Time to help each other
Beer, once our undisputed national drink, is on the ropes. Figures just out show sales fell by nearly 7% in the warm summer months of June, July and August - an unprecedented single-quarter drop. Three of the country's biggest brewers are almost in freefall. Alarm bells are ringing in brewery boardrooms everywhere.
Standard lager, and at a far smaller sales level, speciality beers, are the only categories holding steady - the former because it's cheap, the latter because drinkers need variety. Premium lager, which looked so promising until recently, is really suffering. And so too is real ale.
It's hard to know what brewers can do to arrest this decline, let alone reverse it. Campaigns such as Beautiful Beer are too little too late. The sad truth seems to be that in a mature beer market like ours, drinkers are moving on and seeking something cool and different, with wine increasingly satisfying their needs. As it stands, beer is in danger of becoming terminally uncool.
Bad news for brewers and all those who love their beer - but should licensees be alarmed? Yes, if they are wet-led boozers focused almost exclusively on lager. But not too much if they sell interesting cider, soft drinks and wine that consumers increasingly favour - and have a slick food offer and all-round high retail standards. As Punch showed in its results last week, licensees in tune with changing customer needs can do very nicely. And this augurs well for the new era of non-smoking when licensees must be really sharp to maximise the opportunities in an ever more competitive food-led market.
There is, however, a massive caveat. It's not just that beer sales that are falling. Trading patterns in pubs are also in the middle of dramatic change. This, like beer's decline, is not a new trend - but it's making it difficult for some licensees to predict future trading patterns with any degree of confidence. The best operators are adapting successfully to the shifting visit patterns by pushing up their standards and their offer, while keeping their pricing keen. But the poorest, low-end operators could be doomed to extinction. The only way the average licensee will be able to cope long-term from next summer is by focusing relentlessly on his or her retail standards and offer.
In such a state of flux both brewers and licensees must help each other cope with the changing world they face.
