Inn World

I was wondering after seeing somebody from over the pond advertising for “beer pumps” on a site recently what the position is regarding American Cask Beer,do they make it?If so do they sell it in Bars?Is there a demand for it.
Every cowboy movie I see always shows thirsty Cowpokes being served very frothy lager like beer.Just wondered…

called for a cellar man the other day to fix my big cooler,i was told that some one would be out in 24 hours.my beer was warm and people stopped drinking.i rang them again and was told the call was in the system.Fxxk the system.somebody came out 6 hours later to tell me the cooler was knackered and that it would have to be changed…bollocks another wait.3 hours later someone else turns up with a new machine and tells me my beer will be cool in about 2hours.what happened to looking after the customer what a load of crap.These service companies think they are doing you a big favour just turning up and that you are less impotrtant than there silly bloody computer systems and crap. ifthere was someone local i could have rang i would have and told them to bugger off.am i angry yes am.

Inn World has been banging it’s drum for a long time about pub groups and their real agendas.The current Enterprise Inns situation is a perfect example and vindicates what we have been saying.

The value of the land pubs are built on has always been the key to pub groups corporate value.It was always going to be heads we win tails you loose.They where never interested in managing pubs,managing property assets is what it has always been about.Look at the high rents,beer prices,the punative leases,the cynical attitude to failing pubs.Their attitude has always been the same,as one licensee quits,they have another sucker lined up with the same old promises,that are never fulfilled.

But things have changed.They have killed the Goose that laid the golden egg, well and truly.They are now running scared and wanting to sell the family jewels to bolster falling profits.Pub groups have been instumental in the almost catacylismic collapse of the pub trade,and are now reaping the commercial wind.

And what about you the landlord of one of these pubs that will be sold off?Sorry guys they say,we are only interested in developiing your pub as a potential building plot,we don’t give a toss about you or your business.And as for that great institution, the British Pub,well who gives a damn.

Still at least there is a sort of honesty with Enterprise Inns in taking off the mask and seeking Real Estate status.Small comfort for anybody whose pub is about to sold from underneath them.

British Pubs are great, unlike our high streets shops and supermarkets that are all starting to look the same because they are all owned by the same people. You enter a pub and they are all different but I fear if Gordon brown has his way they will all disappear.

There is something like four pubs closing every day, so when all the Pubs have gone there still will be binge drinking, and they won’t have achieved anything. Don’t think it is so much the Supermarkets, more so the off licences but then I don’t really know because I don’t hang around there all night.

Then who will say I told you so, but it won’t matter because then it will be too late and they will all be out of power there will be no-one to take the blame, and then it really will be too late.

Britain should consider making the legal drinking age 21 as it has “lost the plot” when it comes to regulating alcohol, policy pundits claim.

Would making the legal age 21 really make any difference to binge drinking, I think not. It would only serve to drive the problem underground and increase the use of social drug taking.

Why don’t they just raise the age to forty-two and be done with it, it would probably have the same impact perhaps you would then not take up drinking alcohol at all. Then you could imagine it coming home from a hard day at work dieing for cup of tea. Doesn’t quite have the same ring about it. Does it?

The UK has one of the worst problems in Europe with a fifth of children aged 11 to 15 drinking at least once a week.

When I was young it wasn’t just youngsters in the Pubs, there were all different age groups. So it then comes to my next question why must there always be change? Why must there always be a major change? Every-time something is changed it affects three or four other factors and so it goes on they change this, then they change that, legislate on this, legislate on that, until you have a complete mess like you have now. Now to get it right they will have to change something else that will affect us all and it still won’t be right.

To get it back to how it was, it was accepted to have a drink was a social occasion for all age groups. The beer would not be as strong as it is now. No Alco-pops Shorts were in smaller measures, Supermarkets selling beer at off-licence prices. The list goes on there have been some enormous changes over the years, but really have we learnt anything. Drinking alcohol should be a social event, like it used to be and like it still is in France.

Customer support!

Here we go. Beer prices have just gone up, trading is still slow and lets face sales aren’t exactly booming. We are all looking for ways to improve our businesses, and make more money.

The question I pose is this, apart from all the other factors that are out of your hands, tax, rent, business rates etc. The price of beer is the key to whether your make money or not. So given that you have no control over that either, do the brewers apart from selling you expensive beer provide you with any other services that actually bring added value to your business.

For instance,

    * Technical services, are they any good?

    * Delivery, does the dray deliver your beer in a way that suits you, and on time.

    * Tele-sales, do they have to be so annoying!

    * Point of sale, do you get any?

    * General after market care for you, does it exist?

    * Once you have bought the beer do they give a damn?

Should these brewing giants step back more and have a good look at how they treat their customers and look at ways of adding more value to your business, and perhaps listen to you the customer more. The phrase we know best springs to mind when talking about brewers. I wonder if they really do?

I would like to ask any managers involved in beer distribution a simple question.How come there are so many empty kegs /casks lying around.I visit pubs clubs on a regular basis and I have to say the ammount of empty kegs lying around is staggering.Most licensees tell me that is hard to get the drays to take empty containers away,almost a reluctance.
I know that some brewers have hived off the keg ownership/management to leasing companies but this makes matters even more strange.Presumably there are too many kegs out there or the keg owners don’t care.We all hear the stories of unscrupulous people stealing kegs and melting them down for scrap,it is almost too easy for these containers to fall into the wrong hands.
Surely the cost of of kegs lying around as well as theft must add considerably to the cost of a pint.
Can I suggest to some enterprising person that there is possibly a good business oportunity here.If you where to get permission from the owners of these kegs to actively collect and return them for a price you could make quite a bit of money and save the brewers a small fortune.Just a thought.

With recent figures showing that beer sales have slumped to their lowest levels since the ‘Great Depression’ of  the 1930s, and government policy being to ever increase the tax on beer what hope is there for the Pub.
Beer sold in The UK carries taxes eight times greater than those in France, 32 pence per pint compared to 4 pence. No wonder then that pub beer sales have fallen by almost half, or more than 5 billion pints. Pubs are now pulling 14 million less pints than they did since the peak thirty years ago , figures from the British Beer and Pub Association[BBPA] showed.

With the soaring  prices of barley, malt, glass, aluminium and energy prices sky high,the brewers who for so many years have made consistently good profits, are now beginning to feel the effects.
The BBPA said that major UK Brewers have seen profits plummet by almost 80 percent, and claimed brewers make 0.7 pence per pint profit, compared to the average 33 pence per pint they pay in taxes.

So what about the people at the sharp end of all this, the pub landlord. Once upon a time if you ran a pub it was a profitable business to be in. The rents were reasonable,the margins good and the lifestyle a good one. Sadly things are not what they where. The continued hike in tax on beer, together with the deregulation of brewery owned pubs has lead to a free fall in the viability of most pubs. After deregulation and the scramble for pub estates by companies who knew nothing about the beer trade the inevitable rent rises began. Pub estates are now viewed as property portfolios. The pub chain is not solely interested in beer sales as such but more the high rent revenues generated by their estates. Because of these factors there has been a huge turnover of tenants over recent years, with people finding it impossible to make a living. The seemingly ever ending line of people wanting to live the dream and run their own pub is now drying up. Where once taking on a pub as a business was a good  idea, now the penny has dropped and most prospective landlords  realise that it is quick way of going broke.

The future of  the pub does not look good. Certainly there will always be pubs that will survive,but equally certainly there are a vast number that will not, which is sad for us all. High taxes and greed, have condemned the great British pub to a slow death.

Go into any pub these days and you will find the bar covered in a huge array of dripping beer dispensers covered in condensation. The Extra Cold taps, the latest gimmick of the Brewers is like stranded icebergs somehow marooned in our bars. You could be mistaken for thinking that even our humble boozer was falling victim to global warming and that these mysterious icy towers were in rapid melt down.

These days everything has to be cold or rather sub zero. There is at the moment an “ice war” being waged between the different brewers, each trying to out do the other, in the race for the ultimate cold beer. Extra Cold Carling, goes head to head with Blisteringly Cold Carlsberg, Frostbite Fosters challenges Ice Station Stella. The Brewery Generals take this “ice war” very seriously indeed. They watch the enemy very closely; it is a war of brinkmanship were the stakes are high. If Carling develops a new ice product then Carlsberg will do the same only even colder. There was an expression back in the days of the real cold war, Mutual Assured Destruction, or M.A.D., as it was known. The idea being what ever you do to us we will do to you. Well it seems the Cold War is back in earnest.

Where will it end? Perhaps when the first casualties of this chilly campaign start suing the brewers for injuries sustained during the drinking of these icy brews. Brewers will have to be seen to show due diligence to their customers by providing thermal gloves and safety warnings, in order to prevent frostbitten hands and frozen lips.

Well, as with all things, what goes round comes round, and as for me well I’m waiting for the return of the good old pint of warm beer.

DM

The Great British Pub

These days it is hard to believe the number of pubs that have closed down or are shut awaiting a new licensee .One has only to walk through any town or village to see once thriving pubs boarded up or advertised to let. What has happened to the Great British Pub?

Before deregulation back in the 90s, to own or run your own pub was seen as a great way of making a livelihood. How many licensees have begun their careers, by envying the landlord down at the local, and wishing that they could do the same .For many who became unemployed during the Thatcher era, it seemed a perfect way to invest their redundancy money and build a prosperous future. Sadly, like a bad pint, that dream was to go sour and for many become a nightmare.

Deregulation, headed by Lord Young, was supposed to free up the beer market, like buses, trains and the coal mines, it promised to give the customer greater choice and make Britain more competitive .The big brewers until then had owned thousands of their own pubs. The big players, Bass, Courage and Scottish and Newcastle who controlled the industry, where forced to sell off some of their pub estates to the highest bidder. Prior to deregulation if you where a Tenant or Manager of a pub, the likelihood is that you could make a reasonably good living. Salaries where good for managers, rents low for tenants.

The Brewers, had some scruples in their dealings with licensees. They also looked after the pubs themselves, with programmes of refurbishment and repair, which kept their estates in good order. However they didn’t do this for nothing, after all, they were in the business of selling beer.

The “New” pub owners where less interested in the welfare of their employees or their tenants A new dawn had begun. Gone were lots of the old ways. No longer was selling beer the only priority, now money could be made from property. Yes, pubs where now seen as capital assets, capable of generating revenue through high rents and other more devious practices. Pub chains where born.

The upkeep of the fabric of the pubs has in a lot of cases passed on, through punitive leases to the tenant. What used to be the responsibility of the brewers, has now been put firmly in the hands of the guy who pulls the pints .For people now employed as managers, the once attractive terms and conditions have been eroded, by increasing hours, staff cuts and more responsibility. The Brewers are now wholesalers to the pub chains, and this has been reflected in higher prices at the bar. Depending on what chain you are with and what sort of a deal has been cut you could be paying a lot more for your keg of beer than the pub does up the road.

All these factors together with a change in peoples drinking habits have brought about an enormous change to the British Pub. As Licensees you are going through a period of enormous change .The beer market is contracting, and pub chains are demanding more and more from their pubs. Something has got to give. The question is who or what?

DM