Pubs are starting to go bankrupt. Raising is the last nail in the coffin

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People, especially in the countryside, stopped going to pubs during the coronavirus epidemic and they start to go bankrupt. According to brewery surveys, more than 10 percent have already closed them. In addition to the loss of guests, this is also due to rising operating costs, especially more expensive energy.

Chairs on the table, disconnected taps and on the door signs with the words CLOSED. The restaurant in Vyskytná nad Jihlavou is one of those that have ended. Local regulars thus have a hub. The owner closed it there a month and a half ago. It didn’t pay to run a pub.

“On the one hand, people don’t go there at all, they probably learned to drink at home during the covida.

“Of course, the municipality needs a pub, where otherwise people normally meet daily,” commented Hana Provázková (Nez.), Mayor of Vyskytná nad Jihlavou. The village is now struggling to find a new tenant to take over the village pub.

And there are hundreds of such cases throughout the Czech Republic. “This means a serious existential threat to the entire gastronomy business in the countryside or in a small town,” warns economist Lukáš Kovanda.

“According to our data, about 12 percent of village pubs have closed down in the last three years,” said Zdeněk Kovář, a spokesman for the Pilsner Urquell brewery. It is the breweries that are trying to support and save the moribund village facilities. “We are trying to bring guests back to village pubs, for example, by improving pubs,” Kovář revealed.

According to economists, this summer will show if that will be enough. About a thousand village pubs use support from tens of millions of breweries.

For a beer in the garage

Due to the increase in prices, brewers are starting to exchange pubs for garages. They join those who started doing so during the lockdown. Some even consider buying a home bar, others buy a cheaper bottled beer.

In any case, the outflow of brewers can be another blow to gastronomy. “The brewery will sell the beer, it will find the consumer, but the intermediate link in between, the gastronomy, will unfortunately suffer in this case and the share of draft beer will continue to decline,” complained the owner of the Beertime restaurant Roman Kubásko.

Despite all this, the innkeepers believe that the Czechs, as a nation of brewers, will not disappoint and from time to time they will go for one shot. But beer consumption in pubs is still falling. Fifteen years ago, 60 percent of beer was drunk in restaurants, now it will be only 25 percent.

There is a growing interest among young people in brewing their own beer at home:

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sei, TN.cz

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