Make it easy on the eyes
The Elephant is in a great location. Nestled in the busy bar and restaurant area of Bristol, it is perfectly located to capture the busy daily lunchtime trade of nearby businesses and also the bustling vibrant Bristol nightlife. The Elephant’s offer reflects this with a lunchtime menu and evening cocktail menu both highly visible during my visit at 11am.
And this is the first key opportunity for the Elephant — if you want to appeal to different people at different times of the day and for different occasions then how do you adapt and communicate your outlet and your offer accordingly?
ACTION 1
Improving soft drinks visibility ‘with food’
Soft drinks have the highest purchase incidence of any category with food and 65% of all soft drinks purchases are before 4pm. It is really important that you offer a good range and make it visible to customers to take full advantage of the sales opportunity.
When Ben Bartrip and Sarah Eskins took over the pub, food accounted for circa 25% of the revenue; it now accounts for almost 50%. The pub has cocktail menus on tables and a lunchtime food menu, but no soft-drinks menu, which limits the opportunity to maximise their soft drink sales at this key time of day.
In trials conducted across 250 managed pubs in 2011, Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE) witnessed category uplift on soft drinks of between 5% and 9%, simply by making their soft drinks brands visible to customers on the menus of the participating outlets.
Menu visibility at lunchtime presents Ben and Sarah with a great opportunity to drive penetration and purchase with food.
Action plan
Ben agreed to work with CCE to create a soft-drinks menu to complement the lunch menu. This will be displayed on all tables before 4pm with the option to remain on the table with the cocktail menu during evening hours.
The soft-drinks menu will display brand logos and product descriptions to help improve and widen their appeal to Ben and Sarah’s customers.
ACTION 2
The importance of quality
Alastair Scott, the pub’s official mentor, talked a lot on our visit about the importance of ‘sign-posting’, especially outside the outlet, indicating clearly what your pub is about, and thereby giving people reasons to come in. He also cited small touches inside such as wooden boxes with condiments as a good way to reflect the credibility of the food offering in the Elephant.
Brands and packaging can also help say a lot about your outlet in the same way. Ben was keen to trial Coca-Cola in the 330ml glass contour bottle in addition to his existing post-mix to help signpost a quality message about the Elephant’s offer.
Ben acknowledges the importance of glassware in the serve and provides all of his beers, where possible, in a branded glass as he feels it enhances the quality of experience for his customers. He was keen to mirror this best practice with the Elephant’s soft drinks range.
Action plan
Ben and Sarah will trial branded glassware for soft drinks to enhance the overall quality experience and drive the value-for-money
perception with customers in the same way as for beer.
"I thoroughly enjoyed my trip to the Elephant and look forward to measuring the impact of executing the “brilliant basics” around visibility, range and quality of serve and their appeal to Ben and Sarah’s customers."
ACTION 3
Improving soft drinks visibility at the bar
There is little if no visibility of soft drinks on or behind the Elephant’s bar — with one in four drinks orders in a pub including a soft drink it is not a category that should be “heard and not seen”. Chilled space is an issue for Ben and Sarah, so we reviewed the space currently given to all brands across all categories in the back-bar cooler.
Action plan
Ben and Sarah identified a speciality bottled beer brand that was delivering a poor volume performance and likely to be de-listed, so they agreed to place a selection of popular packaged soft drinks in that prime space. This will help to ensure they have adequate chilled space for packaged soft drinks that are visible to their customers.
