On draught or in bottles?
Once a supplier has managed to secure a listing, there is still a debate over whether the beer should be positioned in draught format on the bar or in bottles.
Adin Wener is national sales manager of Specialist Brand Development, which supplies products such as Fruli, the strawberry beer blended with fruit juice, as well as Paulaner, the cloudy wheat beer brewed in Germany. He says: 'Our company is focused much more on draught than packaged products, so all our beers are available on draught.
'It is a much bigger commitment for licensees to sell the beers on draught, but speciality beers are very much a visual thing, so they need to be seen by the customers.
'Having the beer on draught makes it much easier to sell the beer, by offering samples to undecided customers. It can be very daunting seeing a bottle tucked away on the bottom shelf of the fridge.
Hannah Bass, says this is certainly true of the pub she manages the Ebury, in London: 'Having the beers visible at point of sale is very important. It doesn't work having bottles in the fridge, people can't see them.
Charles Wells' sales and marketing director Nigel McNally agrees: 'If you've got two beers on draught, have one premium lager and one speciality beer. It provides a point of difference and shows that you are offering a broad range of beers from around the world.
'By putting a speciality beer on the bar, you can also attract a price premium. We trialled this in a number of M&B bars and found pricing the speciality beer at 20p more per pint than the Stella on draught next to it worked well.
However, Coors which imports Gulpener Korenwolf, a wheat beer, brewed in Gulpen in Limburg, Holland warns that stocking niche beers on draught will not always work. David Preston, director of marketing, premium brands, says: 'You should only offer them on draught if your brand has the consumer base to support a viable weekly throughput. A great range may look good, but if the throughputs are low, you risk serving your customers something that is far from being a speciality.
