Time to march to same beat
The newish boss of the BII, Neil Robertson, chose the Morning Advertiser last week to deliver an uncompromising message: the trade body needs to act to enforce higher standards.
The BII will, he said, criticise "those individuals or organisations who demonstrate poor standards or insufficient training". There is a much bigger role available to the BII within the pub industry and Robertson looks like he's keen for the organisation to step up to the plate.
Take the standard of training within the industry offered to newly-arrived licensees, who are often totally without the skills needed to succeed in these extraordinarily difficult times. At the moment, training across the tenanted pub companies ranges from non-existent to just-about adequate. It's no longer acceptable for pubcos to place licensees in tenanted pubs on a wing and a prayer. This approach, as we all know, leads to revolving door tenancies, with the revolving door likely to speed up.
The recession has been a big aggravating factor, but poor induction training has played a part in vacancy and speed-of-departure rates now visible in several tenanted estates. Alistair Darby, Marston's straight-talking tenanted division boss, echoed this message at M&C Report's conference on the Future of Pub Retailing last week. He conceded that tenanted pubcos had to raise their game. The first thing required, of course, is that people like Darby have the integrity he showed in admitting deficiencies on his side of the fence and a need for radical change. (He even conceded he thought there had been "a marked deterioration" in the quality of the average licensee in recent years.)
But he rightly pointed out this isn't a "one-person tango". New and existing licensees need to show a hunger for the training and on-going improvements needed in a retail environment. There is so much more that the industry can do collectively.
Take an initiative launched by Greene King's tenanted division. It's set up a new group, the Head Brewer's Club, made up of 300 of its tenanted retailers who are best performers in respect of cask beer. "They serve consistently high-quality pints, are committed to real ale and are outperforming the market in sales," reports division public relations chief Elaine Beckett.
Greene King will, I hope, use the group's skills and retail insights to move its entire estate up the retail curve in respect of cask ale. Licensees selected for membership should be paid, if necessary, to mentor its pubs looking to improve their cask ale offer, to host courses on how to keep and serve cask ale, to act as advocates for the unique opportunity that cask ale provides.
The need to take collective responsibility for improving standards applies, of course, to the trade press — and I'll be writing more on how the Morning Advertiser plans to play its part in the coming weeks. .
