Top News

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.

Independent pubs are especially struggling under the financial pressure, with recent analysis suggesting that they will need to sell over 825 million more pints a year to cover Chancellor Rachel Reeves' hike in business rates.

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.