Beautiful Beer Awards reach 400 pubs
19.06.2008

The 400th plaque was presented by John Grogan MP, Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Beer Group, to John Gohery, manager of The Audley in London’s Mayfair.

The Awards scheme is part of the industry’s Beautiful Beer programme to improve the image of beer. The Beautiful Beer Awards cover the entire beer category - bottled, keg and cask – and are available at two levels, Gold for a pub serving excellent beer, Platinum for a pub that also offers beer lists, beer and food matching and a variety of beer styles. All pubs achieving an Award receive a Beautiful Beer plaque to display outside their pub, to let customers know they can be guaranteed a great beer inside.

The Audley is part of The Spirit Group, which has been strongly supportive of the Awards scheme and very successful at the higher, Platinum level: of the 14 pubs to have achieved the Platinum Award, seven are Spirit houses. Andrew Knight, managing director for Spirit, comments, “We’ve embraced the Beautiful Beer scheme for a number of reasons. Like all good quality schemes, it’s sufficiently rigorous to present a challenge to the majority of our pubs, so they have to look at everything around the way they serve beer and make improvements where necessary. The result is better beer for our customers, and a plaque for the pub to reward them for their efforts. It’s been a great success and we’ll continue to support the scheme.”



John Grogan added, “Enjoying a refreshing beer in the pub is one of the greatest pleasures in life in our country, and drinkers deserve to be given a beautiful beer, every time. These Awards, which recognise and reward pubs serving excellent beer, are to be applauded, and it is good to see support for the scheme growing.”
-ends-


LICENSEE COMMENTS
Chris Mossop
Doctor Duncans, Liverpool
(Gold Award)
“For us, achieving the Gold Award was fairly straightforward as we were already meeting most of the criteria, though we did have to tighten up on some record keeping. We’ve found the Award a really good talking point with customers, we keep it on the bar and we get a lot of questions about it, so it’s helped to position Doctor Duncans as a great beer pub. And we’ve used it in PR, in fact the Award was mentioned in a recent article about the pub in the Daily Telegraph. All in all, it’s definitely worth having!”

David Bone,
The Trumpet, Northampton
(Gold Award)
“We invited the Mayor of Northampton to present us with our plaque and that gave us some seriously good PR! It has really helped to put The Trumpet on the map and give us a name for great beer, and we now have six cask ales on the bar, where before the Award we only had three. Our staff team are more knowledgeable and interested in beer, as I’ve sent them on beer quality and appreciation training courses. And it’s not just my beer sales that have grown: as the pub’s attracted more customers, food income has grown as well.

John Mitchell
Town Hall Tavern, Leeds
(Gold Award)
“We were encouraged to apply for the Beautiful Beer Award as we’re known for serving a great pint and keeping a good cellar. I was very impressed by the standards that we had to meet to pass this award: the assessment was extremely thorough, so you really have to know what you’re doing with beer to get through. Winning this award was an achievement, and it’s good to have a plaque that communicates that to customers.”

Valerie Graham
Café Royal, Edinburgh
(Platinum Award)
“The Platinum Award was a great goal for the pub. We’ve always been proud of the way we keep our beers, and going for the Platinum Award made us focus on how we present beers to our customers. We produced a beer menu which gives tasting notes and food matching suggestions and this definitely encourages customers to order beer. We expanded our beer range to include some more unusual styles including more Scottish beers, which have been very popular, especially with our tourist customers. We updated our glassware, using branded glasses where possible to create a better presentation. And all staff have been trained so they can talk knowledgeably about our beers. Achieving the Platinum Award was also a great marketing opportunity, as we were the first in Scotland to win it, so we secured excellent media coverage around it.”

-ends-




Notes to editor:
Notes to editor:
The Beautiful Beer Awards were launched in 2006, as a way of recognising and rewarding excellence in beer. Further details including the criteria, fees and process involved in achieving the Gold and Platinum Awards are available on the Beautiful Beer website www.beautifulbeer.com



For further information contact:
Ros Shiel
PR manager
ros.shiel@beautifulbeer.com
Tel: 020 7627 9152 / 07841 694137