The Cellar Is the Most Vital Part of the Pub

It's a fact that you can have the best-looking pub in town, with TV, sport, a pool table, darts, and even a great restaurant, but if you don't have a great cellar to go with it you will be losing customers. Director of Cask Marque, Paul Nunny, has said that their Scores on the Cellar Doors programme has shown that there is definite room for improvement, with many pubs only achieving three marks out of five when they were audited for the scheme. 


Nunny said that they have been talking about beer quality for 20 years, but that "not everyone is listening". He went on to say that their beer quality report showed that pubs are losing £300 million in profits every year – that's profits, not sales - as a result of poor beer and cellar management, but that a well-kept cellar increases beer sales by 3%. That can add up to a lot of money over the course of a year.  

You can't take short cuts with cellar management, and you certainly won't save money by reducing waste through increasing the time between line cleans. Certainly, there are pub cellar solutions such as a system that will let you increase the time from once a week to once a month, but if you don't have it installed you really do have to undertake line cleaning every week.

Pub cellar solutions are aimed at keeping the cellar clean and preventing bacteria contaminating the beer, and also being aware of sell-by dates. Another of the pub cellar solutions is keeping it at the right temperature, or more correctly keeping the beer at the right temperature. If it is above 12°C the bacteria multiply rapidly and you can also have issues with fobbing which means that you throw more beer away.

The cooling system should really run all the time because if turned off overnight and the temperature rises you have a problem. There are also little things to watch out for such as keeping the grille on the cooler cleaned. If it is covered in fluff, it won't work as efficiently as it should.

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