Educated barstaff make great salesmen
You can't beat an educated bar team for improving beer sales.
I've proved that proposition again and again, but I am so often surprised to discover how little barstaff seem to know about the brews they are selling. A factor in choosing any retail outlet has to be staff product knowledge, and the more expensive and the greater the quality of the purchase, the better it must be.
Craft beers certainly fit that description and informed presentation will always increase sales and therefore profits.
Often this is dismissed as Utopian. Staff simply don't have time or the inclination to attend even one tutorial, I am often told.
Well, that's simply not true. Take the example of Dan Fox who presides over the iconic White Horse at Parsons Green. A lot of this pub's success is down to on-going staff training and recently Dan held a pre-opening morning session on Budvar for a 25-strong team. There was no three-line whip, but it was a full house, even though many of those attending had been on the late shift the night before.
The reason was that the tutor was none other than the MA's top columnist Roger Protz, a crowd-puller wherever beer is the subject.
He didn't disappoint, and his talk, a brilliant tour d'horizon embracing the nature of lager and beer in general, left an even more informed
and enthused team to man the pumps at opening time.
Of course, you can't always field such an august personage, but there are plenty of people all over the country — members of Campaign for Real Ale and the British Guild of Beer Writers, for instance — who have the knowledge and command the respect of the trade, who could play a far greater role than they do to spread the word on both sides of the bar.
These people are an invaluable resource who could do so much more, if only more of us would give them the chance.
Somebody is also upping the game on the consumer side. Dan Cannas, of the Beer Academy, tells me they are taking the beer message beyond the ranks of the committed to the simply interested.
The academy is now doing fun beer tutorials for family parties, birthdays, office outings and so on.
The better educated behind the bar are going to need to get even better educated to answer the questions of this new wave of beer academicians. It can only be good for business.
Tony Jennings is chief executive of Budvar UK.
