Trade Talk: John Holberry
John Holberry, on-trade sales director for Coors Brewers on the font space given to today's beers.
After several years working in take-home, listening to some great retailers espousing category management philosophies, I felt despite all the long words it boiled down to three things - great, well-displayed brands at a fair price, allied to the single-minded pursuit of quality and service.
It seemed to me when I came back to the on-trade a couple of years ago, that these mantras were just as important in pubs and clubs, but that a history of vertical integration between brand and retailer had got in the way of that simple philosophy and left it without an infrastructure that supported quality.
I really believe that with the variety of initiatives currently in operation, the brewers are trying to recover the position on beer quality through technical service co-operation, cold fonts, branded glasses and quality accreditation.
Now of course, you would expect me to have a pretty strong view on what the great beer brands are - and, I wouldn't presume to tell anyone what their prices should be - however, when it comes to what constitutes a great display I think the rules for sellers are pretty simple, but rarely applied.
When it comes to the way that fonts are allocated in many pubs, certain types of beer do not receive their fair share of space.
Take mainstream lager, for example. Analysis by AC Nielsen in March 2004 showed that even though mainstream lager accounts for nearly half of draught sales and is growing fast, it only has a quarter of the fonts. Even though mainstream lager outsells mainstream ale in the on-trade by 10 per cent, the latter is still given more space on the bar. Meanwhile, premium ale, stout and cider all have more fonts than their draught volume warrants.
With lager now accounting for over two-thirds of beer sales in the UK - and that figure is increasing all the time - you underestimate the importance of lager at your peril.
It's important to get your head around the way the lager market works. At Coors Brewers we forecast that premium lager will soon be outselling mainstream lager in the supermarkets by 50 per cent.
But in the pubs and clubs, mainstream lager will remain dominant, continuing to account for nearly seven in 10 of all pints of lager sold in the on-trade in five years' time. Rates of sale on mainstream lager are increasing slightly, while rates of sale on premium lagers are falling.
So, it's clearly worth making sure you give mainstream lager the space on the bar it deserves. Only a few drinkers switch from premium to mainstream lager at any time, so we'd also advise you stock the biggest brands in your area for each type of lager.
As for ales, stout and cider - of course, they should be featuring on your bar. But my tip for the week is to have a fresh look at your takings on each category and work out if they correspond to the font space you are allocating to them. You might just be surprised by the results.
John Holberry is on-trade sales director for Coors Brewers.
