The Morning Advertiser's free training initiative for reader

Highlights from last month's BS=BP course: Improving your back bar

One of the key messages on merchandising principles from the Better Service = Better Profit day at the Ibis hotel in London was that the back bar is the pub's shop window and, as such, should only feature things that are actually for sale.

So the first action is to make sure the back bar is an effective selling place for the business by getting rid of anything that shouldn't be there. General clutter, such as postcards, staff mobile phones and abandoned newspapers should be found a new home out of sight.

"You should get rid of anything you don't sell," said Keri Ainsworth of training provider ESP. "Only have things there that you are actually going to sell."

Don't overdo your PoS material

Having established that, delegates were asked to think about the "decision corridor", that is the path generally taken from the door to the bar by most customers, along which they'll make decisions about what they're going to buy at the bar.

Along this corridor will be hotspots such aspillars, tables and glass door panels that should be used by pubs for PoS materials to help customers make those buying decisions.

"It's important not to put too much up, though," said Ainsworth, "because we know that people can generally only concentrate on two or three pieces of visual information at any one time."

Discover your bar's hotspots

There are hotspots at the bar too, one of which is the till. If it's on the front bar, some customers will always stand at it because they know the staff always come back to it, and think they will get served quicker if they do.

Once the customer is at the bar, they need to be attracted to the back bar, so it needs to be well-presented and brightly lit.

If the till is situated on the back bar, it will become a hotspot of a different type ­ a focus for the customers' eyes. It was explained to delegates that customers read the back bar from left to right, much like they do a book.

Their eyes will generally scan from left to right and return to a final position just right of centre on the back bar. If the till is in the centre, it can provide a secondary visual trigger to bring the customers' focus to the centre of the back bar. This area can then become an extra merchandising area for the licensee, helping to generate more revenue.

Fastest-selling brands should normally be displayed on Optics at this point. Double-banking brands can also increase the visual impact of this hotspot, as well as making it easier for staff to work the bar and improving customer service by cutting down on waiting times for the highest turnover spirits brands.

It also means that when one bottle runs out, you don't have to lose a member of staff to fetch another bottle, so you can replenish during quiet periods without affecting customer service. The overall image of the back bar can be improved by separating light and dark spirits to create banks of colour and make it easier for customers to make choices.

Where the bar is particularly long, it can be sectioned into a number of sub-bars, each worked by a different member of staff, to avoid them falling over each other as they work.

To make the back bar as profitable as possible it's also important to constantly review which brands are on Optic. Just because something has been on Optic for 20 years, it doesn't mean it should necessarily stay there forever. If it becomes a slow seller, take it off and replace it with a developing line. The more you sell of a spirit the more you need it on Optic for speed of service, and the more it justifies its position as a highly visible brand.

Subtle suggestions of quality

Delegates were also encouraged to think more about cross-category merchandising, or as Ainsworth put it, "making a suggestion withoutmaking a suggestion".

She added: "That's why supermarkets put the dips with the chips, because if they put them in the yoghurt aisle they just wouldn't sell as much of them."

The last piece of advice was to display fresh fruit and ice on the back bar to give customers a quality cue (or indication) about the business. Supermarkets are again a good example of how to do things. "They have fresh fruit and flowers as the first thing you come to, because it tempts the customer in and makes them feel good," said Ainsworth. "If they had Toilet Duck by the door you wouldn't be that impressed. It's the same with hotels. They have fresh flowers in the lobby because it creates a good impression and says something about what the rest of the hotel is like."