Last Orders: Does coronavirus spell boom or bust for Britain’s drinks sector?

The Food Programme

BBC

Food, Arts

4.4 • 977 Ratings

🗓️ 24 May 2020

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Alcoholic drinks are not just big business in Britain - they are an essentially social business.

Whether it's hitting your local with colleagues after work, raising a reception toast to newly-weds or selecting a favourite bottle to accompany dinner at a special restaurant, those traditional opportunities to buy and sell alcohol have been all but wiped out under lockdown.

As Jaega Wise discovers, pubs, bars, restaurants and the drinks producers who supply them have been some of the hardest hit by virus control measures.

But at the same time, alcohol sales have soared in recent weeks: retailers have enjoyed a boom in online orders, as have the producers and venues who've been able to adapt and target this new, stay-at-home market.

So what does this mean for the British drinks sector in the longer term - and, once we're allowed to meet mates down the pub again, just how significantly will the UK's social landscape have changed?

Presented by Jaega Wise, produced in Bristol by Lucy Taylor.

Transcript

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0:44.6	Hello, you've downloaded a podcast of BBC Radio 4's The Food Program.
0:49.7	Welcome to our world, from cooking to culture, politics to pleasure.
0:54.7	We hope you enjoy it.
0:55.7	I'm going to start filling the bottles with fresh beer.
1:01.1	Cicekg orders. How much we do in this week?
1:06.0	500. I can't believe we're doing now this three months ago.
1:10.0	It's pretty. We are collectively telling,
1:15.0	Telling, cafes, pubs, bars and restaurants
1:21.0	to close, tonight as soon as they reasonably can, and not to open tomorrow.
1:30.0	We've been hit hard by the closure of one of our main sources of business.
1:34.0	We're looking at wasting unfortunately or destroying 70 million pints of beer.
1:39.0	We're probably seeing sales at the moment, about two and a half times normally what we'd see for April and May.
	...

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