The news is that the price of soju and beer sold at restaurants may rise to 6,000 won. The price of soju and beer at restaurants, which had remained in the range of 3,000 to 4,000 won for several years, rose to 4,000 to 5,000 won last year.
The prospect of an increase in restaurant sales prices for soju and beer, which are called ‘liquor for the common people’ because they can be drunk at a relatively low price, is further straining the shoulders of ordinary people who have already shrunk due to gas and electricity bill bombs at the beginning of the year.
The reason why the price of soju and beer at restaurants is expected to rise sooner or later is because there are a series of factors that increase the factory price of alcoholic beverages this year. Soju is fueling the factory price hike due to rising prices of raw and subsidiary materials, such as alcohol and bottle prices, while liquor tax for beer will rise significantly in April, and as with soju, raw and subsidiary material prices are rising, fueling the factory price hike. . An increase in logistics costs, labor costs, and exchange rates due to an increase in utility rates is also one of the reasons for the increase in the factory price of alcoholic beverages.
If a liquor company raises factory prices and goes through the distribution process, the price increase of soju and beer sold at restaurants will increase like a snowball. If the liquor company partially raises the factory price, the liquor wholesaler raises the selling price more than that, and the restaurant raises it several times over to the customer. Even if the factory price is raised by 100 won, the restaurant does not raise only 100 won. Because restaurants include the increase in the price of subsidiary materials and labor costs in the price of alcoholic beverages, the price rises to 500 won or 1,000 won.
Currently, soju and beer prices in restaurants in large cities such as Changwon and Gimhae range from 4,000 to 5,000 won. In the suburbs where rent is relatively cheap, it is around 4,000 won, but in the center where rent is expensive, it is mostly 5,000 won. In the end, if the factory price is raised again this year, you will encounter a price tag of ‘6,000 won for soju and beer’ on the restaurant menu board.
As public opinion began to boil over the ‘restaurant soju price of 6,000 won era’, the government is showing a move to intervene. When an opposition member of the National Assembly asked about the prospect of an increase in liquor prices due to a liquor tax hike, Minister of Strategy and Finance Choo Kyung-ho said at a general meeting of the National Assembly’s Strategy and Finance Committee not long ago, “There is a fixed cost burden everywhere, but it is not a common practice to pass it all on to market prices. no. Should the price of alcoholic beverages be raised that much or even more just because the tax has gone up a little?”
Afterwards, the Ministry of Strategy and Finance and the National Tax Service launched a fact-finding investigation into the liquor industry’s movement to increase factory prices.
Regarding the prospect of an increase in alcohol prices, business owners such as restaurants and taverns are in a position that they have no choice but to raise factory prices in a difficult situation due to rising labor costs and subsidiary material prices. However, the shareholder thinks that the price of soju at a restaurant, which was 4,000 won a few years ago, is too high to be 6,000 won. As mentioned earlier, consumers see it as difficult for restaurants to raise the price of food or meat to which they are sensitive, so they pass on these price increases to the price of alcohol to which they are less sensitive.
If a group of people who visit a restaurant to have a drink on the way home from work are weekly drinkers, the day when alcohol costs more than the price of a meal or side dish is not far off.
I am worried that soju and beer, which are called ‘common people’s alcohol’ because they soothe the common people at a relatively low price, will no longer be easily found by the common people.
Lee Jong-goo (Gimhae Head Office)