For the first time in five years, there’s just a chance that I might have a relaxed summer. Normally at this time of year, I’m gearing up for the Cask Report: several months of hunting data, processing it, digging out the key insights and writing them up in 12,000 words or so, tailoring it to the ambitious, interested licensee.
This year the Cask Report is happening in a different way: rather than being a publication that I pull together, it’s going to happen within the pages of the PMA, with all that insight and information spread throughout the year on a monthly basis. So I get to see it from a more distant, detached perspective.
When we began the Cask Report in 2007, the cask ale industry was perceived to be in terminal decline, with cask ale itself an irrelevance to the mainstream market. Sure, the Campaign for Real Ale was thriving, but there was a sense that interest in cask was a ghetto — a niche separate from the mainstream market.
It’s a very different picture today.
I’d argue that any new pub opening without a decent, well-kept selection of cask ales simply doesn’t understand the business it’s in. Trendy bars in London put cask front and centre of their operation, using it to attract a hip young crowd. And even people who aren’t interested in drinking it now acknowledge its resurgence and don’t make fun of cask drinkers any more.
I’d like to think the Cask Report played some role in this extraordinary revival. The aims were, first, to spread the message that the death of cask had been greatly exaggerated, and then to persuade publicans that it was worth their while stocking it.
That second task was a challenge: cask is more difficult to keep than other beers, and sells at a lower price, thereby generating a lower margin for the landlord. What would be the business point of stocking it?
Halo effect
We showed that cask attracts more affluent drinkers, who visit the pub more often, and bring other people in with them. And when they’re there, they’re more likely to order food. We showed that cask has a halo effect on the rest of the pub, raising consumers’ perceptions of the offering in general. In this way, a good cask offering drives both footfall and turnover.
We also smashed stereotypes of who the cask drinker is: most cask drinkers are upmarket and affluent, with money to spend — people no pub can afford to ignore these days. We showed what motivates these people — and what the barriers to cask are for those who don’t drink it. We then gave simple ideas for how to overcome these barriers, and regularly provided case studies of pubs that had profited from doing these things well.
Cask is not right for every single pub, but over the five years of the report’s lifetime we saw more cask-ale hand-pumps going on more bars, until cask was doing better than it had done for the past 15 years.
The one thing we were never able to show in the report was cask getting back into sustained volume growth. It isn’t, because the number of pubs is falling and the beer market overall is declining, and cask is only available in pubs. It would be a miracle if it got back into growth in the current climate.
But we were able to show a dramatic slowing in cask’s rate of decline, meaning that it is now performing very well indeed in relation to the rest of the beer market, and is growing its share of that market. Most licensees now see cask as a crucial driver of their business in years to come.
The Cask Report in its original form has done its job. And the problem with that is, if you carry on, you start becoming repetitive. There’s still work to do — I’m amazed at how few pubs take on some of the report’s very simple recommendations to increase profitability from cask — but it’s now time to try a different tack, I guess.
It will be interesting to see how the PMA can take key news and messages about cask and continue to communicate them in a fresh way, without simply preaching to the choir. I’ll be singing along heartily from the back.
Cask Matters - the PMA's dedicated monthly cask ale coverage - begins on 7 June.