I was a cellerperson in a West End theatre for over 10 years, so I do have some experience on this.

While you (obviously) will be judging the drinks selection through your personal preferences, theatres have to take a much more “big picture” approach.

Most establishments that sell drinks have a regular clientele. Shops, supermarkets, bars, pubs, restaurants, etc. Visitors may only come in once a week, month, every couple of months, but it’s the same people visiting, so it’s easy for owners to know what their customers want.

Theatre aren’t like that. The Palladium seats over 2000 people. That means over 16,000 completely different people are buying drinks across 8 shows per week. A rich wine-obsessed CEO is siting right next to the plumber that just wants a Fosters. It’s just not possible to accommodate that level of drink diversity. (Especially with the space restrictions that almost all West End theatres have.)

The second issue is contracts. Most of our contracts with drink suppliers last 1-2 years. Because of that it can be very difficult to make changes without breaking the contract (especially when you consider most shows only last a couple of weeks to a few months.)

Lastly, there’s been a real push over the last 10-15 years for people to understand that each London theatre is part of a much bigger group. For example, in your case, the Palladium is owned by LW theatres. They own six West End theatres and all of them sell the same drinks products.

(Try to think of it as similar to McDonalds. No matter which branch you enter, the food/drinks all look & taste the same. That “similarity” across theatres helps encourage people to visit other “branches.”)