UK pubs need every Brit to drink 124 pints of beer this year to revive industry

Covid-driven social curbs have cost the UK food and beverage industry £25.66 billion

Every adult Briton will need to down 124 pints of beer this year to pull the British pub industry out of a Covid-driven setback and take it back to pre-pandemic levels, a report said.

Saying the pandemic took a £25.66 billion bite out of the UK’s food and beverage industry, business advisory firm Company Debt said it was the “basic duty” of an estimated 52 million adults in the UK to spend an additional £3 pounds per pint to help the industry get back on its feet.

“Pubs will need additional financial support for years if they are to recover from this,” a campaigner at the Forum for British Pubs was quoted as saying by the report.

People in the UK will likely have more cash in their bank accounts as social distancing norms have offered families fewer avenues to spend freely, and Company Debt says that a good chunk of those savings might go towards saving the pub industry as restrictions loosen.

The UK is likely to ease most social restrictions next month, with Boris Johnson tentatively hinting at June 21 as a likely date, after a successful vaccine campaign that has so far inoculated more than 36 million people with at least one dose, according to government data.

Luckily for the pub industry, before the pandemic hit, the average person in the UK had consumed 71 litres of beer, which works out to just a little over 124 pints. The pub industry will have to wait and watch how loose restrictions actually get before customers can flood in to order one of Britain’s most popular beverages.

Company data did acknowledge, however, that beer may not be everyone’s beverage of choice and so came up with a few alternatives to cater to individual tastes and made a poster for Britons to stick up on their local pubs.

Alternatives include: 122 glasses of wine, 40 roast dinners or 976 packets of crisps.