How Optimising Your Pub Beer Selection Can Help Boost Profit and Customer Satisfaction

Understanding the Need for Strategy When Selecting Beer

By now, if you’ve read our previous articles, you’ll know that your beer selection is more than just a list of drinks. It is an integral part of your identity and can attract new customers, drive sales and keep loyal customers coming back. However, there’s another opportunity to consider that’s more strategic: getting the right balance between offering variety and profitability.

Finding the Balance Between Variety and Profit

It is natural to want to keep adding different beers to your offerings to keep things interesting. However, the focus should be on offering fresh quality, high-margin products whilst catering to the varied tastes of your customers. This is where the balancing act comes in; you have too few choices and risk losing customers; you have too many low-profit beers and erode your revenues. A strategically optimised beer menu will narrow your offerings to those that guarantee the highest returns without sacrificing your loyal customer base.

Delivering What Your Customers Want

The most important thing is understanding the needs of the customer. Do they like traditional lagers and ales or premium and craft? With a focus on the customer, you can choose the type of beer that they want to drink at your venue. Customers’ feedback, sales data, and even the odd conversation over the bar could tell you what people expect from the beer menu and how it could be improved.

Selecting the Most Profitable Beer Types

Your beer collection should be as appealing to the customers as it financially benefits your business. Let us discuss one of the critical elements that will enable you to know how to get the most out of the beers and keep your customers happy.

Understanding Beer Margins

Spoiler alert! Beer margins are not the same for all brands. Some beers will have a higher margin because they are cheaper to purchase but can be sold to customers at a premium price. Understanding the profit margins of different types of beer on offer is essential. Some beers have good margins but may sell far less than those with slightly lower margins. Typically, craft & premium beers yield more significant margins as customers are willing to pay more for those options.  So, you need to drill down to the details with your supplier to understand the financial value of a beer you list. A good supplier will have lookalike sales/profit data that can be shared with you to help you make the right choices.

Choosing Premium Beers

Premium beers like Greene King’s Level Head, Flint Eye, and Hazy Day are good ways to introduce premium beers to customers looking for something different while leveraging the margins that will boost revenues. 

Adding international beers like Peroni from Italy and Estrella Galicia from Spain would be an excellent inclusion to a beer list. These types of beers uniquely appeal to many customers because of their Mediterranean feeling. They are also very marketable, as customers often look for the stories behind such popular European brands and are prepared to pay a little more for the experience.

Rotating Seasonal and Specialty Beers

Seasonal beers help refresh a menu, keeping customers engaged and improving the bottom line. Summer ales like Old Golden Hen or Fireside Winter Ale brews can entice customers to taste something different. Speciality beers or limited editions can add excitement throughout the year and help drive incremental sales.

Offer a Balanced Beer Menu 

Your beer menu must be extensive to appeal to a broad customer base. Various beer styles may need to be offered in such cases, including lagers, cask ales, IPAs, and stouts. Your menu will succeed if the selection is balanced to meet customers’ expectations and costs have been carefully analysed to ensure healthy profit margins. But remember at all times to ensure that you have enough throughput to maintain quality.

Keeping Up with Trends

Beer trends are crucial in the beer market. Craft beer has been popular for a while now, and most recently, low and non-alcoholic beers have become the latest fad in the market. Including such options can attract health-oriented customers or those who want something light. Try including low-alcohol products like Greene King’s Low Alcohol Old Speckled Hen or Guinness 0.0.

Practical Tips for Optimising Beer Selection

Having covered the foundation of optimising your beer selection, it is time to discuss some practical measures you can take to help realise your pub’s potential.

Collaborating with Suppliers for Expertise

When it comes to improving your beer selection, your suppliers are an asset that cannot be ignored. By engaging reputable suppliers like Value for Venues, you get access to the top-selling beers, the demographic profiles of customers buying them, and any other information on current trends. Suppliers have access to a vast amount of research and data. They know what is selling in the market and can assist you in selling your beers and attracting customers to your venue.

Promoting the Right Beers

Make sure that your most profitable beers take centre stage in your bar. Visibility of these beers on menus and other POS material is a must. Also, think about how to motivate or incentivise your staff to recommend new beer arrivals. Social media, special promotions, or a ‘beer of the month’ could also help generate a few extra sales.

Value for Venues – Your Supplier in Beer Selection

Selecting the right beer supplier is an essential factor in your beer selection strategy, and this is where Value for Venues by Greene King and Belhaven can help.

Access to a Wide Range of Beers

Through Value for Venues, you can select from a wide array of beers for every customer base and all price points. Whether traditional lagers, craft beer, or seasonal beers, they can supply the right product that will likely sell well in your venue. 

Expert Support from Value for Venues

In addition to an excellent beer portfolio, Value for Venues can support optimising your beer offering. From product ideas to pricing, their team will be on hand to ensure you maximise sales and increase your profits.

Conclusion

Optimising your beer selection is a strategic exercise to balance the profitability of your beer sales and customer satisfaction. Pleasing customers is paramount, but understanding beer margins and quick adaptation to changing trends is equally important.

Ensuring you have a good working relationship with a reputable distributor, such as Value for Venues from Greene King, ensures that there will be suitable beers, specialist guidance, and expert support when you need it most. So spend some time evaluating your current beer offering to see if there are any opportunities to drive more sales, increase profit margins and attract more customers. 

FAQs

How can I determine which beers are most profitable?  

Evaluate sales, understand beer margins, and reach out, especially to suppliers like Value for Venues, to identify beers with potentially high margins that will appeal to your customers.

What types of beers should I include on my menu? 

Offer a balanced selection of lagers, ales, IPAs, and stouts to cater to a wide range of tastes. Seasonal and speciality beers can add variety and keep customers engaged.

How frequently do I need to change my beer selection?

Consider changing your selection every few months to accommodate seasons and unique one-off brews.  This keeps your menu fresh and exciting for customers.

Are local beers worth the hype?

Yes, local and craft beers often come with higher price points, and many customers are willing to pay more for the quality and uniqueness of these options.

How can Value for Venues help me optimise my beer selection? 

Value for Venues offers expert advice, a wide range of beers, and insights into what’s working in the market, helping you choose your pub’s most profitable and popular options.