John Roberts Fuller's
Fuller, Smith & Turner has gone from a company that was, 50 years ago, the butt of a distinctly unflattering nickname from Londoners under-impressed by its beer quality at the time to one of the most widely-admired cask-ale brewers in the country. It is a five-times winner of the Champion Beer of Britain title at the Great British Beer Festival, with its ESB winning the Best Strong Ale category an unmatched seven times in 25 years.
Its flagship beer, London Pride, is now in 10,000 outlets across the UK, helping it to be the fourth best-selling standard cask ale in Britain, according to AC Nielsen (rising from ninth in 2003), with volume up from 80,000 barrels in 2001 to 130,000 barrels in 2004, Fuller's now has an estimated 7% of the cask-ale market, with ESB, volumes up 6% on the year to 2 April and volumes of its specialist Organic Honey Dew ale up 26%.
John Roberts, the company's beer and brands director, believes that one of cask ale's great strengths in the fight to retain and grow custom is its 'artisan quality. 'If you look at the other categories of food and drink, hand-crafted products are in great demand cheeses, bread and so on, he says. 'There is no reason why hand-crafted beers from smaller British brewers can't create similar demand and attain enormous growth. It is up to the main players in the industry to position and promote beers of increasing quality and consistency to fuel potential interest.
Success in the market will mean retaining and rewarding current ale drinkers and recruiting new drinkers, Roberts says. This latter aim will be achieved in part by attractive and relevant new products examples of which, he says, are Fuller's new Discovery Blonde Beer, designed to be served either at standard cellar temperature or, during the hotter months, cooled closer to lager temperatures; and Organic Honey Dew, another beer succeeding in attracting previously non-cask-ale drinkers.
Brewers also need to stimulate new usage occasions for the category, such as beer instead of wine with food, dessert beers and so on. To this end Fuller's conducts a regular series of tutored tastings around its tied estate, with an invited audience of regulars offered food-and-beer pairings designed to get people thinking about something other than red or white wine with their meal.
In 10 years' time Roberts thinks 'the ale market will be very exciting, with dozens of innovative breweries selling quality, well-positioned beers. If the industry focuses on building strong brands as opposed to concentrating on selling cheap beer then there's no reason why these beers can't command a premium price.
Fuller's itself continues to aim for growth ahead of the market. 'We see no limit to our growth prospects in the long term, Roberts says. The company has invested around £6m in the brewery in the past two to three years, buying parcels of property such as the petrol station that stood at the corner of the brewery site hard by the A4 out of London, to give it a little more room, and it will continue to work to increase brewing capacity, Roberts says. Levels of investment are likely to increase over time, he says, and 'we will also invest to increase the quality and consistency of our draught and packaged beers.
