We’re taking on Coke – with alcohol-free beer on tap
...and mums-to-be can help save Britain’s pubs, says Heineken boss
IT HAS become one of the great imponderables for established consumer businesses: how do you tap into the mindsets – and wallets – of millennials who live such different lives to their parents and grandparents?
For brewers and pub groups, the problem couldn’t be starker. All the available research points to healthconscious younger generations turning away from alcohol in rising numbers.
The most recent study, from University College London, suggests 29 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds now class themselves as teetotal, up from 18 per cent in 2005. Even those who drink do so in moderation – a decade ago, nearly half of young people admitted to drinking more than the recommended safe limits. Today, the figure is one in four.
For David Forde, the softlyspoken Irishman in charge of the UK division of Dutch brewer Heineken, the answer to this conundrum is simple: alcohol-free beer.
Heineken sold 15 million bottles of its non-alcoholic 0.0 beer last year. Forde predicts the figure will double in 2019 to 30 million – and even overtake market leader Becks Blue – as the company pushes it as a soft drink alternative to CocaCola or coffee.
‘I see it with my son, who is 20,’ Forde says when we meet, fittingly, in a London pub. ‘He will pull our alcohol-free Heineken 0.0 out of the fridge three out of every four times he will have a beer. If we didn’t have 0.0, he’d drink water.’
Forde, who has 30 years’ experience at Heineken, much of it spent in the company’s marketing department, commutes weekly from his family home in Cork, Ireland, to London. He accepts that alcoholfree beers have been around for a while and failed to take off in the UK. But the 50-year-old believes plans to put them on tap in pubs this year will represent a turning point.
‘The industry didn’t do a great job with alcohol-free beers in the past,’ Forde concedes. ‘They didn’t taste great and I think this is the first time we’ve really cracked it.
‘Ninety per cent of all beer sold in pubs is draught. If you can offer people a pint in a nice branded glass, we think they will embrace alcohol-free beer.’
A test of draught 0.0 in 100 bars last year was a ‘runaway success’, Forde says, so in the first three months of this year Heineken will install pumps in 3,000 around the country.
The company is also gearing up to launch an alcohol-free version of its premium Italian beer brand, Birra Moretti, which Forde says should be in supermarkets and pubs later in 2019.
Crucially, these new products for the health-conscious will complement Heineken’s alcoholic drinks, which range from Strongbow cider to Amstel lager and craft beers such as Beavertown. Forde says he sees his competition as coffee shops and soft drinks in corner shops – and hopes customers will soon see alcohol-free beer as an all-day drink, rather than just a sober option at their local.
‘You get to a point in the day when you’re coffeed-out,’ Forde explains. ‘We believe we can go on the offensive and go after Coke, go after Fanta, go after spring water, go after tea, go after coffee.
‘There is no limit to when you can drink this. A bottle of Heineken 0.0 has just 69 calories. You can drink this driving home in your car. If you think about all the occasions that people drink a soft drink today – we can be in that market.’
Forde s ays pubs, t oo, must embrace changing tastes and habits, rather than fight them. About 18 close every week – and he believes many will survive only if they find a way to become the heart of their communities again.
‘Where I come from, you had the bar and the lounge, and the bar was for the blokes and the lounge was where females and couples went, but that disappeared 25 years ago,’ Forde says.
He reels off a list of ideas to turn pubs i nto modern ‘ community hubs’: more soft play areas for chil- dren, hosting business conferences, using car parks for car boot sales – and even antenatal classes for expectant mothers.
‘People will vote with their feet and go to the pub that meets those needs,’ he says. ‘If you are in the suburbs with lots of young families and that’s your neighbourhood and you don’t cater for that neighbourhood, you won’t survive.’
Such is Heineken’s belief that pubs have a future, it splashed out £1.3 billion for 1,900 of them from Punch Taverns in 2017.
He s a ys t he o ne where we arranged to meet – one of Heineken’s newly acquired premises, The Gun in Spitalfields, near the City – is a case in point. Its origins trace back to the 16th Century, when it was a tavern for the soldiers of the nearby Artillery Ground.
But its modern target customer is either a smartly-dressed banker or a trendy millennial from nearby Shoreditch. So out went the old carpeted floors, oak panels and Delft tiles, and in came fashionable warehouse-style brushed steel and overhead pipework.
Now a wide range of lagers and ciders is on tap instead of traditional ales, and patrons can choose from a food menu that would not look out of place in a high- end restaurant.
Forde doesn’t mince his words. ‘The UK market was over-pubbed,’ he says. ‘The era of the Coronation Street-style landlady and landlord drinking with their regulars has gone. These days we’ve got completely different operators – kids with Masters and PhDs that just want to run their own business.’
The industry didn’t do a great job in the past...now we’ve cracked it
People will vote with their feet and go to the pub that meets their needs