The company taking this bold step is independent London-based Fuller’s with its Frontier lager. Despite going from strength to strength labelled as a craft beer, Fuller’s is brazenly pushing communications around the brew into the premium sector. But why?
“We’re looking to take Frontier to the next level by updating the look and feel of it,” explains senior brand manager Matt Bassant. “The beer is staying the same, but we’re making the look more bold and modern.”
Since its launch in 2013, volume sales of Frontier have grown consistently and it is now the brewer’s second biggest brand.
Craft and lager is no match
Frontier, which is one of the top-selling on-trade craft lagers, has been associated with the craft segment for the
past five years but, for Bassant, the time has come for Frontier to move to a larger stage. “We’re moving Frontier’s position from craft lager to a London premium lager,” he says.
“We did some consumer focus groups and the main take away was that craft lager doesn’t mean anything to consumers. The link between lager and craft is just not that obvious.”
There is a stronger association with craft around brews with more flavour experimentation, such as hoppy IPAs, barrel-aged stouts and sours, says Bassant. “Whereas with lager, the connection is less developed and Frontier is too well established to remain in such a niche market.”
All about London heritage
For those sceptical about the shift, there is a lot of sense behind the move, which is backed by hard data. Premium draught beer sales are in growth at 3.6% year on year, outperforming total beer volume sales, CGA OPM MAT data to 21 April 2018 shows. Premium draught lager, as a category, is also in growth, with sales up 3.1%, contributing 23.9% to total draught lager sales.
Premium draught lager’s value, according to CGA OPMS QTR data, is also in growth by 1.1% to £1.8bn. Craft beer as a whole, meanwhile accounts for 5.7% of total on-trade beer sales, which is up by 5% on the previous year.
“We’re going to grow sales of Frontier further by repositioning it,” maintains Bassant. “Your more mainstream drinker might not go for something that’s called a craft lager, but they might go for a premium lager.
“For example, recent data from Mintel shows that just 1m consumers said they would drink a craft lager, while 11m said they would drink a premium one.” With the transition from craft to premium, Frontier will be able to play more on the authenticity credentials of Fuller’s, such as its London heritage and independent status, explains Bassant.
“There’s no definition of what is or isn’t craft. Some would say Fuller’s is craft but, in my experience, if you have to write ‘craft’ on something, it tends not to be craft. We’re really heroing our independence and London heri-tage, but we’re not specifically saying Frontier is a craft beer.”
Competitors to the brand, such as Camden Town, Meantime and Fourpure, don’t label their products as craft, but there is general consensus among consumers that they are, he adds.
A hackneyed term
The term is becoming hackneyed, he explains, with many smaller brands moving away from the craft labelling. “The term is used more in the industry than with consumers, and I feel there is a trend of moving away from brewers calling their beers craft.”
Though Bassant won’t go as far as predicting the end of the term craft lager, he firmly believes it will be used less frequently by the majority of brewers, which “is something the on-trade focuses too much on and not really something consumers are involved with”.
He adds: “I don’t see the end of craft lager, it’s up to the consumer to decide what they distinguish as craft or not,” he explains. “Consumers will say Camden is craft, which is fine.
“Frontier, though, is a premium product,” he continues, “it is expensive to make and poised for bigger things. We lager it for a long time and it is one of those drinks we think fits with the ‘less but better’ alcohol movement.”
To fit with the less but better and premium consumer stream of thought, Frontier has recently begun a tank beer rollout, starting with its Distillers site in Hammersmith, west London. Since the installation of the tank, sales have risen by 75%.
While the term craft may be in the process of being removed from the Frontier branding, Fuller’s is still a very firm believer in the role a range of constantly evolving beers has in meeting consumer demand, especially with a younger audience.
The only real debate is whether you obsessively label this as craft, or refer to it as just great brewing.
This feature was brought to you by The Morning Advertiser and paid for Fuller's as part of a series of content looking at the brewer and pub operator.