The UK is facing a Guinness supply issue and Liverpool venues are preparing
The UK is facing a nationwide Guinness shortage with some pubs facing running out of the popular drink before Christmas, during one of the busiest periods of the year for the hospitality industry. The iconic Irish stout is running low across British bars, with reports indicating that certain establishments have already exhausted their supplies, while others brace for scarcity by imposing customer limits.
Liverpool’s hospitality industry is taking the prospect of a local shortage ‘seriously’ with many of the city’s biggest pubs and bars working closely with suppliers to ensure their stocks will last over the festive period. But others have found themselves unable to get hold of any more barrels just says before Christmas and have had to resort to stocking cans instead.
This shortage has been exacerbated by some pub owners panic buying in an ill-fated bid to stave off a dry spell during the peak season. Compounding the problem, breweries have started capping the number of kegs pubs can acquire at once due to logistical snags.
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MJ King is senior operations manager for The 1936 Pub Company, which runs a number of much-loved venues across Liverpool including the newly-opened St Peter’s Tavern, The Red Lion, The Queen of Hope Street, The White Hart and Lark Lane’s Old School House. Guinness is hugely popular with their pub customers, with the company getting through around 250 barrels in a single week. With the drink being so integral to their draught offering, MJ said their staff have been working hard to make sure they wouldn’t be affected by the shortage.
She told the ECHO: “We take Guinness really seriously anyway, so any whispering of Guinness issues were something we were on top of immediately. We take it seriously, including sending people out to Ireland for Guinness training, and our operations teams work really closely with our suppliers so they were able to give us an early heads up that this shortage was going to be the case.
“For our venues, we managed to liaise with suppliers and got some deals in place to make sure there wouldn’t be any issues with our supply. They gave us a heads up before the shortage struck, so thankfully we won’t have any issues. We will be able to be fully stocked for the rest of Christmas and the New Year – but we have been assured by LWC [the UK’s largest independent drinks wholesaler] that the shortage will be over by December 21.”
MJ said the team took swift action to get ahead of the anticipated issues with supply because Guinness is such an important product in their pubs. She explained: “Especially in the pub industry, Guinness is one of your main selling points. We know that personally it’s one of our main selling points, which is why we take it so seriously. But as an industry, you will see major issues with [any shortage]. You can offer as many stouts as you want, but Guinness is Guinness – people who drink it are passionate about it.”
She added: “When you produce a solid Guinness, which I’d like to say we are among the best in the city for, it’s an incredible product.”
Among the city bars which could face the biggest impact of a nationwide shortage are Liverpool’s beloved Irish bars. Early reports of a possible shortage within the hospitality industry prompted many Liverpool pub owners to act fast to make sure they had a significant supply to see them through the festive period.
City centre Irish pub Pogue Mahone, on Seel Street, is just one of the Liverpool venues that acted ‘swiftly’ to see off any shortage issues. A spokesperson for Pogue Mahone told the ECHO: “We at Pogue Mahone pour hundreds of thousands of pints each year, and it’s a cornerstone of our pub’s identity. With the Christmas season upon us, we moved swiftly to ensure our customers wouldn’t face a shortage, placing a significant order to guarantee a plentiful supply over the festive period, with hundreds of kegs secured through our supply partners.
“We hope Diageo [the company which manufactures Guinness] resolves the current challenges swiftly—while the surging popularity of Guinness may have exceeded expectations, we are confident they’ll resolve this for the long term.”
However, not all publicans in the city have been able to get their hands on enough barrels to see them through the Christmas period, and some have been forced to change their drinks offering as a result.
Lloyd Lewarn runs Hoggins Irish bar in Old Swan and The Jubilee pub in Litherland, and has worked in the hospitality industry for four decades.
Mr Lewarn told the ECHO: “We don’t stock it any more now, because we can’t stock it. We ran out as of this week – we had some stock, that’s gone now. We can’t get it.”
He added: “We reached out to other suppliers and they had none as well. We decided to move to cans from the supermarket. The problem I have is the price. Guinness is a unique product that you can’t replace out of the can. The best thing for us is just to wait until they up production.”
Diageo, the producers of Guinness, have been forced to limit shipments of the beer to public houses throughout England, Wales, and Scotland.
A Diageo spokesperson previously said to The Independent: “Over the past month we have seen exceptional consumer demand for Guinness in GB. We have maximised supply and we are working proactively with our customers to manage the distribution to trade as efficiently as possible.”