When I feel the occasional need to offer a pub a spot of constructive criticism...Fuller's Tenants Extra February 2013

When I feel the occasional need to offer a pub a spot of constructive criticism or comment on a recent experience on these pages, I normally preface any remarks with “of course, this wasn’t a Fuller’s pub.” There’s no need to bite the hand that feeds you.

Sadly, in this case of my most recent experience, I can’t say that. One Saturday lunchtime in January, Mrs P and I were out and about on various errands and fancied a sandwich. We  popped into a Fuller’s tenancy, and having obtained a pint of Jack Frost and a glass of the house white, we sat down to look at the menu.

We read it carefully, turned it over, read it again, and finally held it up to the light, just to double check that we hadn’t missed anything. No sandwiches. Fair enough, we live in a democracy and there’s no legal obligation on any pub to serve sandwiches  - but it seemed a bit odd.

While we were rethinking our lunchtime strategy, I had a bit of a delve in the table-top leaflet dispenser. A second, smaller menu emerged, entitled ‘light bites and smaller portions’. This, I thought hopefully, might be just the sort of document to list sandwiches. This proved not to be the case.

 

However, by this stage I decided I’d got the hang of the pub’s approach to its food offer, and I investigated the dispenser further. A third leaflet emerged, and this time we’d hit the jackpot – the sandwich menu.

I was clearly not the only confused customer. While we were in the pub, a couple of families with fairly young children arrived. One of the mums went to the bar and began to place a complex order which involved a number of half-portions of dishes on the main menu. Halfway through the barman stopped her and explained that they could only offer smaller portions of certain dishes.

“Er…we have got a light bite menu…er.. somewhere” he said, shuffling various papers fruitlessly on the bar. Eventually, I handed the customer the copy from my table, and she headed back to for some difficult renegotiating with the children.

Now, I know that top menu design gurus will tell you that including too much information can be confusing. However, the pub in question offers around a dozen main courses and a few extras. It wouldn’t be a major challenge to include the entire food offer, incuding the sandwiches and light bites, on a single menu.

I’m not naming names, and as it happens, the sandwiches were freshly made and excellent quality. I had the sausage and onion, and Mrs P the cod goujons, since you ask. But, it’s worth bearing in mind that the British Sandwich Association estimates that the out-of-home sandwich market is worth about £6bn a year. If customers can even find your sandwich menu, how will you get your slice of the business?

  This 'Kitchen Porter' column appears in the February 2013 issue of Fuller's Tenants Extra

I recently had the opportunity to drink a £200 bottle of red wine - Inapub, January 2013

I recently had the opportunity to drink a £200 bottle of red wine. Not all by myself, I hasten to add.  Even at around £20 an alcohol unit, that would undoubtedly contravene any number of government guidelines aimed at preventing my liver becoming a public nuisance and a burden on the taxpayer.

No, having been given the precious bottle in return for offering an acquaintance some advice on PR, I bought four decent steaks and gave it a go over dinner with some friends. How was it, you ask? Well, as it happens, it was floral and fruity, with notes of blackberry and liquorice. Was it worth 200 quid? I have no bloody idea.

My palate is calibrated around the £8 a bottle mark, on the basis that a six quid bottle ought to be OK and a tenner is pushing the boat out.  It would be stretching a point for me to claim that my £200 bottle of Chateau Whatever gave me 20 times the drinking pleasure of a £10 rioja.

I know that by the time you read this the festive season will be well and truly over, and any vague aroma of sprouts wafting around in the bar will be attributable to customers rather than the kitchen. However, as I write this Christmas is looming and in idle moments, I’ve been pricing up pub’s Christmas menus.

There’s quite a range of pricing available, ranging from Wetherspoon’s £8.75 turkey dinner – Christmas pud for afters is £2 extra - up to an independent pub in the area that’s taking  bookings for a four course Christmas Day lunch at £65 a head.   Clearly, there are obvious differences in the two offers, including the fact that customers expect to pay a premium to eat out on Christmas Day itself.

Fundamentally, though, what’s on offer in each case is a few slices of roast turkey accompanied by veg and sauces, just as every bottle of wine is fundamentally 75cl of fermented grape juice. The difference in the price that a customer is willing to pay mainly comes down to subjective judgements about value, quality and service.

In the cold reality of January, understanding what is that makes your offer stand out can be about much more than know what’s on the plate or in the glass.

On the menu this month: While I checked out Wetherspoon’s Christmas menu, what I actually had was a burger. The latest JDW menu goes a long way towards addressing my long standing gripe that many pub menus don’t tell you enough about what you’re getting. It’s a modular approach, with standard and gourmet options, sauces on the side and plenty of choice of toppings. Just the thing for fussy families. 

This 'Pub Food with Porter' column appears in the January 2013 issue of Inapub

Now, we all know that chefs occasionally need to employ a touch of artistic licence - Fuller's Tenants Extra January 2013

Now, we all know that chefs occasionally need to employ a touch of artistic licence. After all, ‘ground and spiced beef, lightly grilled and served with a rarebit topping on a freshly-baked ciabatta base” sounds a lot more interesting than a ‘cheeseburger’.

As we’re celebrating all things cheesy in this issue of Tenant’s Extra,  I thought it was worth sharing the explanation  given to me by a well-known chef as to why beer is a much better match with cheese than wine.

Apparently, it’s all to do with the fact that, on a molecular level, cheese and beer are very similar. Cheese is made from milk produced by cows, as well as other ruminants such as goats and sheep, which feed on grass. The primary ingredient of beer is wheat which is, basically, just domesticated grass - so the two complement each other perfectly

Now, I’ve no idea whether that’s true or not. We’d both had several beers at the time he explained it to me, but he definitely sounded convincing. It’s also hard to disagree that a nutty, mature cheddar or a creamy stilton, accompanied by a pint of best bitter, is one of life’s more uplifting experiences, and certainly beats a cube of cheese served up with a lukewarm chardonnay.

A few years ago, I also became involved in one of the great Cheese Mysteries of the Ages – the origin of the Ploughman’s Lunch. The BBC was looking into the origins of the staple of pub menus, and asked me to do some research.

Although there are some historical references, notably in Sir Walters Scott’s memoirs, and clearly   ploughmen have always eaten lunch, sadly there is no evidence of it having been a cheese-based dish prior to the 1960s. The Ploughman’s as we know it appears to have been invented as a marketing ploy by the amusingly-named British Cheese Board.

I’m delighted to report that the Cheese Board is still in business, and  its website at www.britishcheese.com  has some excellent information on cheese and beer matching  for pubs looking to pep up their pairing skills beer. Beer writer Melissa Cole suggests a series of specific matches on the site, including Fuller’s Golden Pride with extra mature cheddar – “a classic pairing of two great British institutions”.

The Cheese Board site also features some general guidelines on pairing cheese and beer from beer sommelier Nigel Sadler:

• Pair delicate beers with young, fresh cheeses
• Pair malty beers with nutty, aged cheeses

• Pair highly hopped, bitter beers with tart, sharp cheeses, especially Farmhouse cheddars

• Pair strong, sweet beers with blue cheeses

• Pair fruit/spiced beers with fruit cheeses.

And  to finish, my favourite cheesy song: I’m a sucker for a bit of operatic rock, so it has to be ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ by Meatloaf. Altogether now: “The sirens are screaming and the fires are howling way down in the valley tonight…” Sheer poetry 

This 'Kitchen Porter' column appears in the January 2013 issue of Fuller's Tenants Extra

It’s always gratifying to be proven right - Inapub November 2012

It’s always gratifying to be proven right, even when no one remembers that it was your idea in the first place. Now, I’m not going to pretend that I came up with the concept of serving food in pubs myself, even if Inapub does, somewhat harshly, focus on the longevity with which my insights have been entertaining and informing licensees.

However, there was a time when I had to fight hard to persuade the publishers of a now defunct pub trade newspaper to devote any editorial space to food. Blinded by the wads of cash being offered to advertise dayglo alcopops, headache-inducing nitrokeg beers, and bag-in-box leibfraumilch, the commercial powers-that-were ignored my insistence that food was the way forward.

Happily, most of those soulless, dead-eyed imbeciles are now in occupations more suited to their skill set, such as grave robbing and grandmother retailing, while my crusade continues. While there are still excellent wet-led businesses out there, it’s increasingly unusual to find one that doesn’t include food as part of the offer.

So, I was pleased to spend an afternoon at the latest Be At One cocktail bar watching another domino fall.  The group’s 13^th outlet at Guildhall in the City, is the first to include food. Ossie Grey, one of the team that originated the River Café, has developed a menu of sharing plates for Be At One.

The food is an object lesson in creating dishes that match seamlessly with the drinks menu rather than looking like an add-on.  The range include four sliders, including a tiger prawn variety, crostini, bruschetta and other hand held food with distinctive flavours, all great accompaniments to Be At One’s cocktail range.

In the brand’s defence, its earliest units were small venues which would have struggled to accommodate food. The addition of a food offer at bigger sites with diluting the appeal of the drinks offer should keep Be At One’s ambitious expansion plans on track.

Food and drink working seamlessly together? Who’d have thought it? Me, that’s who.

On the menu this month: I’m a sucker for a sausage sandwich, but the authentic US hot dog is rapidly overtaking the humble banger bap in popularity. Taking a cue from specialist restaurant chains such as Giraffe, pub group Grand Union has come on board with its new ‘Dirty Dogs’ menu. Options include the Hell Dog with chorizo, jalapenos, melted cheese and fiery sauce, and the Dog’s Dinner, topped with bacon, cheese, barbecue sauce and accompanied by onion rings. It’ a far cry from the day’s when the extent of choice “onions with that?” 

This ‘Pub Food With Porter’ column appears in the November/December 2012 edition of Inapub

The illicit appeal of a mid-afternoon pint is still very strong - Fuller's Tenants Extra, November 2012

The illicit appeal of a mid-afternoon pint is still very strong for those of us who learnt our drinking habits in the days when the licensing laws appeared to have been calculated to require pubs to close at more or less the exact point you wanted another drink.  

Not, I hasten to add, that I have very many opportunities to while away the afternoon in the pub, but I still like to remind young upstarts that, like bank holidays and universal suffrage, all-day opening is a hard-won freedom that should never be taken for granted.      

At this point, I know there will be a few older hands cursing me, kicking the dog, and recalling the days when a licensee could get a few hours’ break from the daily grind by calling “time” and putting the bolts across the door. I don’t underestimate the long hours and hard work that running a successful 21^st century pub involves.

It’s not simply more hours, but a more diverse offer as well. Increased competition as well as changes in consumer eating habits that mean we ‘graze’ more,  mean that pub food, in particular, has required a rethink.

From Sunday lunch to sharing platters, pubs need to cater for a wider range of expectations. During National Curry Week in October, I was lucky enough to spend an evening at Fuller’s pub The Red Lion, in Barnes, eating an authentic meal that would have put most ‘specialist’ Indian restaurants in the area to shame.

It’s not just food, of course. New figures from the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers (ALMR) show that pubs sell more coffee than the specialist coffee chains, with 3.6m cups sold each week.

Experts forecast that the need for a more diverse operation will continue. Analyst Horizons believes that the high fixed costs of running a food business means that outlets which effectively run several food formats from the same site are best placed to thrive. That may sound too complicated, but a stroll through the average town centre shows how many needs a pub can meet:

·         Breakfast café – hot drinks, toast and  bacon sandwiches or the full English if there’s enough demand, to eat in or take away 

 

·         Coffee shop – with a menu of specialist teas and coffees, along with a few packaged snacks such as muffins and flapjacks, pubs can keep the morning coffee and afternoon tea market happy.

 

·         Sandwich bar – a simple sandwich menu and some sandwich bags could boost lunchtime trade.

 

·         Family meals – a kids’ menu of burgers, fish and chicken will appeal to parents looking for a change from fast food.   

 

·         Sit-down restaurant – pub food remains the nation’s favourite style of dining for consumers eating out

 

·         Late night menu – if customers head for the kebab shop at closing time, a simple range of quick-to-cook hot snacks will keep them in the pub while they wait for a taxi.

 

Each pub has to make its own decisions based on staffing, facilities and local demand – but if you don’t try, how will you ever know what the potential for extra trade is? 

This column appears in the November 2012 issue of Fuller's Tenants Extra

Lunch is, sadly, a habit I’ve fallen out of...

Lunch is, sadly, a habit I’ve fallen out of. There was a time, back in the days when I worked on much-missed trade paper The Publican, when lunch was more or less obligatory.

At the appointed hour, we’d head to Fuller’s temple of calm in Croydon, the Royal Standard, nestling in the shadow of the A232 flyover.  A sausage sandwich and a pint of Chiswick set me back less than a fiver, and was the perfect way to set up an afternoon’s work.

Alas, the old Publican team is now scattered to the winds, and the downside of working from a desk in the front room is that lunch tends to be less of a social occasion. I normally manage to compile a makeshift toastie from whatever’s in fridge, but with only the goldfish for conversation, debate about the burning issues of the day is somewhat lacking.

So my attention was caught by research from our old friends at analyst Horizons, forecasting that lunch is set to grow its share of overall foodservice sales. 

Among the insights, we learn

• The lunch market is currently  worth £14.9bn
• The lunch market  has risen by 3.3% on 2009 figures
• The average British adult eats lunch out 1.4 times per week in 2012, a rise from once a week in 2011
• Lunch through quick service and casual dining restaurants is doing well, meeting consumer needs for fast meals to eat-in or takeaway

Spurred on, I decided to pop out for a pub lunch. In my local – which sadly, isn’t a Fuller’s pub and  – the sausage sandwich comes with red onion chutney, something which  the Royal Standard’s otherwise impressive range of condiments never ran to, with the choice of chips or salad on the side.  Well, I was never going to have the salad, was I?

My lunch may have had more frills than the simple fare of old, but the price was also as eyewatering as the barman’s aftershave.  Could pubs learn something from other businesses which are successfully driving lunch trade? Just a few ideas:

• Deli counters – let customers build their own sandwich from a choice of fillings
• Takeaway – offer simple lunch deals ‘to go’
• Loyalty cards – stamp the card and drive extra trade with offers such as a free after-work drink after five lunch visits
• Meal deals – offer a pint, glass of wine or soft drink with a sandwich at a set price.

In a market where we’re all pressed for time and looking for value, a pub lunch shouldn’t feel like a luxury

This 'Kitchen Porter' column appears in the October 2012 issue of Fuller's Tenants Extra.

There was a certain grim inevitability...

There was a certain grim inevitability to the news that Tesco is to launch a traffic light colour coding system to let its customers know how ‘healthy’ or otherwise the food it sells is.

Those lobbying to change the nation’s eating habits have been pushing hard at Britain’s supermarkets, as well as pub and restaurant operators, to make nutritional information available on ready meals and menus.  As the UK’s biggest retailer, Tesco was an important scalp for the campaign.

I have no problem with giving consumers information which they want, and in ensuing that we all understand what a balanced diet is.  However, I’m deeply wary of people who want to decide what’s good for me, and I suspect those lobbying to change the nation’s eating and drinking habits fall into that category.

A reminder of the practical challenge facing busy pub kitchens was bought home recently when I spent a very pleasant morning preparing food in the development kitchen at Wadworth’s Brewery in Devizes. Cooking with a group of seven others, we cheerfully greased baking trays liberally with butter, sliced chips into non-uniform sizes, and dipped fish into bowls of freshly made batter.

Even with many of the ingredients pre-weighed, it’s a safe bet that no two meals served up at lunch that day had the same nutritional value. Frankly, none of us cared too much as we tucked in and, and that, I suspect, is why the – mainly self-appointed – health lobbyists have a problem.  We all need to mix the healthy with the indulgent, but the eating out is definitely a time for the latter.

I won’t argue that the smoking ban wasn’t positive in public health terms, even if I’d like politicians to acknowledge that it had unintended consequences in terms of hastening the decline of many wet-led pubs. Pushing pubs down the route of menu labelling would mean, in practice, that operators would have to buy in pre-labelled dishes, and would mark the triumph of bought-in food over freshly-made.  Would that really be better for us?

Menuwatch:  The rise of the takeaway continues. Having pioneered the take-home carvery at its Toby and Crown brands last year, Mitchells & Butlers has introduced a takeaway menu at its Ember Inns pubs which includes burgers, fish & chips, sandwiches and even steak and ale pie. If you don’t eat it at the pub, is it still pub grub? I’m not so sure…

 

This 'Pub Food With Porter' column appears in the October 2012 issue of Inapub