Dale Vince, club chairman at Forest Green Rovers, explains why being ‘green to our core’ helps tackle operational costs – and why it’s a win for customers too.
To those of you familiar with Forest Green Rovers, you’ll know that sustainability is at the core of everything we do – along with winning football matches, of course.
The club’s identity is rooted in responsible business practice and providing matchday experiences for our fans that support the team and the planet. After 16 years at the club, and the introduction of a long list of initiatives – from going vegan to building a wooden stadium – it can be difficult to find new ways to go greener, but we’re always exploring.
We’re also a business with a bottom line to protect. Every day brings new, complex challenges – especially in non-league – for me and my team to navigate. For this reason, we must ensure any climate-friendly investments also set the club up for long-term stability, growth and success.
We know that the impact we stand to make is significantly smaller if we act alone. That’s why we consider it a key part of our mission to spread the word about what’s worked for us - in and outside of football. One area that has been a notable success is how we’ve addressed the holy grail of the football experiences: the matchday pint.
Pitch perfect pints
Whether you run a pub, bar, hotel, restaurant, or football club, you’ll know that the art of delivering the perfect pint to your customers is becoming significantly harder.
Operational costs are on the rise, competition is rife and punter expectations are – rightly – a higher than ever. One bad pour and you could lose a customer’s loyalty for good. When you’re pouring pints at pace during a matchday rush, the margin for error shrinks further.
So, how do you address this? Well, unsurprisingly, my answer is rooted in sustainability.
When you look at the journey of a pint, the opportunities for wastage are plentiful – be it through energy, leakages or careless pouring. According to research, 860 million pints are wasted per year in the UK.1 You can’t expect to win – with punters or your bottom line – if you’re not addressing the efficiency as your first port of call. It’s a non-negotiable.
We’ve found that a great pour starts long before the product reaches the glass. By investing in a high-quality, sustainable dispense system, you can reduce product waste, minimise operating costs and deliver more consistent quality with every pour, protecting your margins while giving customers a better, greener experience.
With more consumers increasingly likely to consider sustainability in their purchase decisions – 69% in 2026 vs. 65% last year – it’s a win-win for hospitality operators.2
Fortunately, when evaluating our own operations, we quickly found the perfect partner to ensure we could deliver cold, crisp, climate-friendly pints to our supporters.
A green partnership that delivers
As mentioned earlier, it’s becoming increasingly hard for us to find new ways to improve the efficiency of our matchdays, given the great strides we’ve made in the last 16 years.
So, a few years back, when we realised the potential wastage reductions that could be made with our matchday pints, it set the ball rolling. From that point, in 2025, we made our first call to Heineken SmartDispense®, made the decision to install their system and haven’t looked back.
The most important aspect of this decision was that we progressed with a partner that matched our values and demonstrated true sustainability by design. Of course, we also needed to make sure that our investment would guarantee consistent, quality pints for our fans.
I was immediately impressed by SmartDispense® and their team of dedicated engineers that carried out a seamless integration into our existing infrastructure – along with regular and holistic maintenance support over the past year.
The technology itself provides a robust suite of efficiencies from the cellar all the way to the pump, protecting our bottom line, and significantly reducing waste across product, water and chemical, saving up to 18,000 pints a year for a ten-tap outlet on a three-pint pull.
Football and pints are a time-honoured pairing. But the matchday rush presents us with both an opportunity and a challenge. Behind a spike in sales is a team of hard-working staff and a back-end operating system under increased pressure to deliver quality at scale.
SmartDispense® has been our silent partner, lightening the operational load and taking care of the pints themselves so my team can focus on making it a seamless match day experience for fans.
A more efficient system is certainly a business win – but when higher yields can mean more top-quality pints in hand for our supporters while the game is on, it’s a win for our fans too.
Sustainable practice without sacrificing margins
Over the years, we’ve invested blood, sweat and tears into making our club and matchday operations the greenest in the world.
I’m passionate about sharing what’s worked for us with other business leaders because real change requires a collective effort and we can only have a limited impact alone.
If there’s one thing I want like-minded publicans and operators to take away, it’s that sustainable business practice doesn’t have to mean sacrificing margins. Finding the right partner that truly understands the unique challenges you’re facing and can tailor solutions to help your business succeed is what SmartDispense® does so well.
Calculated as follows - for a 10 tap outlet on a 3 pint pull the outlet could see the following savings:
● Water 8,300 pints
● Beer and Cider wastage 1,559 pints
● Gas CO² 8,230 pints
● Chemicals 41 pints
● Total 18,130 pints
Find out more about what a SmartDispense® solution could look like for you.
Author: Dale Vince, club chairman at Forest Green Rovers
References
1. Research carried out by Avani Solutions, reported in Food Manufacture, April 2025.
2. Sustainable Retail Barometer: 2025 UK Edition. Bearing Point. March 2026.
