Six cans of the strongest lager the supermarket has on offer, split between mates, and you’ve already had a good sniff of the barmaids apron before you even get to the bar. you’re feeling smug because you’ve spent a fraction of the £7 to £10 a pint a London club will relieve you of once you actually arrive. This drinking behaviour is no longer the noble tradition of the skint student. It’s a verdict on the economy, and another boot to the ribs of an already wheezing hospitality industry.
The numbers are not subtle about it. Across the UK’s five most popular beers, Guinness, San Miguel, Heineken, Corona and Kronenbourg, the average supermarket pint comes to £1.79. The national pub average, according to Square, is £5.91 in 2026, up from £5.47 in 2024. That makes the pub 2.6 times dearer for the identical liquid, and the gap widens every year. Guinness alone is up 30.4% since 2023, reaching a national average of £5.41. And before you sharpen the pitchfork, pub operators are clearing roughly 13 pence profit per pint. They are not fleecing you. They are cornered, so they put prices up, so you drink more before you leave the house. Everybody loses, slowly, in a room with sticky carpets.
The full cost of a night out in London in 2025, two pub pints, a tube ride, club entry, two club drinks, a McDonald’s and a twenty-minute taxi, came to £66.48. The same evening in 1995, adjusted for inflation, would have set you back £44.41. Some of that is transport and a late-night Big Mac. But the door tax is a big chunk of it. Koko, the Camden venue that was Camden Palace back when this all cost less, charged £6 on the door in the nineties, about £12.50 in today’s money. Its median ticket in 2025 was £29.50, a 136% real-terms rise. You now pay more to enter a room in order to pay more for everything inside the room. At some point the arithmetic stops resembling a fun night and starts resembling a formal question about whether to bother or if you can even afford to do it.
Home drinking now accounts for 73% of all alcohol bought in the UK, and adults are twice as likely to drink at home each week as in a pub or bar. Pre-drinks were always part of the ritual, but they used to be the warm-up act.
It’s a rather nasty vicious circle, people spend less, venue overheads go up, venue puts prices up to offset dwindling bottle sales and less people go. It’s no wonder nearly 800 late-night venues have closed since 2020, leaving 2,424 standing, a 26.4% drop. A quarter of British towns and cities that had at least one nightclub in 2020 now have none at all. The British Beer and Pub Association counted 161 pub closures in the first three months of 2026 alone, getting on for two a day. The industry tends to frame this as a calamity done to it by costs and policy. But the closures and the pre-drinks boom are the same story told from opposite ends. When the price of staying out becomes silly, people stop staying out. Venues close.
Why Your Pint Costs so much
The Bill Behind the Bar
Before you decide the pub is fleecing you, look at what lands on the landlord’s desk. The pint isn’t expensive because someone’s getting rich. It’s expensive because almost everyone want their cut.
- £1 in every £3 you spend in a pub goes straight to tax. Brewing is one of the most heavily taxed sectors per pound of turnover in the UK, with tax making up 40% of brewing turnover. (BBPA)
- After tax and costs, a pub clears roughly 12p of profit per pint. Not 12%. Twelve pence. (Oxford Economics for the BBPA)
- 161 pubs closed in the first three months of 2026 alone, taking around 2,400 jobs with them. (BBPA)
- Business rates bills are climbing. UKHospitality estimates an average pub will pay £4,500 more in rates in 2027/28, and £7,000 more by 2028/29, than it does today. (House of Commons Library)
- From April 2026 the minimum wage for over-21s rose to £12.71 an hour, and employer National Insurance climbed from 13.8% to 15% with a lower starting threshold. The industry puts the combined extra labour bill at £1.4bn. (Access Hospitality)
- Alcohol duty on non-draught drinks rose 3.66% in February 2026, in line with inflation. (HM Treasury)
- There were 44,650 pubs in the UK in 2025, down from 60,800 in 2000. The long decline isn’t slowing. (BBPA / ICAEW)
So when the pub charges £5.91 and the supermarket charges £1.79 for the same drink, that gap isn’t greed. It’s tax, rent, wages, energy and trying to survive on a 12p margin. The pub isn’t the villain of this story. It’s getting mugged the same as you.
Up your pre-drinks game without breaking into the overdraft
Five Pre-Drinks That Cost Less Than the Cloakroom
Every one of these is built on supermarket spirits, the £15-a-litre stuff, not the fancy bottles. Each scales to a jug and lands harder per pound than anything you’ll buy once you’re out.
Vodka Cranberry, But Honest
Own-brand vodka, cranberry juice, a squeeze of lime if you’ve got one. Do the maths on a litre of supermarket vodka, and it equates to a lot of shots. That’s your crews whole night’s warm-up for the price of one double in a club.
Rum & Ginger (the Dark ‘n’ Stormy’s skint cousin)
Dark rum, ginger beer, lime. The ginger beer hides a multitude of sins, which is exactly why it’s here. Buy value ginger beer, not the craft stuff.
The £2 Margarita
Tequila (yes, the cheap gold stuff is fine when it’s fighting citrus), lime juice, a spoon of sugar or a splash of orange squash instead of triple sec. Shake with ice in anything with a lid. Salt the rim if you’re feeling classy.
Cheeky Vimto
Port and blue WKD, or the budget version: cheap red wine and blue raspberry squash concentrate topped with lemonade. Sounds nasty but it drinks like a care free night in the student union in the best way.
Screwdriver Plus
Vodka, orange juice, and a splash of lemonade to stretch it. The “plus” is the generous pour of Vodka and that the lemonade makes the juice go further, so you’re paying for less mixer per unit of merry. Breakfast-adjacent, dangerously easy, the definition of bang for buck.
One jug formula to rule them all
Serves about six: 500ml spirit, 1 litre mixer, 250ml fruit juice or squash, ice, and something citrus floating in it so it looks like you tried. Costs less than two pints out and gets six people pissed.
What they actually cost
| Drink | Cost per serving | Club equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| Vodka Cranberry, But Honest | ~90p | £8–£12 |
| Rum & Ginger | ~85p | £9–£13 |
| The £2 Margarita | ~£1.10 | £10–£14 |
| Cheeky Vimto | ~70p | £7–£10 |
| Screwdriver Plus | ~75p | £8–£12 |
Per-serve costs are rough, based on own-brand or spirits on offer.
One sensible note: free poured drinks are strong and easy to lose count of, so pace yourself, line your stomach, and know that cheaper booze often comes with unwanted consequences. Drink responsibly.
On the other hand, how to not kill the places you pre-drink before going to.
Here’s the catch. If everyone pre-drinks and nobody spends, the venues close, and then there’s nowhere to pre-drink for. Pre-loading is fine. Pre-loading while the last club in town quietly dies is how you end up drinking cans in the living room every weekend because that’s all that’s left. So, occasionally, feed the thing that keeps you entertained.
Go out properly sometimes
Not every weekend, not at those prices! But a proper night out now and then, where you actually buy drinks at the bar, is what keeps the lights on. The venue can’t run on your one lime soda.
Book in advance
Advance sales let venues plan staff, security and stock. Rocking up on the door is nice for your spontaneity and useless for their cash flow. If you know you’re going, buy early.
Back your local when it’s under threat
Venues get killed off by noise complaints and licensing rows as often as by costs. If a place you love is fighting to keep its licence, a two-minute email to the council counts. Campaigns like the NTIA’s “Last Night Out” exist for exactly this.
The point isn’t to never pre-drink, it’s to make sure there’s still somewhere worth pre-drinking for. Save money at home, spend some of it out, and the night out survives to empty your wallet another day.
