Good morning and welcome,
On a recent visit to Whitstable, I spent some time in a small, but perfectly formed craft beer pub. This is always slightly awkward for me as, being that I don’t drink beer, it tends to depend on Mr Katy to order and enthuse about the product- meanwhile, I eagerly ordered the English wine, which happened to be delicious.
Fed up with giving away countless tasters, but knowing that the very nature of a craft beer pub means that he needs to, the owner of this venue has started charging a nominal fee of 25p per “taste”. See below for a picture of the blackboard informing customers of this.
I wasn’t sure about this to start with, but, from what I saw, the customers were in no way put off and in fact often put a £1 across the bar and asked for “4 sips” before deciding on a pint- adding a pound to each transaction.
But what do the members of KAMunity, our online community of pub/bar goers think? We asked them what “tasting mechanism” would be most likely to encourage them to try something new;
Coming in at number one is “a tasting night”- a brand/product owner hosting a tasting and information night as a ticketed event (36% of the vote)…see second picture below of a Chapel Down tasting night advertised at a bar in Surrey late last year.
…but this was very closely followed by “cost per taster” (between 25-50p each was seen as reasonable) which was voted for by 34% of people asked.
Could suppliers and retailers be doing more to convince customers to widen their repertoire of drinks? Almost certainly, but, as with everything, there’s a cost attached- offsetting that cost is the challenge that I believe can be overcome with close licensee/supplier co-operation.
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It’s been a busy week with 12 client meetings across 4 days & two dinners out, so tonight will mainly revolve around binge-watching House of Cards and possibly a takeaway. Tomorrow I’ll be dodging the hipsters in Shoreditch as I’m out for dinner with friends and Sunday is being dedicated to the family; weather willing a long walk and a pint in the local.
Enjoy your weekend
Katy
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