Ravintoloitsija earns 40 cents from a 10-euro beer

About 40 cents of a 10-euro half-litre beer served in a Finnish restaurant goes to the operator, according to calculations by the hospitality industry group Maran.

Maran, which represents restaurants and bars, said the remaining share is split roughly equally between taxes and payroll costs, leaving the operator with roughly 4 per cent of the price.

Alcohol sales in restaurants have fallen sharply since 2000, when they accounted for more than half of total revenue. Last year they contributed just over a quarter, Maran said.

Maran chief executive Timo Lappi cited rising alcohol taxes as the main reason for the decline. Since 2008 the government has raised alcohol duty 11 times, most recently in January when taxes on wines and other fermented drinks above 2.8 per cent alcohol rose by about 9 per cent on average.

All alcohol taxes are now tied to an index that automatically raises duty by 1.4 percentage points each year. The Finnish Tax Administration sets the exact rate annually.

For a 10-euro beer, taxes amount to about 2.86 euros, Maran said.

Lasse Pipinen, chief executive of the Finnish Breweries Association, said Finland is by far the most expensive country in Europe to drink beer. He compared Finland with Sweden, where the tax on beer converted to 100 per cent alcohol is 20.66 per cent, compared with 36.71 per cent in Finland.

“Taxation is almost double,” Pipinen said. “Who would ever have believed Sweden would be the beer-tax paradise for Finns?”

The latest tax increase left alcohol duty about 100 million euros short of the government’s budget forecast for last year, he added.

Marko Hirvonen, drinks and food manager for Pirkanmaan Osuuskauppa, which runs restaurants in the Tampere region, said the industry aims for a 4 per cent margin on beer sales and acknowledged that achieving profitability requires additional revenue streams such as food or events.