Need more advice on how to stock your fridge? Scottish & Newcastle (S&N) has launched www.planyourfridge.com, a web service available to all UK licensees that enables users to create back-bar fridge plans to suit their outlet-type, bar area and region.
The website generates images to use for reference of what your fridge layout should look like to achieve maximum sales.
Based on Nielsen data on bottled product sales across regions and outlet types, the website offers three ways to plan your fridge:
• Ready-to-Go Fridge Plans
• Bespoke Fridge Plans - a fridge plan can be created in a few easy steps when a licensee inputs their fridge size and bar layout
• My Sales - The user can create an optimised plan based on their existing sales and can compare it with the best practice version recommended by planyourfridge.com.
Pilot test results in 250 bars revealed that, on average, retailers who implemented the advice saw back-bar sales increase by up to 10 per cent.
Of course (as outlined on the first two pages of this Focus report), the fridge is only one of many areas to which consumers turn to check out a pub's bottled beer range. S&N has conducted research using cameras strapped to consumers' heads to gauge where their gaze falls as they walk around a pub.
While the brewer and pubco would not divulge precise details of what this revealed, S&N range and merchandising strategy manager Jenni Archibald says it indicated the importance of placing promotional material in areas away from the bar itself.
It pays to display at the Elm Tree
Charles Wells' the Elm Tree in Cambridge, is a pub packed full of initiatives for selling bottled beers.
The pub takes inspiration from Charles Wells' Speciality Beer Houses, a pub concept which began at the Bedford Arms, in Bedford. Here, there is a focus on selling an ambitiously large range of beers through unorthodox techniques such as allowing customers to help themselves to beers from fridges and pay at the bar. The idea is for the concept to be rolled out to more pubs in the estate, with the Elm Tree one of those earmarked.
Wain uses menus, complete with tasting notes, to promote the range. Whenever a new beer comes in, Wain gathers his staff to familiarise them with the brand. Beers entries on the menu are initialled with the names of staff to signal their personal recommendations.
Every so often he runs tasting nights where groups of up to 10 customers pay a set fee to taste a selection of beers. "A lot of people are nervous about spending £5 or £6 on one beer, given they may not like it," Wain says. "However, if they have had the opportunity to trial a few, the likelihood is that they'll find some they are sure they'll like when they re-order."
The pub does not have enough fridges to store the full range of beers, so some have to be kept chilling in the cellar. "The menu mitigates the fact they aren't displayed," Wain says. He even makes a virtue of the necessity of using the cellar by using it as an element of theatre. In general, the more expensive lines are kept down below. "It gives the impression they are getting something a bit special when you have to go off and fetch them," he says.
And making products seem a bit special is worth doing for any category.