Popular Northamptonshire pub launches campaign against brewery price increases as drinks hiked by 12 percent

A popular Northamptonshire pub has launched a campaign “kicking back” against breweries and price increases.

The Tollemache Arms in Harrington launched the campaign in February, after management had to make the difficult decision to increase drink prices by 12 percent, due to the increase from breweries.

As part of the campaign, owner Joe Buckley filmed a sit-down video explaining the ‘behind the scenes’ of the industry and where the increases come from. This has been shared on social media and has garnered lots of support from customers.

The Instagram post, with the video reads: “Over the last few years, what we sell our drinks for has increased considerably and it’s time to explain why.

"The pub system is an odd beast, built up mainly of four main models, tenancy, managed, free of tie, and us, a leasehold.

"This means we pay our rent to our brewery, have full responsibility to maintain the building and buy our beer from our brewery at prices set by them.

"We have no say in that price and are given guidance of what we must charge. Obviously we have choice of what beers we use and to give great choice we select a broad range, from their home brewed beers to more world renowned beers.

"When we compare our prices from when we first opened in 2015, our ales have increased by 52 percent and our lagers 44 percent. Which we hate as we know we could buy beer for so much less, in some cases £100 a barrel less.

"We will continue to beat the drum of being a village pub, we love nothing more than having our community and friends in the pub with us. We still do as much as we can to support you all, donating to any charity cause possible, working with local schools and colleges to help the local economy but it’s hard when we are being squeezed so much.

"We will continue to be as honest and transparent with you all and we know we are very lucky to be as busy as we are, but so many aren’t. Local independent pubs need your support more than ever, whether going to a quiz night, drinking a local ale and not going to a chain or spending that bit more for a quality meal instead of Bills.

"THANK YOU all for your continued love and support and helping us do what we love.”

Joe added: “We want to start a campaign, kicking back against the breweries and trying to get fair pricing to all landlords across the UK, but to also communicate that to our customers to show them these increases aren’t our fault or decision. So we have created a video that explains the system but will also hopefully get to the people that are putting these increases in.

"Us landlords need to stick together and demand change for us to get change.”

As part of the campaign, the Tolly team were featured in the Sunday Times.

To find out more, search ‘The Tolly’ on Facebook.