€1.60 for a pint of Guinness

November 30th, 2007

Everyone is talking about the robbery in Guinness this week. However I think people are missing the real crime here. The mark-up on beer put on by the Government and Publicans. From the Irish Independent “A man drove a truck into the company’s famous Dublin brewery and hitched up a trailer containing 450 kegs of different beers before escaping through the front gates.

Diageo, the drinks company that owns Guinness, Budweiser and Carlsberg, said yesterday that the tab stands at €64,000.

That works out at less than €1.60-a-pint, as it does not include mark ups by the Government or the publicans. In the pub, the haul would be worth €160,000.

“It’s a serious breach of our security. I spoke earlier to one of our supply guys who said it was unprecedented that this number — a full trailer of kegs — would be illegally taken off a site,” a spokeswoman for Diageo said yesterday.

“So obviously, we’re taking it extremely seriously. Full investigation ongoing but in terms of our own security procedures that we have in place by finding out what exactly happened and how it happened, and also working with the Gardaí.”

In the run up to Christmas there are more than 250 truck movements in and out of the St James’ Gate complex every day. At around four o’clock on Wednesday, a man drove a cab truck into the yard where there were three or four trailers loaded with kegs.

He hooked up one of the trailers containing 180 kegs of Guinness, 180 kegs of Budweiser and 90 kegs of Carlsberg, before calmly driving out the main gate.”

€1.60 for a pint! I’m paying nearly a fiver for mine.

Entry Filed under: Opinion, Ireland