Just as British pubs are suffering through a nationwide Guinness shortage thanks to renewed popularity among Gen Z drinkers, we find out a truck loaded with 400 kegs of the world-famous Irish stout was stolen from a Northamptonshire depot.
The truckload of 50-liter kegs vanished mid-December, The Guardian reported, its contents roughly equivalent to 35,000 pints of Guinness—pints that will likely still be chugged and sipped until everyone is properly pissed, but now the imbibers’ path to drunkenness will be decidedly less legal than it otherwise would have been.
If you’re wondering what will become of these kegs, we can look toward the surge in high-end cheese heists.
The cheese world has been rocked by a series of high-profile heists in recent years. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of literal cheddar were stolen in the UK. Between 2014 and 2016, around $7 million worth of Parmigiano-Reggiano was stolen in Italy. It’s all because cheese is in high demand and prices have skyrocketed.
All food has gotten more expensive thanks to the post-pandemic lockdown inflation that has affected every country on Earth. Combine increased value with a sharp rise in popularity and all of a sudden you have a thriving black market and massive alcohol heists.
Thieves are raking it in with high-end cheese and it’s safe to assume the missing Guinness will find its way into similar illegal sales. Those stolen kegs will likely be secretly sold to pubs all over England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, and maybe even beyond, to meet demand and take advantage of scarcity.
Diageo, the maker of Guinness, has declined to comment on the theft, and the truck’s current whereabouts are unknown. Diageo is a British multinational alcoholic beverage company headquartered in London with offices all over the world helping to manage its vast empire of big-name liquor brands, including Guinness, Smirnov, Bailey’s, Captain Morgan, Tanqueray, and Gordon’s gin.
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