shanks72 wrote:Don't go out that much now as prefer a quiet night indoors but when I do I don't tend to spend more than £15
Me too. I have worked in pubs and hotels and so know how they work.
In the hotel we had 4 bars. I was the Cellarman at the time. In the bar we would charge for a pint of lager £1.80. In the Lounge we would charge £2.00 and in the function rooms we would charge £2.20. If people paid for a function room they would pay over the odds. Well over £100. Those rooms were not being used, we could have given it away, but we charged over the odds as people paid it. Most of the time they wanted a buffet so again over £80 pound was charged for that privelage and a small portion of that was spent on cheap food, Tescos at a push, market or nettos otherwise. The biggest trick to sell the buffet was to place a fresh dead fish on a mirror like tray and frame it with lemon and orange wedges, it worked a treat, it was the focal point for anyone approaching the buffet table. If they discounted that and looked at the buffet itself, they would question where the £80 odd went, but they didnt.
A drink of coke in a pub is the biggest rip off. Its a box of syrup, fed through a cooler and then dispensed with water. All pubs charge the earth for this. A box of coke syrup costs the pubs next to nothing, and yet a small fortune is charged. And yet again, people pay it, not only that, they request ice. Ice does water it down. You dont need it. The cooler does the job, the coke is cold enough, you dont need ice.
And the grand finale, the ones who are drunk who ask for a vodka and coke. A single house vodka and coke rather than the smirnoff, and charge full whack (a double smirnoff and half a coke) the drunks pay it every time.
Which is why I will buy beer to drink at home and take out £20 or less. So many people think "that beer was watered down". It wasnt, it was a barrel bought at the cheapest place available, lager that isnt known to anyone but ran through a "carling" pump so you know its lager at least.
People who spend more than this have probably been robbed so many times, they have been too drunk to notice.