Brewers ‘forgotten’ during crisis
SALES FALL AS INDUSTRY STRUGGLES
A Newcastle brewer says her industry has been “forgotten” during the coronavirus crisis.
It was confirmed on Thursday morning that the entire region will have to endure the harshest level of restrictions for at least two more weeks after December 2.
That means pubs, bars, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, and other indoor venues will have to remain closed for a while longer, with a first review of the measures due by December 16.
Julia Austin, director at Tyne Bank Brewery, said that some brewers have been “forgotten”.
She said: “Brewers have been forgotten in this whole process unfortunately. They have three sales streams; direct to pub, direct to customer, either online or from their premises if licensed, or direct to retail, for example, bottle shops or supermarkets.
“Sales to pubs have reduced to near zero in Tier 2 and Tier 3 especially if they mainly do real ale, a product which has a eight-week shelf life and a five-day shelf life once opened.
“If the brewery wasn’t licensed to sell from the premises they were not allowed to do so, unlike pubs which were given a blanket permission to sell takeaway.”
Ms Austin said that direct sales online or from retail premises don’t bridge the gap.
She continued: “Sales to direct to customer if online, and licensed and retail are still an option, but typically for small independent brewers this is typically around 10-20% of their turnover.
“In the first lockdown, breweries were given no help if they operated out of rate-free premises.
“Only hospitality venues qualified for the additional grants initially. This was reviewed on a case-by-case basis via the councils and some of the brewers with larger premises may have negotiated support. The taproom is a large part of our business and luckily we managed to qualify for the hospitality grant.”
Ms Austin also said that when pubs were open rules restricting customers to visiting in single households caused real ale sales to plummet.
She added: “In the initial release from lockdown the two household rule meant things could start to return to normal and sales were lower
than before but good.
“With the introduction of single households in the North East and then the talk of tiers, sales of real ale plummeted. Who wants to go to the pub with people they are seeing such a lot of already!
“As brewers have never been forced to close they do not automatically quality for grants and payments.”
This was echoed by Martyn Stockley, co-owner of Errant micro-brewery in Newcastle, who said that more
needs to be done for the hospitality industry’s suppliers.
He said: “The brewing and hospitality industry have been affected more than any other industry over the last six months. We have seen our customer base shrink and shrink over the last four months.
“We’re going into Tier 3 without customers and the level of support [from Government] hasn’t been massive. We have had a hospitality grant and there is talk of a winter support grant but nothing has appeared yet.
“We market our beer to a national audience, we have customers in Manchester that we can’t deliver to.
“This problem goes all the way up the supply chain, if small independent pubs aren’t open they can’t buy our beer, if we can’t sell our beer we can’t buy hops.”
Speaking on Thursday, Dave Stone, director of Wylam Brewery, described the restrictions as “completely unworkable”.
He said: “Pubs are there as social hubs and for people in the local community. I don’t see why we should be obliged to serve food if all people want is a pint, it is not why we built a pub.
“We believe regardless of whether we are Tier 2 or 3, it is not suitable for us to offer a service that we would not normally. I think this now means none of our venues are going to reopen this year.
“The restrictions unworkable for us.
“I hope that by March there will be systems in place to control the spread of the virus and we are able to reopen the hospitality sector.
“When we opened in June, we were able to offer an experience for people that was still pleasurable. That is what we want to do.”
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