Rapport with your customers is crucial

18-Apr-2013 - Last updated on 12-Mar-2017 at 02:57 GMT

Jennings: "We can’t escape the fact that the pub trade is absolutely central to our culture"

I must declare my admiration for Bridget Ware, the new host of the College Arms, Hall Green, Birmingham. For one thing, this is the first time that this 75-year-old has taken on a pub, writes Tony Jennings.

That in itself shows chutzpah of a rare order, but what I really admire is her business philosophy, which is, to use her own words, “to establish a rapport with the drinkers to make sure that the business booms”.

That’s a task anybody who runs a successful pub has to be on top of. No rapport means no regulars and without a core of these you haven’t got a business. That goes for anybody in the supply chain en route to the pub.

At Budvar we realise the importance of this by always being prepared to go the last mile for a stockist and getting as many of them as possible, including their staff, to come and see what our brewery and philosophy is about. That not only makes for great on-going rapport but good business as well.

We have also found that getting involved with the Publican’s Morning Advertiser in programmes such as the Top 50 Gastropubs and the Great British Pub Awards also hits the spot.

Strangely enough, a great swathe of the pub trade doesn’t seem impressed by the rapport thing when it comes to reaching their customers. I suppose this is what has prompted the ever prescient Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) to approach the problem from the all-important drinker end with a research programme to find out what consumers expect from their pubs.

It shows just how bad things are on this front when the trade’s biggest consumer group has to do its crystal-gazing for it.

And CAMRA is so right to be concerned. Notwithstanding how many premises have bitten the dust in recent times, we can’t escape the fact that the pub trade is absolutely central to our culture.

For instance, it was some earlier CAMRA research that showed one in four couples met in a pub and one in three use the local for weddings, funerals and family knees-ups.

I bet Bridget has clocked this because her rapport idea that inspired this piece comes from a woman who has been in the pub trade for 55 years. So you can be sure that she knows what she is talking about — nobody can teach this great grandmother to suck eggs.

Tony Jennings is chief executive of Budweiser Budvar UK