Plastic is put to the test

Punch licensee Graham Rowson has undertaken a three-week polycarbonate glass trial at his pub, the Plungington Tavern, in Preston, Lancashire. Below, he shares the results

My pub is a wet-led community public house on the fringe of Preston city centre and within the University of Central Lancashire campus. The clientele is a cosmopolitan mix of various age groups and both sexes.

We sell bitter, lager, stout and cider, plus the usual spirit range and single-serve wines, and average about 450 barrels per year. We offer pool, darts, Sky and various other traditional pub activities.

Our opening hours are very traditional, 10.30am to 11pm Mondays to Fridays and 10.30pm on Sundays. Our motto is to serve a good pint in a clean glass at the right price.

With all the hype, propaganda and scare-mongering about the polycarbonate issue I decided to undertake a three-week study. Polycarbs are not to be confused with the traditional floppy plastic cups often seen at outdoor events. The new breed of polycarbonate glasses are streets ahead.

1 Blanket ban

I contacted the three main police authorities closest to the Plungington Tavern - Lancashire, Merseyside and Greater Manchester.

On no occasion have any of these police authorities insisted on a blanket ban on glass. What they have said is that they would like to see late-night pubs and clubs in the city centre implement polycarbonate as standard, but this is not mandatory.

However, if a venue has a history of glass violence they would, through consultation, make use compulsory. Reading between the lines, the authorities seem to work to the

theory that if you want to profit from late-night drinkers, you may have to be prepared to invest in polycarbonate glassware.

Personally, I think that is not too unrealistic as we all have to invest in our own businesses to attract and keep customers, whether it be glassware or a plasma TV.

2 Cost

l Price of a senator pint glass with head keeper: 65p

l Price of senator pint polycarbonate with no head keeper: £1.50

l Cost to convert to polycarbonate at Plungington Tavern: £960 (without surplus stock)

l Life expectancy of polycarbonate: three years

This is obviously an unacceptable cost for an establishment with no history of glass abuse, not operating late at night.

However, it is quite conceivable that a club could achieve this amount of profit in one night and if one person a year is saved from horrific injury, the high initial cost could be well justified.

3 Range

The polycarbonate range is limited. Generally speaking, the availability is pint and half pints in a few different styles - nonic, senator, tulip, and slim-jim; various styles of wine, champagne, soft drink and spirit glasses are also available. All of these can be supplied government stamped, or in over-sized glasses.

Type of polycarbonate glasses tested: Elite premium range from BB Plastics (visit www.bb-plastics.co.uk for more information).

4 Presentation

Whether dispensed in pints or halves bitter, stout, cider and shandy look and hold their heads quite well. There appears to be no major issues, the drinks coat the polycarbonate glass nicely and the overall visual experience is

satisfactory.

However, lager is a problem as the head fails very quickly and therefore there is no coating of the glass as the drink goes down.

The pint appears flat and still - almost lifeless. Customers start holding their glasses up to the light. The drink tastes OK but looks very poor. I am afraid this is not what my customers want - a tight, 10mm-thick head is necessary on lager.

I understand that in some areas of the country a flat head is required, so you just might get away with it. The side-effects are more detrimental on extra cold lager.

BB Plastics is importing a machine from Germany to nucleate the bottom of the lager glassware to help get around the problem of flat dispensing.

5 Quality

There seems to be no problem with the quality of products in polycarbonates. It neither enhances flavour nor degrades any part of the original properties.

They look fine and are of excellent manufactured quality. They feel good to hold and are kind to the lips when drinking; the edges hold up fine, so there should be no problem with transmission of infections or a build up of germs around the lip of the glass. They are, in fact, a good product.

6 Glass washing

We use a Nelson glass-washing machine with rinse aid and cabinet-class wash chemicals. The machine is about 12 months old in good working order, gets cleaned daily and has a major clean out every 10 days or less.

We placed a senator pint polycarbonate glass in the machine and left it there for three weeks and approximately 850 washes.

The result - very little scuffing on the surface. In fact, the glass was hardly marked at all.

We noted that the polycarbonate glass cooled down extremely quickly, which is great for fast serving, but it did not dry effectively.

Therefore the approved method of dispensing beer in a clean, cold dry glass went out of the window.

You can, of course, dry them with a towel but you may run into cross-contamination problems.

When placed on the shelf to dry naturally the time delay was unacceptable and on a busy night you would run out of dry glasses.

7 Cultural and environmental

Explaining the positive side of polycarbonates to your customers is harder than explaining the smoking ban.

Once you have managed this, customers can see the benefits, but opinions are historically entrenched in the use of standard glassware. Change, to them, is somewhat hard to accept and not all change is for the good.

There is a major problem in the mental attitude of drinkers that needs to be overcome before polycarbonate glasses are openly accepted in pubs.

There is also the added problem of theft - customers want them for home, picnics, barbecues, parties and for their children.

Polycarbonate is not environmentally friendly as it will not bio-degrade. It can be recycled to produce other plastics, but we have it for life, just like nuclear waste.

8 Customer feedback

Although customers appreciate the safety aspects involved, they would only like to see them used in late-night pubs or clubs.

Overall, they were quite impressed with the style and quality of the polycarbonates and would try them again when the nucleation is completed on the newer range of lager glasses.

But not one person could see the benefit of a blanket ban on traditional glassware. Many are fed up with the persistent attacks on our culture. We are British, after all.

Personally, I see no point in a blanket ban.Not only would it be costly to licensees, but it attacks our heritage.

Having spent two weeks on holiday where all drinks were served in plastic cups it was great to come home and have a drink in a proper glass - you just cannot beat it.