Looking to make the most of the heatwave and head to the pub? You could end up paying almost double the price for the same pint of beer depending which borough you choose for your booze.
The Standard surveyed the prices of Guinness, lager and real ale across all 91 Wetherspoon pubs in London to find the average price of the cheapest round, using the prices of the cheapest pint of each drink for our calculations.
Where in London are the cheapest Wetherspoons?
Croydon, Brent and Waltham Forest are the top three boroughs for buying the cheapest pints in a London Wetherspoon.
The cheapest round was in Croydon at £2.40 a pint, closely followed by £2.41 in both Brent and Waltham Forest.
The most expensive borough to buy a round is Westminster, coming in at an average of £4.21 a pint.
Other boroughs with some of the highest average prices include the City of London at £4.05, Camden at £3.95 and Islington at £3.64.
This interactive map shows the cheapest price per borough.
Kensington and Chelsea and Barking and Dagenham are excluded from the data set as there are no Wetherspoon pubs in these boroughs. Airport-based Wetherspoons – where a pint comes in at £5.08 – are also excluded.
How much Wetherspoon charges for a Guinness in London
The price of Guinness varied by more than half, or up to £3, across pubs in different boroughs. Ten boroughs including Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest and Hackney sold the cheapest Guinness at £3.30 a pint, while Westminster sold the most expensive Guinness for over double that at £6.64 in London’s most expensive ‘Spoons – The Moon Under Water.
The cost of a pint of Guinness also varied across different Wetherspoon pubs in the same borough. At the five pubs in Westminster, a pint of Guinness varied from £5.64 at three pubs, to £6.14 and £6.64 at other locations in the same borough.
A spokesperson from J D Wetherspoon said: “Wetherspoon aims to offer excellent value and competitive prices to all of our customers at every location, but we do not charge the same prices everywhere.
“This is because the costs of running pubs vary greatly, depending on location.
“Prices are higher in some city-centre pubs, which unsurprisingly have higher costs such as rents and rates.
“For example, our pub in Leicester Square, London, has rent and rates of approximately £1 million each year.
“Many pubs have rent and rates of less than 10% of that amount.”
Wetherspoon pubs with the cheapest pints in London
- Croydon – The Moon Under Water, The Whispering Moon, The Sir Julian Huxley
- Brent – J.J. Moon’s
- Waltham Forest – The King’s Ford
- Enfield – The New Crown
- Redbridge – The Great Spoon of Ilford, The New Fairlop Oak, The Eva Hart
- Hillingdon – The Good Yarn
- Hackney – The Rochester Castle
- Barnet – The Railway Bell
- Harrow – The Village Inn
- Havering – The Colley Rowe Inn
