Publican marketing

I had a chat yesterday to the publican of the pub chosen for horse day.

It’s the local of a mate.

The publican is in the process of changing his beer selection.

We were chatting about this in the context of my ex-publican capacity.

Basically he is going ‘upmarket’, replacing the stock beers (Tooheys New for example) with white rabbits and other silly boutique beers.

His motivation is increased revenue and profit. He thinks.

But I know publicans. Running a pub is incredibly boring and they eventually just make changes to alleviate the same.

I asked him about his strategic marketing.

‘eh?’

‘Well it’s a hypothesis at best that selling higher price boutique beers will increase revenues. Margins will stay the same but on a higher per unit cost base, so that is all good. But you don’t know whether you will get more drinkers or not. You may even lose some of your regulars – many of them will resent the new beers. And the market for boutique beers is pretty over-subscribed; everyone is doing it.  And the people who drink this stuff only drink one or two on a night out. In fact it’s hard to drink too many of these things – they have too much flavour.’

Not fazed. At all. Boutique beers it is.