Beer masterclass with Marc Stroobandt
Through the Stella Artois Draught Master programme, beer sommelier Marc Stroobandt wants to eradicate warm lager and poor service in UK pubs and bars. He tells Ewan Turney that making bartending more professional will help save the trade.
In our role as the official trade media partner of this year's Stella Artois Draught Master competition, the Morning Advertiser caught up with beer sommelier Marc Stroobandt to find out how the right glassware, selling beer with food and keeping an eye on quality will help your business.
What are the most common mistakes made by staff?
Not knowing their product, or checking the quality. Beer is classed as food here in the UK, but it gets nowhere near the same attention regarding quality as food. They are miles apart; take temperature as an example — a chef is constantly checking that food is served at the correct temperature. He would not send out a dish at the wrong temperature and yet we do it with beer. No one has ever said: "I would like a warm beer, please."
If you are supposed to be selling the beer, you need to know the quality of the product. Too often, I ask staff on the training courses: "How do you know when there is a problem with your beer?" and the reply is, "When a customer brings it back and tells us." I cringe whenever I hear that answer. It is too late if you leave it to the customer. You have already lost them.
People are also leaving beers on for a week after they are tapped. When I hear that, I just make a mental note not to ever go into their pub.
And we wonder why people are not coming to the pub anymore. We need to take more care of our products and if we do we will sell more.
Is lager the poor cousin of real ale?
This is exactly the attitude we see. People tend to taste their cask ales for quality and temperature, but not their lagers. We have to become more real in our attitude.
Lager is our bread and butter — a large part of our turnover is lager and it needs looking after. It is probably the one thing we take least care of. I want to see tasting notes put on the back of lager pump-clips, like they are on real ales, so staff can talk about the beer.
Is it about making barstaff more professional?
Yes. If you look at the States, it is seen as more of a career than here. The training you get here is often "here is your apron, now get on with it".
What we want to do in the long term is get all the information to-gether in one place, so there are some uniform standards. It is not each brewer saying we want our beers to be served like this, at this temperature, because you only have one cellar. We need some standards.
What are your top tips for selling?
1. Know your product.
2. Check, check and check again.
3. If you do food, talk about it as early as when you pour your customers a beer — and for me food is anything from crisps to three Michelin-star meals. If you do food, mention it, even if it is as crazy as offering customers a packet of cheesy Wotsits with their Stella Artois because they complement each other. Chances are the customer would say: "Yeah, why not?"
How do we get people back into the pub?
The pub is about delivering an ex-perience that people just can't get at the supermarket and at home.
Everything from the glassware to the pouring, to the personality behind the bar.
At the moment, there is no one in the supermarket [playing that role], although I can see it coming — people saying: "Hey, how was your day? Have you tried this beer and how about some cheese to go with it?"
For example, I once went in a pub and ordered a Guinness and Stella and they swapped the glasses. I said: "You don't really give a monkey's do you?" And I left. Why should I pay if you don't care? We have to get the experience right.
• All venues that sent staff to the Stella Artois Draught Master training programmes will be assessed with a view to progressing to the UK National Draught Master event on 13 October. The national winner will then move on to the world final on 28 October.
