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From Bitterol Spritz to Excelsior Lager to the award-winning Perlenbacher Pilsner (named the world's best classic pilsner in 2024), Lidl’s drink dupes have a cult following all of their own. At the moment, you have to scan them through a checkout if you want a sip, but soon there’ll be one place in the UK where you can get Lidl booze on tap. More than year after getting the green light from the High Court, Lidl has officially started building its very first pub.
The budget brand’s inaugural boozer will launch in Dundonald, a suburb of Belfast, this summer. It’s been a long and complicated road to finally get to this point. More than simply a marketing gimmick or an attempt to diversify income, Lidl’s Belfast bar is a bizarre one-off in which, thanks to Northern Ireland’s strict licensing laws, opening a pub is the only way it can sell alcohol.
Planning permission for the supermarket’s boozer was granted in 2020, but Lidl had to pass an ‘inadequacy test’ whereby businesses hoping to sell alcohol must prove that that the existing off-licenses and pubs in the area are insufficient to meet public demand.
Alongside proving a lack of other licensed premises in an area, in Northern Ireland, supermarkets can only sell alcohol by purchasing a license that has been ‘surrendered’ by another business, such as by a pub nearby that is shutting down. Lidl didn’t pass the inadequacy test for a standard off-licence, which means that it can’t sell alcohol in its actual store. But it was able to pass the pub test thanks to two nearby bars closing in recent years.
A local off-license chain brought an appeal against the plans to the High Court on the grounds that it was trying to use an unlawful loophole to operate an off-licence, but it was overturned.
Construction on the pub has now begun. It’ll be able to fit 60 punters at a time and, instead of being inside the new Dundonald store as originally planned, it’ll be in a separate premises just next door. The bar will serve a variety of products from Lidl’s own range of beers, wines and spirits, alongside a few other beverages that ‘promote local suppliers’.
Lidl's managing director for Northern Ireland Gordon Cruikshanks said: ‘After six years in the planning process, we're delighted to today confirm the development of a brand new public house and associated off-sales located adjacent to our Dundonald store.’
Will we see more Lidl pubs to popping up across the UK? Unlikely. Laws for supermarkets in England, Scotland and Wales aren’t so restrictive.
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