I suspect the problem was that they didn't realise the extent to which gweilos are happy to drink without eating. The $10 cider was probably put there to bring in people who they thought would eat, and it probably works quite well for the lunchtime crowd (which was entirely local apart from us 3 gweilos), but if, say, a gweilo rugby team descended on the place then they would drink barrels of stuff at $10/pint without buying much else, which would blow holes in the business plan because $10 is pretty much marginal cost I would guess.