More than half my life ago, I spent a month or so doing nothing very productive in Paris. A friend had gotten into a post-grad course there and, for some reason, it sounded like a good idea for a gang of us to hole up there ensuring his inevitable academic failure. We sat in bistro half most days getting over or creating the conditions for horrendous hangovers. Or both. I recall we didn't go much for the beer when we were out due to the price. Cheap grocery store wine was our thing. I never claimed I was clever as a yute. Sounds like things are getting worse for bistros according to this excellent story at Deutsche Welle:
About a third of the beer drunk in France is French. Kronenburg mainly. Another Alsace beer. The cheapest. Now, having a demi - the more-or-less half pint measure that people drink here - is going to become a little more expensive. Six euro cents more expensive, says the government. More like 60, say the breweries and the cafe owners. For whom it's not just the money - it's the principle of the thing. Because this is a tax that is hitting the poor. The poor, of course, used to drink wine. Peasants would drink liters of the stuff. Each French soldier on active duty in 1914 was given a quarter of a liter of wine a day. What were the lot on the other side drinking I wonder? Beer I don't doubt. In that war, though, France won back Alsace-Lorraine and, with it, its breweries. And now, the French poor - who no longer have to go to war, plough the fields or, for increasing numbers of them, do anything at all - drink beer. When they're not drinking Fanta.
Belgium is apparently ticked off with the issue being raised at the highest political level as, if I have my math right, 20% of Belgian beer production is downed in France. Like the rest of the western world, modernity has shifted life away from bistros. The article states that there were 200,000 bistros in 1960's France and 35,000 today. There's a lot behind those numbers other than taxation but, still, a one time tax hike that will add 20% to the price of a beer has many in the trade concerned. Yet, in times of impending economic grief, many things will have to be cut and others will have price hikes. Should beer be immune?
Comments
Pivní Filosof - December 3, 2012 4:26 AM
What the article (or at least the part that is quoted) fails to mention is that wine doesn't pay any duty tax at all. Which, as I've said before, is terribly unfair.
John Coates - December 3, 2012 5:38 AM
While in Germany, beer is deemed a necessary right... cheaper than water.
Alan - December 3, 2012 8:51 AM
Why "unfair"? I can imagine the French wine industry is a massive employer and exporter. Tax policy is not based on maximizing idle pleasures you know.
Gary Gillman - December 3, 2012 11:37 AM
The slow-down of smoking and banning same in the pubs has surely affected bistro business together with the drinking-and-driving laws.
This tax increase will put another nail in the coffin.
The answer is for the remaining pubs to differentiate themselves by selling better beer, better food, and offering a nice ambience.
The typical demi of France is probably no worse than the typical lager in England or Canada for that matter, but the pubs should consider offering better and a greater range. The challenges are steep though since beer already is very expensive in France, or at least Paris.
Gary
Pivní Filosof - December 3, 2012 2:06 PM
Is not about that.... The beer industry, all across Europe, is also a massive employer and, in certain countries, exporter as well, and yet, only beer pays duty tax. I'm not saying that beer should not pay taxes, I'm saying that wine should pay it too. And given the profit margins many winemakers work with, they could very easily absorb some of it.
Jeff Alworth - December 3, 2012 4:26 PM
On the issue of taxes, I would say that while you're correct in general, Alan, in France the situation is dire. Beer is crazy expensive and has a hard time competing with wine. (I can't say I have done a careful study of prices, but the Nord/Pas-du-Calais brewers said beer was more expensive.) So taxing it ever higher while exempting wine perverts the market.
Belgian beer is big in France, and sells well in the "craft" segment. Local breweries have a hard time competing because they remain largely unknown while Belgian beers are famous. (As in Belgium, abbey ales have the most cachet.) So the poor breweries are fighting on two fronts, and the French government shouldn't be further crippling them.
Jason - December 24, 2012 12:04 AM
Yes it should be. Beer sales attribute to alto of the revenue taken in by pubs and bistros. This hurts growth and the government knows this.