There’s news coming out yesterday and no doubt moreso today that really proves Wetherspoons aren’t the freehouses they claim.
First off, if the Manager/Landlord can’t chose where they buy in from, they’re not a freehouse in my opinion.
So on to ‘Spoons…
In November 2021 ‘Spoons signed a 20 year contract with AB-InBev (owners of Stella, Budweiser, etc – so much for their ENGERLAND FIRST stance) to display an amount of the AB-InBev brands on the pubs t-bars, those keg line things.
Seems though, that Timmy assumed that AB-InBev would do the installations, and claimed that they said they would, while AB-InBev assumed that Timmy would.
If either of these did say they would, you can be sure it’ll be in a legal contract somewhere. These are not small businesses.
But either way the installations didn’t happen and AB-InBev are threatening to pull out of the contract saying ‘Spoons breached it.
This’ll really shaft ‘Spoons because it’s unlikely that they’ll get a good deal with Heineken after dumping them back in ’21.
Why has this happened though?
A very real possibility is that last year AB-InBev tried to raise the prices of their drinks due to all the rising costs everyone is having, but Timmy argued against it claiming it would make their beers “uncommercial”, or in other words he wouldn’t be able to continue selling Stella for £3.60 a pint and might have to actually raise his prices to what everyone else charges.
So now we have Timmy threatening the world’s largest brewery with a court injunction to prevent them from stopping supplying him cheap beer, and AB-InBev threatening him with breach of contract.
This is Big Business, Timmy wants his cheap beer for 20 years and is trying to use the law to force a brewery to supply him, AB-InBev are claiming that if it had terminated the deal when Timmy claims it tried to, then it would be liable for £9.9 million in compensation.
So whenever either of these companies claims that they’re part of the community, you know which community they’re really talking about.
We as a Family frequent Wetherspoons circa Once a week, WE NEVER knowingly order ANY AB-inbev products, they are imitation Factory Beers brewed in the UK under licence, poor Quality Stuff modified to so called British tastes. For example: their Stella Artois is a different colour & taste Compared to the
Original.
If Wetherspoons dump AB-Inbev, so much the better, I can source OAKHAM, BLUE MONKEY, CASTLE ROCK (small example) BETTER than ANY AB-Inbev factory rubbish.