between 2000 and 2023.”

That’s just one such issue they’re facing, even before conversations about the impact of covid, changes in drinking habits, and complaining neighbours, to name just a few more.

But that doesn’t mean that it’s all doom and gloom. Brits still flock to boozers and many are standing room only in peak hours.

If you get too stuck into the numbers – which we at Daily Star Towers have been guilty of doing from time to time – the outlook can become rather bleak.

We live in an ever-changing nation in an ever-changing time, and finding ways to make the things that have defined this country fit into that can be hard.

But we want to hear what you think because what better way to find out how people about the public house, than from the public itself.

This quiz comes as part of your Daily Star taking a deeper dive into the health of the pub industry.

From next week, (Monday, March 24) we will be bringing you a deep dive into the health of the industry, plunging into the nitty gritty and shedding some light on the state of play.

In the meantime, let us know what you think.