New ideas - however simple - help us all

New ideas - however simple - help us all?I can't remember any time when it was more urgent for brewers to commit to putting into the hands of beleaguered retailers some product, service or idea that can either help make them a destination for new customers or just to give sales a boost.?

Given the general economic downturn and the fact that Government, local and national, continues to jack up its financial impositions on our business, and endeavours to hobble it in any new way it can, these ideas have got to involve a very low investment for retailers and kick in as earners for them at once.?This is not just something for the big boys either.

I can see no reason why family brewers, regionals and importers, like my own company, with only one or two products to offer, can't get involved as well. In fact the shorter lines of communication that the smaller outfit enjoys can make it a better bet for getting something like this off the ground quickly.?The added something can be very basic. For instance in our case, by adding a third tap to a duo-font we have enabled an outlet to offer a third drink by mixing our dark and light brews.

Incidentally by doing this I have been told that this has stimulated sales of the dark brew considerably — another plus for the host.?Besides making us more creative about what we have to offer the present situation should also help us to develop a much more "can do" attitude. As an example we are offering unpasteurised beer in the UK for the first time.

Admittedly it's in a limited way and only to those outlets that we feel can handle it, but at least we have overcome the old "don't even think about it" attitude to the idea of introducing yeast beer ?it here.?Quite the best business builder I have heard about recently comes from the Czech Republic. The owner of a bar and restaurant in Northern Moravia is offering hands-on brewing courses at his microbrewery as birthday presents.

They started only recently and so far 150 people have had the pleasure of sampling the beer they brewed as part of their course. ?And it's not just women buying gifts for their men folk — one third of the would-be brewers have been female.?Things may still look a bit gloomy out there but one way of overcoming, or at least ameliorating out problems, is by implementing fairly simple ideas like these that are in our own backyards and easy to implement. There are plenty of them out there, all we have to do is find them