Five months ago, chef Tom Davies and his partner, Libby Driver, took over the lease of The Village Inn, a pub nestled in Swindon, England. The quaint brick-laden pub had long been a local darling, but on December 4th, The Village Inn had shut its doors for good. Why? Because soaring energy bills had eaten too much of the pub’s profits for the business to have been remotely sustainable.
The Village Inn’s story is not an outlier. Thousands of pubs and restaurants in the UK are facing financial ruin as the ongoing energy crisis continues to drive up operational costs. Nearly half of the 47,000 pubs in the United Kingdom are owned by corporations, and their executives claimed at the end of August that tenants were already giving their notice because they could not afford the energy costs, which are expected to increase by more than fivefold in some cases.
Gas effect
Russia typically supplies around 40 percent of Europe’s natural gas, and since Europe’s entire energy system relies so heavily on this imported gas, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has had catastrophic consequences for European businesses. Prices skyrocketed, volatility in the gas market reached its highest point since the mid-90s, inflation followed, and costs are getting out of hand. There’s no cap on business energy costs in the UK, just like the European Union, which is also reeling from the crisis. To make matters worse, Europe could be running out of fuel altogether in 2023.
A recent joint press conference held by the European
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