You spot the prices, we ask the questions
It being Lent, PriceWatch reader Sean Forde decided to give up the booze. A few days into his period of abstinence, he visited a local pub in Dundrum where he ordered a pint of blackcurrant. Made with just water, a few ice cubes and a dash of blackcurrant, it should have been pretty cheap? Wrong, Forde was charged €2 for his non-alcoholic tipple.
"Is it just me or is this ridiculously expensive for what is glorified water - and tap water at that?" he asks.
He says the price has taken him by surprise because he normally has a pint or a cup of coffee watching the footie in his local pub. "What are your readers' experience of non-alcoholic fare in pubs?" he asks. "Given the current don't-drink-and-drive campaigns, I would assume pubs would encourage non-drinkers rather than punishing them."
The cost of a pint of water and a splash of cordial varies widely around the country. Some pubs routinely give it away for nothing, others charge in the region of 70 cent while pubs, like the one our reader visited, charge what have to be considered excessive amounts.
We contacted one publican who charges 70 cent for a pint of water and blackcurrant to try and find out how publicans decide on the prices of non-alcoholic drinks such as this.
He explained that some - particularly those with very substantial overheads - charge high prices for cordial-based drinks, almost as a reverse prohibition because they believe it is "commercial suicide" to encourage people to drink what is essentially water.
Other publicans charge a less severe 70 cent, he said. "It should be kept at something reasonable," he added, "because the people who are actually ordering such drinks are few and far between and it doesn't make sense to alienate them and their friends with ridiculous prices."
A HARD GRIND It's the high price of fair-trade coffee that has angered Petra Kindler from Waterford. She got in touch because she was "baffled" by the high prices for ground coffee in the Republic. "On my regular visits to Germany I always stock up on 500g bags (that's over two pounds) of organic fair-trade coffee for between €4.80 and €5.20 per bag from supermarkets and drugstore chains," she writes.
And the reason? For the same type of coffee in Ireland, "I'd be lucky to pay that sort of price for half a pound," she says. "It's a shame that fair-minded shoppers in this country seem to be getting such an unfair deal." We checked prices in a number of supermarkets and the cheapest fair-trade coffee we could find was a Tesco own-brand option which was priced at €3.29 for 227g, or over €14 a kilo, significantly more than the €10 per kilo our reader pays in Germany.
CHEAPER TOOTHPASTE Last week we listed €3.40 as the price for 100ml of Colgate toothpaste in Boots. Since we first established the price, it has been reduced on two separate occasions. First Boots lowered the price to €3.20 and then last Saturday the price of Colgate Total at the chemist fell an additional one cent to €3.19, matching the Tesco price, which was the cheapest outlet we listed.
