A pub landlord is fighting rising costs by offering customers discounts on food and drink – but only if they pay in cash. Alan Davies, who runs the Trumpet Inn near Ledbury in Herefordshire, launched the scheme in a bid to offset high bank charges on card transactions. The 53-year-old has introduced a 5% cut across his menu for those paying the old-fashioned way after soaring bank charges began adding up to £5 for every £50 spent.
The rising charges are set against a bleak economic backdrop for UK boozers, with recent hikes in employers’ National Insurance, the minimum wage and business rates forcing many to either close or continue operating at a loss. Mr Davies’ unorthodox method of cutting at least some of his costs has become a customer attraction, he said, and caused a huge spike in cash payments.
« A lot of small businesses are struggling at the moment, so we’ve gone back to the old system like when I was young, » he told The Telegraph.
« Before this, we had 95% of our transactions on card, now it’s risen to 50% cash. This is not just on pints, it’s on everything, food and drink. It’s also the fact that it’s bringing customers in, which is handy. »
The Treasury announced a 15% discount on business rates bills for pubs from April last month following closures of around one business a day in 2025 and growing public pressure.
Publicans insisted that the partial retreat made little or « no difference » to their financial struggles, however. Alex Cook, 43, landlord of The Mill in Stokesley, North Yorkshire, told the Express: « The best way I can describe it is like somebody’s stolen by packet of sweets an given me just one back. »
Changing cultural and social attitudes post-Covid have also contributed to an increasingly difficult economic climate for boozers, and while discounts for paying with cash may draw punters in in the short-term, larger-scale change will be needed to secure the future of the UK’s hospitality sector.
Shadow Chancellor Sir Mel Stride said: « If you see pubs go and restaurants go and shops go and high streets start to dwindle and decay, then you have all sorts of knock-on consequences as a result of that. Communities become less strong, they become weaker, they become more fragmented. We need to be building up our high streets, not pushing them down. »
The Government has insisted it is « backing hospitality » with a £4.3 billion package to cap big bill hikes, preventing bills from rising for over half of business properties.
