Greene King offering free drinks to tackle loneliness

The offer comes after a study into how community ties have changed since 2020, conducted by the pub company, revealed almost half of Brits had felt lonely once a week or more since lockdown ended while 17% said a strong sense of community spirit was lacking in their area.

Greene King has aimed to support communities in battling these issues by offering customers who bring their neighbour with them to the pub, and use the codeword ‘neighbour’, a free drink when visiting one of the 564 participating sites between 3p and 9pm on the day.

Bring people together 

The offer can be redeemed on selected drinks including Ice Breaker Pale Ale, a single Beefeater London Dry, Pink Strawberry or Blood Orange gin with Schweppes tonics and selected soft drinks including a regular glass of draught Coca-Cola Zero Sugar.

Greene King local pub Marketing director Andrew Gallagher said: “We wanted to start the new year by helping locals to rekindle the feeling of togetherness which has been lost since the pandemic was at its height.

“Local pubs sit at the heart of the community, and we know many people are having a tough time at the minute, which is why we want to bring people together, to enjoy a drink on us.”

In addition to this initiative, the operator has also relaunched its Tub2Pub appeal for a third year, encouraging customers to recycle empty plastic sweets and biscuit tubs at one of its 1,600 participating sites throughout January and until 19 February.

Great initiative 

The Greene King pubs will act as drop off points for people to leave their containers, as they cannot be easily recycled in kerbside collections, saving them from landfill and instead take to recycling specialists, Co-cre8, with last year’s Tub2Pub scheme saw 24,000 tubs saved from landfill.

Additionally, money raised from the sale of the resulting granulated plastic will be passed onto Greene King’s charity partner, Macmillan Cancer Support.

Greene King supply chain director Vance Fairman-Smith said: “Tub2Pub is simply a great initiative as we all need to play our part in tackling waste. As a company we’re constantly working to support our communities and are committed to reducing the impact on the environment.

“January and early February is an ideal time for our pubs to act as community collection points as millions of these tubs are sold over the festive season.”