Cellar to Glass: the perfect pub?
There's one sure-fire way for a company supplying the pub trade to prove wrong licensee critics who say they don't understand their livelihoods. That's taking on your own pub.
Since January, the Oak Tree Inn in Newton-le-Willows, Lancashire, has been the venue for a series of tests on cutting edge cellar to glass technology. Technical services company City Dispense has been running the Punch tenancy as a test-bed for experimental dispense equipment in a bid to achieve what it has brazenly branded 'the perfect pint'.
City, which works with several brewers and pub groups, is treating the Oak Tree as a means to perfect systems before they are rolled out to clients, a showcase of what is possible by keeping, chilling and serving lager to tip-top standards - and the first in what it hopes will eventually be a profitable national pub company in its own right. The Oak Tree's high-tech cellar is used to demonstrate City's services to clients and the company also plans to train its technicians there.
It's out to attract customers, too. Signs around the Oak Tree brand it as "the perfect pub" and its beer as "the perfect pint". The signage specifies the temperature of individual beers.
Along the way City met with resistance from Punch to what the pubs giant saw as risky ambitions for a prime site, perfected cooling technology that can chill lager to icily low temperatures, and achieved a turnover that is around twice the average for Punch's estate.
"We were getting the message that we don't run pubs, so know nothing about it," says business development director Vic Nicholls. "So we thought 'let's find out about it'. We are encountering all the issues our clients encounter.
"We also wanted something to play with. We have everything here and can ask 'does it work? Does it deliver what we believe it will deliver?'
"We have got an insight into things we thought were petty before - for example, parts being delivered hours late. We now think the dispense system should be fully installed three or four days before opening so you can sort out the training."
A massive draught range is found at the Oak Tree bar: Amstel, Beck's Vier, Carling Extra Cold, Foster's Super Chilled, Boddingtons, Strongbow, Leffe, Staropramen, Stella Artois, Heineken, Guinness, Tetley's Extra Cold, Wells Bombardier, draught wine… the list goes on.
A host of technologies are being trialled (see box) that address current issues in pub dispense.
Drinkers, for instance, seem to be demanding ever-colder lager, and the prevalent mood means that temperature is set to be the dominant factor in its sales for some time to come. This is something the Oak Tree is set up to capitalise on through the sophisticated cooling system in its cellar.
The fact that it is instantly adjustable means there is no problem if consumer tastes suddenly change, however unlikely this is. In fact, the Oak Tree can vary its beers' temperature day by day, as Andy explains.
"If the sun was up, we could tweak the temperature, put a sign up outside, and say our beer is served at zero degrees."
Glycol cooling systems are increasingly becoming the norm in managed houses. Removing the need for secondary coolers behind the bar, the technology frees up space and cuts down on a potentially self-cancelling trait of bar-based, fan-style coolers. In many cases, the heat emanating as a by-product from these devices actually warms the pythons.
The latest Brulines dispense monitoring enables the Oak Tree Inn to "map a pattern of consumption to accurately predict when barrels need to be changed," says City's managing director Andy Fletcher. "We drill down into the data Brulines provides, looking at beer temperature, cellar temperature, speed and thoughput."
Brulines data better prepares Vic, Andy and commercial director Grant Giles to monitor sites where their equipment is installed. This can be done remotely via the internet, and helps in examining certain elements without resorting to sending out an engineer.
"We can say to licensees that we can tell from Brulines you have not cleaned the lines in three weeks and ask them to do that before we send out an engineer to look at their fobbing problem," explains Andy.
Much of the kit used at the Oak Tree can be found in the cellars of City Dispense clients, in many cases in less advanced forms. The Extend-a-Clean, however, is the only one of its type.
City's own pub is the perfect environment in which to test and prove such new products before risking them on other licensees, according to Vic.
"We are tweaking things every week," he says. "No pub can have cellar managers trained to the level we are. It's one thing to understand the basics of the system, but another to work out how to get the most out of it."
You might think City's strategy would be a risky one for the Oak Tree's drinkers. Not let in on the test role of the pub, they are unwitting guinea pigs. Grant, though, dismisses these fears. If the Brulines monitoring failed, the pub just wouldn't get any data, he says. If Extend-a-Line stalled, the highly-trained barstaff would notice and clean lines in the orthodox way.
City spent £130,000 on redeveloping the pub when it took over. Of this, £20,000 went on the cellar. Was it worth it?
The throngs of drinkers in there on the mid-week lunchtime I visited suggest the customers think it is, and a sip of the beer tells you what it has achieved. The company itself is happy, too, with how the pub has developed.
"People drink these brands all the time. Now they realise this is what they should taste like," Andy says. "We will be looking to expand this offering to similar pubs in Birmingham and London in the next year. Every time new technology comes out, we can be the first to know about it."
