Cask Marque’s first bar staff training plan

At the launch of the Beer Quality Report last week (6 April), which outed pubs across the UK for serving poor quality beer, director of Cask Marque Paul Nunny announced the organisation would launch a four-point scheme to boost beer quality.

Read more: Pubs face potential ruin if they do not improve the quality of their beer in such a competitive landscape

Plans to have trained cellar managers in cask ale-serving pubs is a big part of the initiative, as well as broadening the organisation’s Scores on the Cellar Doors scheme, which looks at the quality of pub cellars and scores them out of five for quality.

Bar staff training

There will also be a push to increase bar staff training to talk about beer properly, as Nunny said: “It’s 65% of the sales in an average pub yet a large percentage of staff don’t know about the different types of beer.”

Finally, the organisation would work to increase its presence in UK pubs by boosting the number of sites it accredits up from the current number of 10,000.

“Investment in training has been reduced in the past few years because of the cost pressures on the pub and I think that’s showing,” added Nunny.

“Our industry has a great career path and you can be on a significant amount of money in it at a young age.

Cask ale quality and image has been the subject of heated debate for years, but more so since beer writer and The Morning Advertiser (MA) columnist Pete Brown recently spoke openly about the state of beer quality.

Read more: CAMRA boss defends cask quality in UK pubs

State of cask ale segment

In a recent video interview with MA, Marston’s managing director Richard Westwood gave his perspective on the current state of the cask ale segment, prior to the publication of a Big Interview in the current issue of the MA.