The Illusion of Choice?

 Real ale is a traditional draught cask beer, a "living" product that is produced and stored in its cask. It differs from a cold, fizzy lager, in which the yeast is killed and carbon dioxide is added. Real ale contains live yeast so it continues fermenting until it is served.

Outside the Devonshire pub in Soho, central London, there is an ever-present horde of drinkers downing pints of Guinness, a stout made by the multinational company Diageo. But the landlord and co-owner Oisin Rogers says: "Real ale is all I drink."

"It is a properly handmade product," says Rogers, "produced in exactly the same way it has been for centuries. It has never been industrialised like some of the other drinks that are for sale in bars in London...

Tom Stainer, Camra's [Campaign for Real Ale] chief executive says independent breweries are facing unfair competition from multinationals. If you walk into a pub on the high street, you are often confronted with the same few beers, most of which are made by the same large companies, he said.

"The beers people want aren't available in bars because of the ways the huge international brewers operate," said Stainer. "We call it an illusion of choice - a lot of people  walk into bars and don't realise everything in front of them is owned by the same big company." He said these "big global brewers who have deep pockets and huge influence" make it "hard for small brewers to get to market". The incentives offered to large pub companies include cheap packages for beers, wine and soft drinks, with a multi-year tie-in, and minimum purchase orders where "pubs are forced to sell a certain amount of this product".

Boors Carousing
Dutch School
Photo Credit: York Art Gallery [Public Domain]

Stainer added: "We have heard of pubs taking off independent beers because they are too popular and it stops people buying that  product they have a minimum purchase order for." He said Camra is calling for the government's Competition and Markets Authority to investigate the stranglehold the big beer companies have on the market.

There are no such problems in the King Charles 1 pub in Kin's Cross. As an independent, community owned venue, they can choose what's on tap. They have a healthy range of cask beers, swapped out every five weeks.

Mat Roberts, the manager said: "I like to choose local beers. Today we have one from Southwark, some from Kent, and one from the West Midlands. Cask ale is still very popular, it makes up around 30% of our sales. We are lucky we don't have a big pub company telling us what to sell."...

(Helena Horton, The Guardian, 2026)

According to the British Beer and Pub Association pubs that are not owned by large pub companies or breweries is roughly 50% of the total number of pubs in the UK . That figure is 22,650. The number of pubs that are community owned and independent is 237.

So is that a stranglehold if 50% of pubs can choose what beer they sell?