Mark Daniels: Real Beer, on a Real Pump please...
Wells & Young's launched an innovative new font for their Bombardier cask ale last week, amidst fanfare and brouhaha that it could lift sales of their beer by 20%.
And I have to say, at first glance, I quite like it.
Certainly, in town centre bars where lager sales dominate - and the shiny, dripping wet fonts postulate - I can see a hand pump like this doing well for their beer. The pictures show a classy, modern hand pump being operated by a pretty barmaid and in busy bars where plasma screens bombard you with constant widescreen images of footballers, I suspect the site of such bar staff pulling seductively on big handles will do no harm for the image of bitter whatsoever.
Indeed, when Greene King launched their new IPA font earlier this year - complete with its nifty North/South option and pump-handle biased to right-handed staff only - a similar estimation of increased sales was hypothesised.
These new pumps, resplendent in shiny chrome and a twenty-first century appearance, wouldn't look out of place being pulled by a beautiful Bajoran barmaid in a bar aboard the Starship Enterprise.
I think they're great - until you're standing behind the bar, serving. It's like being in a high-tec, five-star prison, trying to move pints around between glittering fonts all jostling for the attention of the customer.
More than once I've managed to catch a pint glass on the edge of one of the towering pumps as I've attempted passing it through to a customer, resulting in spillage that I've then had to top up. And, when it's quiet, trying to talk to customers through these glamorous obstructions has become nearly impossible. Eye-contact is a no-no; you simply end up moving your head around like a startled pigeon, trying to see who you're talking to.
In the end, all they have managed to accomplish is to put up a barrier between the customer and the bar staff.
In order to compensate for the shiny new IPA pump and all its futuristic pomp and circumstance, I've had to remove my just-as-tall-and-even-wetter Kronenbourg and Fosters pumps, which is no bad thing as they were a bugger to keep clean, and put the products through a nice little lo-liner instead - and the effect has been staggering.
Beer sales in general have actually increased, not because of in-your-face hi-def beer fonts, but because the customers actually feel more comfortable sitting at the bar. Now they can talk to the staff, and to me, and even to each other across the bars without having to navigate a skyscraper eyeline of beers they're not necessarily interested in.
Other brewers are bound to follow in the footsteps of Greene King and Wells & Young's, and there's no doubt that in town bars these elaborate new fonts may just attract a much needed newer, younger audience across to delicious cask ale. But in traditional village locals, usually more famous for their real ales than town centres, they sadly do nothing for the customers.
As was proven recently when a customer visited our pub, took one look at the IPA pump and grimaced. "Ugh," he groaned, "haven't you got any proper beer, on a real pump?"
Luckily for him, I had...
