by Michael Wolsey, December 2013
I see a campaign in underway to end the practice of buying rounds in pubs. It started on John Murray’s RTE radio show where a text poll showed 96 per cent of people in favour of ending this odd custom. Since then it has gathered pace on social media sites as we head into the season when the rounds get longer and more costly.
Good luck to the campaigners, I say. If they succeed, I’ll buy them a drink. For surely there is no more illogical, wasteful, wooden-headed convention than this one.
The practice is unique, I think, to Ireland, Britain and misguided places where the Irish and Brits have spread their drinking habits, such as Australia. And it is confined to the consumption of alcohol.
If two people are in a café together, one does not pay for the coffee and say to the other: “That’s my round. How about you getting the doughnuts?’’
In a restaurant, bills are either split equally or paid entirely by the host. Waiters would not be happy (or speedy) if one customer paid for the soup, a second called them back to order and fork out for the main course, a third paid for the puddings and a fourth coughed up for the coffees.
No would this be a fair distribution of expense. The main course could well cost as much as the other three put together.
This is also true of buying rounds in pubs, since it is virtually impossible to assemble a company of three or more who drink at the same speed and favour tipples of equal price.
This is purgatory for a fast drinker who can get through several glasses of Sauvignon Something or Cabernet Whatsit before a more thoughtful companion is halfway down the first pint of stout. Speedy then has to resort to such demeaning behaviour as glaring into the empty glass or rattling it on the counter to bring the contemplative pint-sipper to a realisation of his responsibilities.
Conversely, the slow imbiber is forced to ship far more liquor than desired to keep up with the others. Even then the books won’t balance because half the world has taken to drinking imported designer beers that cost twice as much as Guinness, or cocktails that are dearer still.
All this assumes, of course, that those in the round will pay up when their time comes. But we know that’s not true. There are people who have devoted their lives to becoming parts of rounds to which they hope not to contribute. They are specially to be watched about an hour from closing time, in a big company, because they always buy last and pray the law will intervene to save them.
So good luck, again, to the anti-round crusaders. They’ll better move fast, though, while there are pubs left to drink in. For I am looking at another survey which suggests that, if not quite an endangered species, traditional pubs are vanishing at an alarming rate and being replaced by coffee shops. It finds that twice as many people visit a coffee shop every day now as did in 2009.
The smoking ban and tighter drink-driving laws have hurt the trade. But pubs have also inflicted damage on themselves by trying to compete with restaurants, and indeed coffee shops, to the detriment of what used to be their core business.
You can’t stand at some bars now because most of the space is designated as a serving area or filled with knives, forks, napkins and other dining implements. They are on the bar because the tables are crowded with similar equipment.
All pubs serve coffee but very few serve good coffee and I can’t think of any that can match the variety available at any decent coffee shop. The same goes for their efforts at food. Some pubs have, in effect, become restaurants and are excellent at it. Most are not. And in trying to be something they are not, they have sacrificed the style and ambiance that have made Irish pubs a major export.
When I raise this gripe with publicans, they tell me it would be impossible to run a bar nowadays without a serious food menu. Really? Have they tried? It’s not food that has people flocking to Irish pubs all over the world. So why do our bars choose to compete in this over-crowded market?
Michael Wolsey is a former deputy editor of the Irish Independent, features editor of the Irish Press and managing director of the Drogheda Independent group. Michael sits on the judging panel for the National Newspaper of Ireland Journalism Awards.
