Brulines. Mention the name of the country's leading installer of beer dispense monitoring technology and many of the nation's licensees come out in hives.
In recent years pubs up and down the country have resonated to a chorus of disapproval over what many licensees see as the 'spy in the cellar', a technology they assert calls into question their professional integrity.
Their landlords, the pub operators, predictably have a different view on what Brulines' 'edisBOX' technology offers. Nevertheless, the ability to monitor the beer tie remains a contentious issue.
Brulines now has 18,000-plus pubs on its books, with clients including Enterprise Inns, Punch Taverns, Admiral Taverns and Marston's. Systems cost around £1,500 per unit with monthly running costs coming in at £40, depending on the data required.
The group is quick to stress there is more to its product portfolio than equipment designed to keep tabs on the tie. It points to a new range of products, notably a quality monitoring system, currently being rolled out.
So will the critics come round to seeing technology as a useful piece of kit, capable of improving a pub's trading performance?
James Dickson, Brulines' chief executive, reckons so. While he admits it has been a long haul, he believes the group is now starting to win the battle for the hearts and minds of tenants across the country.
"When I joined Brulines [in 2003] there weren't many people out there who saw us as anything but the bad guys," he says. "But we're starting to see more and more positive feedback."
Dickson is up for challenging the received wisdom concerning his company's products. Brulines wants to be seen as a business facilitator, rather than just a tie enforcer, he says, with its recently introduced customer service charter evidence of its commitment to high standards.
False accusations
But tenants are a feisty, independent lot and are particularly quick to shout about what they see as miscarriages of justice, especially if they believe they've been unfairly accused of buying out.
Dickson points to a 100 per cent success rate of 218 injunctions taken out against tie-breaking licensees since August 2004 and stresses the integrity of Brulines' audit processes. But mistakes do happen, as The Publican reported last October when Union Pub Company (UPC) tenant Phil Turner-Wright was threatened with court action over what later appeared to be faulty data.
At the time, Dickson identified "a very basic internal communication failure" as being the problem. The issue was finally resolved with UPC and Brulines apologising to Turner-Wright.
Pub groups are aware of the bad publicity that can result from a mistake. "Our position is to be totally convinced of the data's accuracy before going to court," says an executive of one Brulines client.
He concedes that errors occur, but claims they number only "a handful", and points to a growing number of licensees who use the system to run their pubs more profitably.
With the number of installations growing from 5,000 to around 18,000 in four years and 45 full-time engineers now servicing pub estates across the country, Dickson reckons the equipment is achieving its aims. "If it wasn't, people wouldn't buy our systems or replace them," he says.
He prefers not to be drawn on the percentage of tenants who may still buy out, as do the operators. Instead of focusing on buying out, he argues for transparency in the running of pubs. "I want pubs operating on a level playing field," he says.
"That affords the business development managers the opportunity to help the licensee improve the business in their pub, rather than [just] preventing buying out."
While there has been resistance historically to the systems his company sells, he believes the evolution of the industry means more people will recognise what it has to offer, another point with which pub groups concur.
"The face of the UK pub trade is changing," Dickson says. "There are more new entrants with skills in other areas who appreciate the power of the information we can give them. They'll have had similar data in a previous career, are web-aware and can see how it can be utilised."
There to help licensees
A pubco executive agrees: "We don't have as much of a fight [getting it into pubs] as we used to. Those challenging the technology are older hands, while newcomers understand its aims and are more open to it."
While acknowledging that landlords want the technology to keep tabs on beer supplies and sales, Dickson says there are more strings to Brulines' bow than just being what might be termed 'the pubcos' grass'.
"The products we're developing are there to help licensees," he says. "They can have automatic real-time data downloaded to a laptop in their pub. They can see what's going through the pipes and compare that with what's going through the tills."
Staffing levels, font usage, cellar temperature and line cleaning regimes can all be assessed automatically and problem areas flagged up, notes Dickson.
"If you're a proactive licensee and you've got that quality data you can market yourself to brand owners to ensure you get promotions," he says. "You can demonstrate you are implementing promotions and not just pocketing the support."
When it comes to growing Brulines itself, Dickson points to around half of the tenanted pub sector that has yet to fit its edisBOX. "There are systems upgrades and new business to go after," he says, pointing to nearly 130,000 pubs, clubs, bars and hotels in the country that could benefit from the services the group can provide.
Grand plans
"The growth has been in the tenanted side of the trade and that's given us the wind and the space to develop other products and accumulate scale," he says.
"Our goal is to have penetration across every sector of the licensed on-trade. While we don't see enormous growth from freetraders, we want to have products available for operators who are switched on. If they pick up an extra pub or two it can help them with the controls they need."
So much for the long term future. For now, the City awaits with interest Brulines' maiden full-year results on June 17. A recent successful flotation on the Alternative Investment Market "gives us more credibility and profile", says Dickson. And it means the group will be under more scrutiny and more pressure to deliver than ever before.
With Dickson and his executive team locked in to retaining their stakes in the group for another three years - and anticipating year-on-year growth of 20 per cent for the same period - one suspects they will welcome being under the microscope.
And while the same might not be said for many of the tenants whose pipes are being monitored day and night by its equipment, Dickson and his team are working on changing that side of things too.