Map reveals cheapest pints of Guinness in the UK
Around 6,500 venues have had their costs assessed and collated into a map showing how much visitors will need to pay for a pint of Guinness in pubs in the UK.
The data, which was obtained over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend, was gathered by an AI bot via a phone call. The bot, named “Rachel” asked each establishment how much a pint of Guinness was.at the pub.
Geographical price difference
The prices were then added to the “Guinndex”, drawing up a map showing that a pint of the Diageo-owned stout brand would cost £10 if bought at a pub in Maldon but as little as £2.50 in a Wetherspoons pub based in Sittingbourne.
The Guinndex also revealed that the average price tag of a Guinness is now £5.82 and highlighted that in London pubgoers would likely pay £6.72, while drinkers in Scotland would only need to spend around £5.20 for a pint of ‘the Black Stuff’
According to reports across the national press, the map illustrates how the North-South divide can be seen in the ‘Guinness equator’ line, where the average price of a pint anywhere below Oxford, Cambridge and Norwich sets people back £6.18, which is reported to be at least 73p lower than in the south.
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Inflation and AI assessments
After an Ireland-exclusive version of Guinndex was published earlier this month, the UK-wide map came out this week with the AI bot “Rachel” having been built by software engineer Matt Cortland.
Cortland told the national press that that the idea for Guinndex emerged following a Dublin bartender telling him that his pint of Guinness would set him back €7.80 (£6.80).
He explained: ‘You can literally go two streets over and pay €6.20, so it didn’t make any sense.’
Cortland admitted that he felt compelled to make the Guinndex after discovering that officials had also stopped charting the price of a pint of Guinness in 2011. Back then, the price of a pint of stout was said to be €3.93, so he felt that for it to then reach €7.80 meant people needed to recognise how much prices change.’
Cortland created Guinndex with Irish AI researcher John Fleming and admitted that as few as 4% of UK bartenders and pub landlords who picked up the phone actually knew that they were speaking with an AI bot.
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