Cellar to glass: Back to basics

Lester Pyatt strongly advocates adopting good practice to ensure quality service.

If you look at it in footballing terms, which former Shrewsbury Town central midfielder Lester Pyatt is prone to do, the draught beer market is leaking goals through a shoddy defence. Serving a good-quality pint at the right temperature in a clean glass with a head that lasts until the end are the basic disciplines. Getting just one of them wrong is an own goal that can lose you the game - the game of winning customers to your pub.

That was Lester's approach to stemming declining beer sales at Jersey brewer CI Traders, formerly Ann Street, and now he's set up his own company, Omark, to bring his quality systems to the mainland.

Lester had worked with CI Traders for several years, first in its soft drinks division then launching a highly, if briefly, successful RTD for the Channel Islands, before turning his attentions to beer.

CI Traders was rebranding its Mary Ann range of brews but Lester knew that there would be more to reversing falling sales than changing the name. "The defence of draught beer was so poor," he explains. "We carried out a glassware audit and found that 44 out of CI Traders's 52 managed pubs were using Fairy Liquid in the glasswasher!

"The licensed trade is about having a quality leisure experience now. Younger drinkers are looking for reassurance from a brand - a badge - and the presentation of draught beer just doesn't deliver that. That's why, in the 1990s, they turned to PPLs (premium packaged lagers).

"Draught beer needs a stout defence, the right quality foundations, or it will leak goals."

It's not only a more demanding consumer that has put pressure on the trade to do something about raising beer quality, it has been a nagging issue since the emergence of the independent pubcos snapped the organic link with the brewer for most pubs in the UK.

And Lester believes that even vertically integrated regional brewers such as CI Traders have problems driving good practice into the cellar and bar.

"The quality issue tends to slide between technical services, sales and marketing - it's always somebody else's fault. It can only work if everyone acts together to make the quality connection."

That's one reason why, coming from outside, Lester thinks he can make a difference. His first step at CI Traders was to sit down with everyone concerned, encourage them all to take responsibility for beer quality across the estate and get them to support him in his initial audit.

Detailed audit​

This involved a cellar inspection and a mystery visit for each pub, the results being pulled together into a score and presented back to the brewer's team.

That was followed by a more detailed audit, "a total survey of what's going wrong", and a test carried out in conjunction with lager supplier, Coors.

There was a special focus on glassware and glasswashing where Lester guessed most of the problems laid. Not only were glasswashing machines repaired and staff trained to use them properly, each house was given enough branded glassware for every pint served of the test brand, Carling.

Three months later the pubs were audited again and improvements noted - but the most dramatic impact was in terms of sales. In an overall draught beer market declining at the rate of five per cent a year, Carling's sales across the CI Traders estate climbed, year-on-year, by 11.6 per cent.

Interestingly, PPL sales were down by 27 per cent, proving Lester's argument that drinkers were switching from draught beer for quality reasons. "It suggests that people had been drinking their beer through gritted teeth for many years," he says. "Brewers spend a lot of money on marketing but the pint in the glass often doesn't conform to what the marketers are trying to say about the brand. I think they should take five years off while we build the foundations and get the quality right."

In those five years, Lester believes his system can get beer quality 95 per cent right across a pub estate. "It will never be perfect but we can get damn close," he says.

And it will take that long because consistent quality cannot be achieved overnight. CI Traders is continuing to push forward the quality gains it has made by scoring pubs against Omark's standards and establishing a league table with a prize of £2,000 for the champion licensee. It seems as though the football parallels are sticking just as much as the quality controls.

Beer quality audit checklist​

• In the cellar​
  • Cleanliness
  • Tidiness
  • Stock rotation
  • Temperature

Behind the bar​

• Clean beer lines
• Glasswashers
• Product temperature
• Clean nozzles

In the glass​

• Correct pour
• Right glass
• Head retention
• Lacing

Super-chilled beer - is it really necessary?​

Over the past year or so super-chilled beers have been largely responsible for a turnaround in standard lager sales - another sign that drinkers really do respond to quality.

But Coors, first into the extra-cold lager market with Carling, is already seeing the impact tail off, and, for Lester Pyatt, the brewing and pub industries are going to have to work hard on the foundations of quality to secure results into the longer term.

He is, in fact, disparaging about the whole super-chilled phenomenon. "I wish it had never been invented," he said.

"If the industry had spent money on getting beer temperature consistently right in the first place it would not have been necessary."

Three-tier cellar scheme launched​

Leicester brewer Everards has launched a new three-tier BIIAB-accredited cellar management awards scheme as part of its strategy to help lift beer quality.

More than 400 people, from the company's own 160-pub estate and freetrade and pubco accounts, have already successfully completed courses at bronze and silver levels and a gold award is currently in development.

The bronze level is an introduction to beer quality held in-house at the pub and the silver, in cellar and beer management, is held monthly at the Star & Garter at Wigston Magna. The gold award, according to marketing director David Bremner, will be more "gimmicky" and could involve licensees being trained to brew and market their own limited edition beer brand for sale at the pub.

As part of the quality drive, all Everards pub cellars have now been equipped with auto-tilt stillages and its tenancy deals include agreement by licensees for the company to carry out unannounced cellar audits twice a year. If a pub scores less than 75 per cent, issues are put right and it is revisited the following week. Cellar audit scores also contribute towards Everards' incentive scheme for tenants.

"Our quality assurance manager Mark Tetlow is on call to tackle problems 24 hours a day," says David. "He has even been known to answer licensees' queries while he's on holiday."

The combination of initiatives has contributed to a three per cent beer sales growth across the Everards estate against an industry decline of five per cent.