Black days ahead for Big Brewing's dark forces

A couple of weeks ago one of Big Brewing's Dark Lords came up with the idea that the way forward for the UK pub was to benchmark against Starbucks rather than the traditional outlet.

They had to think, he said, like "world-class retailers" whilst brewers had to "start thinking like consumer-goods companies" using the likes of Procter & Gamble and Nestlé as their benchmarks.

They should also be looking to Big Brewing for their standards. Coincidentally, my chairman had appeared in print only a few weeks previously, raising the alarm about an article in The Seattle Times​ revealing an alleged Starbucks plan to sell alcohol through their outlets.

These two drastically different reactions evoked by the same brand name speak volumes about how, on the one hand, regional brewers like ourselves value the pub, while on the other, what kind of fate Big Brewing has in store for it.

Indeed it would be fun to play one of those alternative history games and give ourselves a vicarious frisson of terror with what this Dark Lord's Brave New World could have looked like.

I say "could have" advisedly, because it isn't going to happen. Declining global beer sales show that Big Brewing is losing ground slowly but surely in the mature markets of Europe and America.

Here international consumerism is a dirty word rather than something to be aspired to. There is a real shift in our business towards the small and the regional; to good old fashioned craft-brewing, in fact.

More and more drinkers are realising that this is the only route to getting beers with the quality, variety, provenance and values they crave, and the traditional pub is central to this, making it far more than a great retail experience. Thank goodness society is at last showing signs of valuing the importance of this institution in our world.

Of course the Dark Lords of Big Brewing are going to rabbit on about global companies being the pacemakers in terms of standards and innovation, about the need to turn our pubs into facsimile Starbucks outlets, and brewers to stop thinking like brewers and start thinking like consumer-goods companies instead.

But this is the bellowing of dinosaurs on the verge of extinction. It won't be this year or next year, but it will happen.

Tony Jennings is CEO of Budweiser Budvar UK​