Profit from Beer
Remember how you felt when your dad told you it was time the stabilisers came off your bike? In a function room above a pub in Slough it was just like that for the licensees who had come along for Punch Taverns' new Profit Through Beer course. You could almost hear the jaws hit the tables and the faces turn white when trainer Jay Pearce dropped his bombshell.
"My aim is that by the end of the day you will remove all the drip trays from your bar. Your staff will look at you as if you've got three heads. 'I'll get wet,' they'll say. 'Not if you do it right,' you'll say."
They all looked at Jay like he had three heads.
"One licensee I know puts a plastic duck in the drip trays and tells the staff it mustn't be allowed to swim," he offered, as a not entirely convincing alternative.
Aimed at newer licensees
Whether the attending licensees would go back and rip out their drip trays or invest in plastic ducks it was hard to say. But there was no doubt that Jay had got his point across. A lot of beer is wasted unnecessarily through poor practices, and that means a lot of money licensees can't afford to throw away.
Profit Through Beer is a spin-off from Profit Through Quality, Punch's series of day schools aimed at newer lessees, and it already seems to have met a need at the sharp end - in the first couple of months, 1,000 lessees and key staff had booked a place on the course and 700 had attended. Feedback showed that 97 per cent of them had found it of value.
"We've had a brilliant response," says Punch head of training Jacqui Grundy. "In fact, we are laying on extra courses in October to meet the demand."
There are incentives. You come away with a book that goes into what you should have learned in more detail, a DVD to help you train staff, a marketing calendar to help you plan events and a cellar card to maintain beer quality - the kind of vital tool brewers used to supply.
"But it's really about the Action Plan, the ideas that our customers can take back into the business and use to increase their sales," she says.
It's the Action Plan, a step-by-step guide to reviewing your beer business and making changes that can improve your profitability, that structures the training. By the end of the day, each attendee will have completed a simple two-sided form they can take back to their pub and hopefully implement, with the support and encouragement of their business relationship manager.
They will look at everything from how their choice of brands can encourage the customers they want into their pub, through to how to achieve the quality those customers demand, what price you should charge and how to market your beer offer.
What's interesting about Profit Through Beer is that it recognises that for all the talk about pubs having to find alternative sources of income through wine, cocktails, food or whatever, for the vast majority beer remains the key to a successful business.
"Beer is still the main profit stream for pubs," Jay, an experienced publican himself, told the audience. "But the market has now been in decline for three years. People are visiting pubs less often, and 54 per cent feel the drink they've been served is poor value for money. This course is designed to address that."
