Renata Pankova: 'Big brewers of perfidious Albion maul the trade'

Recently I have been able to satisfy myself that these two national traits, first observed by fellow Continentals, are alive and well.

There's no doubt about it that when it comes to big shop keeping, like multiples and super stores, the British are numero uno. Forget all their undoubted know-how about things like loss leaders and foot-fall drivers and so on and just focus on the way they seem able to get their big suppliers to sell them product for next to nothing or maybe less than nothing.

I am talking of course about the incredible offers on big brand beers that have been selling through them recently for as little as £9 a case of 20 440ml cans. If you calculate how much that leaves the brewer after duty and VAT have been paid you will realise that we really have entered Looking Glass land.

I am in no way condemning the multiples for this. In fact it just goes to show what superbly professional operators they are. Good luck to them and may their bottom lines ever prosper. It's the big brewers who agree to supply at these prices that I worry about. Not because they seem to think that the laws of economics are suspended when negotiating with a multiple but because of the harm they are doing to the already badly mauled pub trade, which incidentally they also supply and which probably provides them with their best profit sector.

For operational sanity we in the business divide ourselves between the "on" and the "off" trade but consumers don't see that difference. What they do see is an insulting rip-off, with a beer that costs maybe £2.50 in the pub costing pennies in the supermarket. That's not the kind of situation from which brand loyalty is built.

Now that isn't the publicans' fault or the multiples' fault, rather it's down to big brewing, and this is where I get onto the Perfidious Albion bit. Have you observed how all these vastly discounted brands are all signed up to the "Drink Aware" program and yet here they are more or less giving the stuff away to be consumed heaven knows where, but certainly not in the civilised environment offered by a pub. If that isn't perfidious I don't know what is.