Tied house

The pub itself may be owned by the brewery or pub company in question, with the publican renting the pub from the brewery or pub company, termed a tenancy. Alternatively, the brewery may appoint a salaried manager while retaining ownership of the pub; that arrangement is a "managed house". Finally, a publican may finance the purchase of a pub with soft loans (usually a mortgage) from a brewer and be required to buy the beer from it in return. The traditional advantage of tied houses for breweries was the steadiness of demand they gave them; a tied house would not change its beer supplier suddenly so the brewer had a consistent market for its beer production. However, the arrangement was sometimes disadvantageous to consumers, such as when a regional brewer tied nearly every pub in an area so that it became very hard to drink anything but its beer. This was a form of monopoly opposed by the Campaign for Real Ale, especially when the brewer forced poor beer onto the market from the lack of competition from better breweries. Some or all drinks were then supplied by the brewery, including third party spirits and soft drinks, quite often at an uncompetitive price relative to those paid by free houses. From 1989 to 2003, some tied pubs in the UK were legally permitted to stock at least one guest beer from another brewery to give greater choice to drinkers. == Outside the United Kingdom ==

Canada In Canada, alcohol laws are the domain of the provinces. Tied houses were eventually banned in all provinces in the aftermath of the repeal of total alcohol prohibition. In the 1980s the concept of the Brew Pub or Microbrewery was introduced to Canada beginning in the Province of British Columbia. Through the 1980s and 1990s this concept expanded to other provinces but was not a return to fully tied houses in the traditional sense. Very few alcohol producers or distributors survived prohibition, creating a concentrated market ripe for abuses. For example, in British Columbia in 1952 there were “no licensed restaurants or private liquor stores and only about 600 bars and clubs” compared to “over 9000 licensed establishments, including 5,600 restaurants” in 2011. A proposal to loosen the restrictions was put forward by the government of BC in 2010, in response to these changes, but regulation to implement the law was still under debate in 2012. United States In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, saloons across America were often tied houses, with breweries having exclusive contracts with drinking establishments, including helping business start-ups. Competition was fierce among competing breweries' tied houses within cities. ==References==