The range of speciality spirits can appear bewildering at first, but with a little know-how they present pubs with a great opportunity to boost profits. Nigel Huddleston reports
Every month sees a new batch of genre-bending spirits launched on to the UK market. Buoyed by the cocktail revolution ushered in by the style-bar boom, suppliers large and small are coming up with quirky and esoteric drinks that they hope will capture the imagination of the trade and consumers.
At the same time, liqueurs with centuries of heritage are shedding their after-dinner images and trying to grab a piece of the modern-day action.
For pubs it's a tough call about which of these products to list, if indeed they take any at all, because they carry an element of risk and often take venues out of their comfort zone.
But, as the brand case studies overleaf show, by careful selection of products there are decent margins to be made. Pubs just have to make sure the way they serve them is simple for customers to understand, easy for staff to make, and that the drinks contain a limited number of ingredients to keep the retail price realistic.
Long Island Ice Teas at a tenner a time are fine in a flash bar in the West End of London, but they're not going to go far in many mainstream pubs. Upmarket spirits, however, needn't be the preserve of style bars and some brands have even been built up in the pub trade.
Success story
The Italian liqueur Tuaca was first imported to the UK by licensees at the St James Tavern in Brighton after one of them discovered it on a snowboarding trip to Colorado, the heartland of its US sales.
After it became popular with regulars, they began selling to other pubs and bars, and city-wide distribution hit 98% within a few years, based on simple shot serves and the bespoke Tuscan Mule cocktails.
Staggeringly, CGA Strategy reported earlier in 2007 that some venues in Brighton were selling in excess of 30 bottles a week.
The brand is now rolling out across the country having been absorbed into the portfolio of Bacardi Brown-Forman, with Bristol, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham
and Edinburgh on the hit list for this year. Senior trade marketing activation manager at Bacardi Brown-Forman Brands Emma
Stevenson says those cities have been identified as having the potential for a new brand such as Tuaca in pubs and bars.
Stevenson says: "In Brighton, the success has been based on it being a local brand that's seen as something special to do with that place - that's what we need to replicate in other cities outside of London. London is a hard nut to crack because every brand focuses on it."
So, if Tuaca can be such a success for pubs, why can't brands such as Midori and Grand Marnier do the same? UK marketing manager for Grand Marnier Pierre Garbolino says brands are starting to gain confidence.
He says: "We have seen double-digit growth for Grand Marnier in the first quarter of this year. While most is contributed by style bars, pubs are beginning to make an increased contribution because they want to grab a slice of the action associated with cocktails."
Developing a cocktail menu
Grand Marnier brand ambassador, the cocktail guru Jamie MacDonald, has created a pub cocktail menu of drinks containing no more than three ingredients that can be found behind the bar in most pubs (see panel).
A classic brand like Grand Marnier might be relatively easy to accommodate, but when you're faced with a range of 19 cocktail spirit ingredients, as you are with the Volare range from Hi-Spirits, where exactly do you begin?
Hi-Spirits managing director Jeremy Hill says the company is trying to promote a "modular approach to cocktail making", to make them accessible to pubs with little cocktail experience.
Hill says: "If you start with the most common of the 19, which is Blue Curaçao, you'll be able to make five cocktails. If you then added Green Melon - our best seller - to your range, you'd be able to make up to nine cocktails. Add triple sec and this could go up to 14. The point of all this is that if you want to make a list of six or seven cocktails you can do so with the addition of just a few products to your existing back bar of basic spirits."
He argues that this type of knowledge could become even more crucial after 1 July.
"Liqueurs could become more prominent for pubs after the smoking ban. Pubs have got to start thinking more about drinks that they can market alongside food, and brands like our own Volare triple sec or Cointreau are going to be important sell-ins as liqueurs with coffee after a meal.
"There's also more potential profit because a lot of these products are at 16% to 22% abv, which means the duty element is less than for full-strength spirits."
Senior brand manager for De Kuyper at First Drinks Brands, Anthony Habert, agrees that "there is an opportunity, and it's all down to the margin on the products", and adds that simplicity of offering is key for pubs.
"It's got to be a clear offering, with cocktails that are quick to prepare, and have a clear price and where the customer understands what they are," Habert says.
He argues that the greatest obstacle for pubs could be the tendency to over-complicate things. He suggests using the company's in-the-spirit.co.uk website to source serving ideas and taking a DIY approach after that.
"All it takes is someone with a calculator to sit down and work out from the recipes on the website how much they would cost to make, bearing in mind that you can make use of what you've already got behind the bar.
"Also, get the selection on the front of the bar for people to see, using your printer and laminator just as you would for food menus. Or get a chalkboard and some coloured chalk and mix it up with some water so it looks like paint - but whatever you do make it simple."