Students could once walk into U-Bar’s Wednesday Pint Night with a crisp $20 note, leaving four pints happier and with a shirt as soaked as your poor liver during Flo and O-Week. News of ‘pint-flation’ has spread across campus following the discovery that students’ most thirsted-after pints have increased in price – from $6 to $7 (the two pints and a watery OUSA butter chicken are hardly worth sacrificing the tinny-$20). Critic Te Ārohi’s economist reports on grumbles from the 90-minute line.
The humid, dimly lit U-Bar was filled with thirsty students at the first Pint Night on Wednesday, February 26th, armed with their weekly cost of living payment. Reports from the line were that over one hundred people entered the bar within ten minutes of opening, and that most of the IDs were ‘06 and ’07s (freshers have graduated from Toga, it seems). Levels of stoke were high, eager to get amongst the live music from regulars like the Audio Visual DropKicks. But there was something in the air (besides tinnitus and body odour): the word “seven” was on everyone’s tongue, and it tasted as bitter as the coil burning on your mint solo.
First-hand accounts from the battlefield were riddled with superlatives when they caught wind of the extortionate prices ahead (read: were told by Critic). “Disgusting,” “shit ass,” and “ridiculous,” were among the most commonly used to describe the price increase. One student even alluded to threatening behaviour Critic can’t reprint over the news – despite admitting to not drinking beer. Note: Pint Night discounted prices apply only to Speights, both Gold Medal Ale and Ultra (hence the emphasis on “pint”).
Critic Te Ārohi reached out to ‘The Man’ behind it all: University Union’s General Manager Stephen Baughan. He confirmed that pints had indeed increased to $7 due to inflation, an economics term even BA students are all too familiar with. Economics major and AVDK bassist Jeremy told Critic that 20% is “a lot higher than inflation,” saying that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand “will have to get onto this.” Critic notes that these numbers are based on what students from 2020 remember paying ($4) but that U-Bar has been unable to confirm.
Students’ pint glasses are half-empty when it comes to once again being at the sticky end of the cost of living crisis. As fifth-year Will put it, “The more you drink, the more fun you have. So when you think about it the cost of fun is getting more expensive along with everything else.” But in Baughan’s humble opinion, the $7 is still a “good deal”.
Critic Te Ārohi cheekily prompted Baughan a pint-flation economic deep-dive – or rather, schooner-flation. At 430mL per serve at U-Bar, the supposed “pint” (570mL) could be closer to a “schooner” (425mL). This means that the $10 pint of Speights at The Bog is roughly the same value (57ml/$) as the $7 schooner from Ubar (60ml/$). A good deal, Baughan – one on par with the cheapest beers in Dunedin – but it’s not what it used to be (stares longingly out the window).
Baughan set the record straight at these claims, saying that a pint in Aotearoa generally means the largest size on offer (that’s what he said) and is “widely accepted” to be between 400mL and 600mLs, “and we fall within that range.” At Critic’s suggestion of renaming Pint Night to ‘Schooner Night’, Baughan was a stick-in-the-mud: “We do not want to change the name ‘Pint Night’ because it has been the catch phrase for many years.”
This wasn’t the first conspiracy Mr U-Bar was hit with. Anyone who’s come within spitting distance of U-Bar is familiar with its climate so tropical it could support a venus flytrap. But on Wednesday, U-Bar wasn’t tropical, it was thermo-fucking-nuclear – and it soon became apparent why: the heaters were on. Pint Night was in a situation not so dissimilar from Cars 2’s Miles Axelrod nefarious renewable fuel scheme: a line long enough to sober students up, and the heater blasting to get them sweating and thirstier than Pavlov’s dogs.
U-Bar had the perfect money making machine, and they’ve just increased the price of the pint to cash in. The campus-based bar enjoys a near monopoly on venue-oriented student boozing and live music. And with no student bar to compete with, U-Bar doesn’t have to keep their prices low to stay competitive – they’ll fill to capacity (and more) every Pint Night regardless. But Baughan cut this theory off at the knees. “Our University’s automated heating scheduling unintentionally created the tropical feel and that has been rectified for this week,” he told Critic Te Ārohi before the second Pint Night last Wednesday (a promise that was kept).
Wondering if students, using the power of collective bargaining, would stand against the price hike, Critic borrowed the Radio One mic to ask students (stuck in the line and with nowhere to run) if they were going to continue to attend Pint Night and buy beer every week in spite of the stacked Pint-onomics in U-Bar’s favour. Student Anna said, “I usually get two, now I’m just gonna get one.” Thrifty Sam said, “I’m not buying anything. I get wasted then come in.” A nearby group of third-years agreed: “Let's pre more and buy less beer.”
Whilst this sentiment was shared by many, no one said they’d stop coming to Pint Night, and almost everyone we spoke to agreed that the attraction of Pint Night is the “super sick bands” and not the cheap beer. One student we spoke to said she’d “rather kill herself than pay $7 for a beer,” whilst waving her empty pint glass in the air. So whilst U-Bar’s price hikes are “ridiculous”, their monopoly on live music has students in a price inelastic choke hold.