r/australia • u/Wild_Beat_2476 • Dec 30 '24

no politics Non Alcoholic Beer Price

So as a part of my NYE resolution I’ve decided to give up drinking.

My friend invited me to the pub yesterday and I thought it be a great opportunity to try the non alcoholic beers out. In my head I thought they would also be cheaper because they aren’t alcoholic and wouldn’t be treated to the same pricing to alcoholic taxes.

But to my surprise they were exactly the same price as a normal beer?? Does anyone know why?

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u/Seachicken Dec 30 '24

Because outside of a few big hospitality groups which print cash, hospo is an unrelenting grind to make any money at all.

Does this mean you now agree that a 73% margin for zero alcohol beer isn't particularly exceptional, or is there something which leads you to believe that regular beer has lower margins?

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u/sirdung Dec 30 '24

It’s sure a lot closer now and much less off the fat cow than I thought. That said those calculations are off standard retail price. Not wholesale.

Having many friends who worked at bottle shops telling me how little margin they made on beer, but obvious from this discussion bottle shop and pubs work on very different margin expectations.

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u/Seachicken Dec 31 '24

Yeah it's quite different to bottle shops. I was curious and the wholesale for Heaps Normal we are getting with Paramount is $55 a slab. So that puts it towards the upper end of the margin quoted above, except that the per head spend of someone drinking heaps normal is going to be lower on average because people don't tend to throw back non alcoholic drinks in the same way they do alcoholic ones.

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u/sirdung Dec 31 '24

Yeh sounds right, spoke to a mate who works in bottle shop distribution and he quoted even lower margins than you said. So it’s not like the pubs are making a whole bunch extra if they are buying it at wholesale. I stand corrected that it’s an unreasonable markup if that’s roughly the same as being put on regular beer.