Having a wine In the car park...

I’m fairly sure that if I set up a stall in my car park and started offering free samples of wine to visitors of my establishment, I’d be summarily shot at dawn.

That’s because, as purveyors of alcoholic products, we have to stand by a Mandatory Code of Conduct that forbids us from doing anything stupid with alcohol.

Dentist’s Chairs, Happy Hours, three-for-one offers on Sourz shots, pouring wine down people’s throats in the car park: they’re all illegal now, because we have to make sure we’re seen to be being responsible when it comes to the retail of our product.

I remember sitting on one of the original consulting panels for the Mandatory Code, which was attended mostly by council officials and policemen, and asking if the Code would cover both the off-trade and on-trade, or if it was aimed squarely at public houses. (One female officer was all in favour of the Code being so strict she could just shut any pub down straight away in order to make her life easier.)

The answer was that the Code should cover all aspects of the licensed trade, with the added caveat that supermarkets would also be told to put up a poster telling pregnant women that it might endanger their baby if they had a drink.

Since then, there’s been countless arguments in the press about whether the off-trade has adhered to the Code, especially around Christmas time when Mr Tesco and his pals seem to be able to make wine cheaper than water, and which has prompted repeated calls for an introduction of a minimum price for alcohol.

Such practices can be irksome, especially when we lessees are having to churn out beer at £3 a pint in order to make ends meet, but equally I’ve always argued that buying alcohol from a supermarket is not the same as paying for the pub experience, and that’s where the value between the two should be seen.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the off-trade shouldn’t be responsible for their actions when it comes to selling alcohol. How often have we heard the term pre-loading, a troublesome pastime that often ends up getting the pubs a bad reputation for something they haven’t done?

Following the introduction of the Mandatory Code I’ve yet to see a poster up telling pregnant women that booze could be bad for the baby (although it could be up in their toilets, for all I know) but last night, as I headed out of a branch of Tesco near to me and pointed my trolley towards my car, I was confronted with a giant display of wine and a pretty young thing holding out a glass of vino.

She stopped short of saying: “fancy a drink before you drive home, sir...?”

Playground politics​

Never let it be said I don’t acknowledge when I’ve got things wrong. In my last blog, I attempted to make a comparison between the playground tactics my eleven year old is facing as he finds his feet in a new school, and the tactics used by certain pressure groups when they come up against somebody who holds a different point of view to them.

The piece was meant to have a tongue-in-cheek intonation to it pointing out that just because I view the future of the tie and the imminent repercussions of the BISC pubco situation from a different angle there’s no need for playground politics but I got it wrong and, by the time it made it from my laptop to the website, that tone certainly came across differently to the way it had played out in my head.

I’ve received e-mails both chastising me for it and supporting me for it, and thank you for the correspondence both in the forum and via e-mail; my view point still stands, but I recognise that in the last piece I didn’t portray it as well as I should.

I’ll try harder next time...