Free shots, free beer, free haircuts: the alcohol price war

Even as health experts warn of rising alcohol consumption among under-18s, nightclubs are giving alcohol away to lure customers

CLUB PROMOTERS are calling it a sprint to the bottom. It’s a price war in which clubs – previously bastions of high-priced alcohol – are now offering free drink and cut-price promotions just to attract customers. Essentially, they’re paying for people to come through the doors. The economy of selling alcohol has turned on its head.

Alcohol is 50 per cent more affordable than it was 15 years ago, according to a technical report on the affordability of alcoholic beverages in the EU. And, on average, Irish people drink twice as much as they did 50 years ago, according to Alcohol Action Ireland. A generation of young people is drinking more than ever, and is drunker than ever. And it costs. The bill for alcohol-related harm amounts to €3.7 billion a year.

This week a report by the Health Research Board outlined dramatic figures, with the number of people seeking treatment for alcohol abuse increasing 50 per cent in five years. There was a 145 per cent increase in those under 18 seeking treatment, and half of all cases treated were people under the age of 39.

On foot of the report, Minister of State for Primary Care Róisín Shortall pinpointed the price of alcohol as something to be examined. Taoiseach Enda Kenny said this week that the pricing of alcohol, and the scale of its availability, is something the Minster for Health must examine.

In the past fortnight there have been renewed calls to introduce a minimum-pricing framework for alcohol. Barnardos, Focus Ireland, the Irish Medical Organisation, the Irish Heart Foundation, the ISPCC and the National Youth Council of Ireland, among others, support such a measure.

In the drinks business, clubs and bars are struggling to stay open, existing from week to week and using cheap and free alcohol as a way to draw in enough customers to pay their bills. They have been competing not just with pubs and with each other but also with off-licences and supermarkets. Somewhere along the line, as prices were cut beyond recognition, alcohol became free.

Section 20 of the 2003 Intoxicating Liquor Act prohibits “happy hours”, or the sale of alcohol at a reduced price during a limited period on any day. So bars and clubs just sidestepped the law, running drink promotions all night instead of for a limited period. The law doesn’t cover free alcohol, either, because it’s not being sold at a reduced price.

On one night at the end of September, the Dublin club Tripod, on Harcourt Street, gave away 200 naggins of Mickey Finn liquor and 200 beers.

“Students’ budgets are definitely tighter than ever,” says James Morrissey of Signature Group, which ran the event. “They still want to go out two or three nights a week, and they’re still going out, but their spend is down.”

Morrissey has started offering free haircuts in the beer gardens of venues as a gimmick to lure more customers in, and, despite the drink promotions that his nights offer in conjunction with venues, he is critical of the price war in general.

“It’s been damaging for the industry as a whole. The owner of a nightclub might want to put on drinks deals because his venue is about to go bust, but it brings down the price of everyone else’s as well.”

Like many promoters, Morrissey believes the rock-bottom offers are loss-making and just exist for venues to generate cash flow. “It can’t get any lower . . . If you saw the [low] average spend on these student nights at the bar, you’d be shocked.”

Dandelion, a club on St Stephen’s Green, gave out 1,000 shots at its Monday club night, Rehab, recently. Prhomo, a popular night at the Dragon on South Great George’s Street in Dublin, offered €1 shots and a free half-hour vodka bar last Thursday.

The list of venues and club nights offering cheap or free alcohol goes on. Club XXI, a popular student nightspot on D’Olier Street in Dublin, runs “99 Mondays”, during which shots cost 99c. “Everyone has to follow suit,” says JD Skeehan, the club’s marketing and PR manager. “If one person drops [the price], they get the crowd, so everyone else has to drop.” Skeehan says the club tried giving away alcohol but found it drew a troublesome crowd.

Across the road from Club XXI is Lafayette Cafe Bar, a venue that celebrated its €1 million refurbishment with a free bar, and offers bookings of 10 people a free bottle of vodka and mixers on a Sunday night. As a smaller venue, it can’t compete with the cut-price offers of its neighbours.

“What the larger venues are doing, they’re busy at the weekends, so they’re turning cash flow during the week,” says its general manager, Barry Kiernan. “It’s just generating cash, paying the bills, keeping creditors on side, chipping away constantly.

“It breaks my heart to see the staff on a Tuesday night hammer out drinks for four or five hours for such little return.”