Day in the life: Her Brothers' keeper

This is a crucial time for Brothers Drinks, and the company needs good people steering the cider brand, as it bids to develop its presence in the pub.

It's a good job, then, that company founders the Showering brothers have Danielle Jones (pictured, straight hair) as a business development manager. She works with Lucy Broadley (wavy hair) of sales, marketing and commercial management company Windfall Drinks.

While Lucy handles selling to wholesalers and directly to local managed house groups, such as Butcombe and St Austell, Danielle is more concerned with managing the brand on an individual pub basis. She works with licensees to maximise the money they can make from the brand and develop the sponsorships which have proved so crucial to Brothers over the years.

Of course it all began with the sponsorship deal with which Brothers earned its cult status. After getting involved with the Glastonbury festival in the 1990s, the cider became music fans' favourite. Now, it is all about expanding to become a genuine force to be reckoned with in the booming cider market.

So what does Danielle get up to in a typical working day in Bristol?

9:00am

Emails, phone calls and contact reports

For Danielle, the day begins with catching up with emails and answerphone messages. Spending a lot of time out on the road, driving long distances to visit accounts, she really needs to keep on top of this. Yesterday was a particularly long one - a six-hour round trip to Cornwall.

She also spends time filling in the all-important contact reports. These bits of admin record what happened in each meeting and keep track of points to follow up on.

11:30am

Meeting with commercial manager of Daybrook House Promotions at Thekla, one of the company's sites

Brothers flags erected by Danielle flutter in the wind on the top deck of this bar-on-a-boat. With Thekla being a large-capacity student-orientated nightclub and music venue, it offers perfect sponsorship opportunities for Brothers.

This was a summit to discuss the renewal of the company's sponsorship of Thekla's student night, under which Brothers pays to subsidise the printing of flyers and a price promotion on the brand. The resulting boost to both volumes sold by the bar and profile among this key target market for Brothers has been well worth it so far.

The talks focus on the exact price promotion that Daybrook will run. How will it compare to the two-for-£4 deal applied to Magners? Can the bar managers achieve the 50 per cent margins they are aiming for with each case of Brothers sold under the promotion?

With the bar group calculating it will only get a margin of 42 per cent at the present price tabled by Danielle, she offers to consider the demands before another meeting.

1:30pm

Trade visit to Kensington Arms, and sales meeting

It's time for a business lunch, during which Danielle and Lucy discuss what came out of the morning's meeting. The lunch venue is chosen carefully, for it's another Brothers account.

This food-led pub doesn't immediately leap out at you as somewhere that would have a big Brothers customer base.

However, the licensee reveals that Brothers has been representing 12 per cent of the Kensington Arms' wet sales. This is not through heavy promotion, as bold point-of-sale (PoS) material would not be in keeping with the pub's design. What the Kensington Arms does take a fresh delivery of, though, is Brothers pens. They come in useful at its weekly quiz.

With talk turning back to Thekla over lunch, Danielle and Lucy resolve to meet Daybrook in the middle. "We may give him £1 off a case, but we won't subsidise it to the point where they can offer two bottles for £4 and make the margins he's after," Danielle decides.

They also decide to push the group harder to take on more varieties of Brothers. "This is a big strength of ours," Danielle explains. "We can say 'if you're selling lots of apple or pear cider, why not stock our lemon or strawberry?'"

3:00pm

Trade visit to the Scotchman

Lucy knows this Punch Taverns pub well - she used to be the licensee here. She and Danielle should be in a good position, then, to advise John Murphy, the licensee of this big cider stockist.

"The reps we liked were the ones that gave you time to think, rather than pushing you to take their product there and then," says Lucy.

Taking this approach, the two Brothers representatives check up on how much of the brand has been sold at the Scotchman since their last visit. John is concerned, following the duty increases, about having to raise his prices. They discuss ways for him to avoid "pricing myself out of the market".

The pub could do with more PoS and, again, Brothers pens are well received. "Our quiz is sponsored by Barclays - I'm having to go into the bank so often to stock up on pens," John jokes.

4:00pm

Trade visit to Racks

Here, the licensee has been having difficulty getting hold of Brothers in small enough quantities. A bar that sells more spirits and wine than beer and cider, Brothers sales at Racks still mean it is worth stocking. But the bulk quantities of it supplied by many wholesalers makes it not very affordable and creates storage problems, the licensee explains.

Danielle replies that a call to Booker may be the answer.

After fetching in some bar runners from the car boot, it's the end of another day at 5.30pm. There's not much rest for Danielle though - tomorrow holds a long drive to see another set of pub accounts.