Chris Maclean: 10 things that changed the face of the pub trade

• Keg beer​ - my pal claims he can remember the night when the landlord of his pub, the Tally Ho! in Kentish Town, proudly announced a new era; no more cloudy, flat, warm beer. Henceforth cold, bright fizzy beer. It was the arrival of Watney's Red Barrel. It ended a pretty wretched period of awful beer. It also set a standard people would measure cask beer against. It was a pivotal, if double-edged, occasion.
• Food​ - as consumer demand increased, and as licensees sought to increase revenue, the development of food in pubs was inevitable. My, perhaps misplaced, memory is that in the 70's, when many breweries shed rural pubs, aspiring restaurateurs acquired them driven by the prospect of the greater spend of diners necessary to pay the costs.
• Babycham​ - a product I've enormous respect for. Until Babycham emerged, women drank men's drinks in pubs. Milk stout. G&T. Babycham was a product specifically targetting women. It was a woman's drink. It heralded a new era in pubs; women were now welcome.
• Continental holidays​ - without doubt the development of cheap foreign holidays has driven the most changes in pubs. Consumers yearned to mimic their holiday experiences. Sol beer drank from the bottle with a wedge of lime. Ice cold beer from the bottle.Wine. Coffee. Longer trading hours. Cafe culture superimposed onto the British pub scene. Pubs were reflecting and delivering this as demand increased.
• Sky television​ - I'm still amazed that our national sporting events were siezed and monopolised by a single company and then sold back via satellite. Until then pubs might drag a telly out to show the Grand National. Now, with the exclusive monopoly, pubs elect to subscribe at great cost and with investment in big screens, to attract sports fans. Pubs are polarised into sports bars or not.
• Institutional shareholders​ - investing in breweries and pub cos has been very rewarding for the shareholders. Companies keen to expand their estates have welcomed the money but the price has been a clinical and dispassionate regard for their pubs. Whatever romantic vision you might have about your pub theirs is simply about maximising the "site investment return". Until the institutional investors moved in breweries owned pubs to sell their beer.
• Redundancy​ - in the 60's legislation was passed to provide compensation for those who lost their jobs in certain circumstances. Tragic as it was,there seems to me to be no doubt that some regarded these redundancy payments as a personal windfall. Without work, and a chunk of money at their disposal, their attention often turned to the tantalising lure of pubs. I'm convinced that, until then, potential tenants would spend months preparing their case, learning their trade and raising their finance. Now, suddenly, they were cash-rich and saw a bright future. Breweries and pubcos weren't slow to recognise the potential. Many wrong people got pubs.
• CamRA​ - the direct response to the evolution of keg beer. The Society For the Preservation of Beer From the Cask set out to champion the neglected cask ale market. It didn't connect immediately but it wasn't long before beer festivals showcased cask beer to an emerging consumer driven by choice. CamRA, regarded as villains by some, have been hugely influential and continue to influence how we sell beer. The resurgence of the popularity of cask beer, now capable of matching the keg beer standards, was perhaps entirely due to their input. Cask beer is practically the only product we sell that cannot be replicated at home.
• Supermarkets​ - it wasn't so long ago that alcohol was only available from pubs or off-licences. Now I watch as Threshers cease to trade and supermarkets stack packs of beer and wine near the check-outs at ridiculously cheap prices. Home drinking has, undoubtedly, increased. Some seek to replicate the cheaper pub-experience at home. The challenge for us innkeepers is to offer something they can't do.
• Refrigeration​ - probably influenced by the continental holidays (above), no bar exists without some provision for cooling. I've a chilled cellar, refrigerators for wine and beer, coolers and extra-coolers, insulated sleeves and thermometers to measure it. It is often ugly, intrusive and noisy.

There will, do doubt, be other ideas. These, I submit, are the ones that have changed the face of the pubs.