Data solutions firm, Vianet has today revealed that the Six Nations provides the highest draught sales for a short-term sporting event in pubs, and getting the range right now on bars is vital for operators to maximise both sales and margin during this lucrative tournament.
Steven Alton, managing director of Vianet, said, “We have identified in our industry wide analysis that the Six Nations tournament is one of the most important in the pub event calendar, particularly for draught beer, and it is important that pubs are prepared to maximise the trading benefits of this event.'
Vianet's iDraught app ensures that draught products are served in the very best condition by; ensuring product is delivered at the correct temperature, line cleaning is carried out to best practice standards and dispense equipment is performing effective.
Yummy Pubs founder Anthony Pender and co-owner Tim Foster decided to trial Vianet’s iDraught in one of their six pubs they had an open mind as to the outcome. With the wet sales of the business split between 22% draught and 40% prosecco, a full trial was required to see whether the software would be a useful tool for the pubs.
iDraught was installed in one venue, the Somers Town in London and with the trial proving a great success to the point that the business is now looking to roll out installations to their remaining three town centre sites. The first win for them was the insight into the range on their bar.
Between 5-8pm on Thursday and Friday the Somers town can typically sell four brewers’ barrels of Estrella (1,152 pints) – a high margin product for Yummy but the number of taps available and the subsequent queues for the product during this time was impacting these sales.
The iDraught system enabled Yummy to identify when more taps of a particular product were needed, so they could maximise the sales of that brand.
Pender said, “Now we are able to be much more fluid in terms of our draught offer on the bar by trading session, having the right number of taps of the product that’s being demanded thus increasing our profitability. We are also able to understand what we need for sporting tournaments like the Six Nations in our pubs especially the Gorringe Park.'
Yield improvements were another major benefit. For the same sessions the system also identified that Yummy were losing more Estrella during these periods through overpouring. They needed to ensure the teams in place, particularly on Thursday and Friday evenings understood the impact of overpouring and, following more training they have seen yield improvements go from 96% to 102% on Estrella.
Pender said, “The iDraught system gives insight to both the operator of the pub and its management team and we have increased our yield by 2% overall at a 900 brewers barrel site by acting on the insight. The system provided benefits which we didn’t foresee.'
Alton added, “The iDraught system is telling us that pubs are over ranging by at least 3 pumps and what that does is decrease profit. If the ranging data provided through iDraught is used effectively like the team at Yummy have done, you can gain more profit from simple changes on the bar and training; utilising the data to do this for the Six Nations is a game changer.”