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Spotlight on Paul Nunny

By Mike Levy (May 2005 Issue)
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How do you get an industry to accept and conform to higher standards of customer and product care? Paul Nunny should know the answer and it comes down to two key elements: a commitment to training, and its effect on the bottom line. Nunny is director of Cask Marque Trust, a non-profit-making organisation which accredits pubs that know how to keep and sell best quality cask ales. The Trust also runs training programmes for cellar managers and the results are clear. ‘We have just completed an in-depth study of the impact of our training programmes,’ says Nunny. ‘It directly results in a 3 per cent increase in beer sales and a 7 per cent rise in yields. In other words, training has a measurable and significant impact on profitability.’

Cask Marque has 40 corporate members including the leading pub groups, and the brewers fund Cask Marque. It makes awards to licensees who serve the ‘perfect pint’ by carrying out a number of mystery drinker visits. To date 3,642 licensees hold the award. Cask Marque is also involved in setting industry standards and carrying out research on behalf of its corporate members.

Pubs that join the scheme will be visited unannounced by an independent assessor twice a year. The assessor checks all cask ales on sale for temperature, appearance, aroma and taste. If the pub passes it receives a plaque, framed certificate and merchandising material to inform its customers of the award. Customers are also encouraged to comment independently.

Cask Marque is Nunny’s brainchild. His story is a good object lesson for raising standards and getting a whole (and rather conservative) industry to take on new ideas. Nunny’s campaign to raise standards was very timely. Cask ale has been showing significant volume decline in recent years – over 8 per cent per year. It isn’t just about our lager-loving youth culture, says Nunny, but the result of years of neglect of the real thing. He commissioned a survey in 1997 of more than 1,000 pubs and found that one in five pints sold was of poor quality. The ale had been badly stored and kept at the wrong temperature. In Nunny’s view, the solution wasn’t just better information or guidelines, but a thoroughgoing set of standards that managers would have to accept if they wanted to display the all-important Cask Marque plaque.

‘I was determined to set industry-wide standards. Many breweries have spent a lot of money on their own training and accreditation schemes but none had achieved national recognition,’ says Nunny. ‘Also they weren’t always seen as totally objective.’

Nunny qualified as a chartered accountant. This brought him into contact with many clients in the wine trade. ‘I thought back then in the 1970s what a difference there was in the way wine merchants were trained and standards set with the lax way in which British cask ales were being treated.’ He went on to work in sales and marketing for Adnams, the brewers of traditional Suffolk ales and a family business that set very high standards in the way its ales are stored and served.

When he left Adnams in 1997, Nunny managed to persuade some of the big independent brewers to commission research into why cask ale sales were draining away. ‘They thought it was all about marketing but it was clearly an issue of quality – and the research confirmed that. I think it shocked them to see how many pints were being offered at well below best quality. The industry had in effect taken its eye off the ball; it was more interested in changes in structure than issues of quality.’ Many of the largest breweries had also handed over their training functions to individual managers. Issues such as a cellar management were often given short shrift, says Nunny.

Nunny’s most recent focus has been on training. Over the last 18 months Cask Marque has been working with the four national brewers (Carlsberg UK, Interbrew, Scottish & Newcastle, and Coors), the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) and the British Institute of Innkeeping (Bii) to set industry standards on cellar management. The Bii has taken this standard and has now produced a new qualification – the Award in Beer and Cellar Quality (ABCQ).

‘From November 2004 we started offering licensees one-day training courses in cellar management. This covers cellar practices on all beers, dispense equipment, the bar area (including glass washing) and the presentation of beer to the customer,’ says Nunny. He is particularly gratified to see that a giant company like JD Wetherspoon currently has 1,500 bar managers training in cellar management. Training is often provided by external trainers who deliver in classic classroom style but there is practical experience too.

The training day culminates in the ABCQ exam, which is a multiple-choice question paper. By the end of the course, candidates should be able to demonstrate practical competence in serving the perfect pint, cleaning lines, changing a cask or keg, and the more arcane skills of cleaning, tapping, tilting and venting. ‘We now have organised training days in six centres of excellence across the UK,’ says Nunny.

‘Our view,’ he adds, ‘is that every pub should have a qualified cellar manager who in effect becomes the beer champion in the outlet.’ Profit, of course, is driving much of this admits Nunny: ‘Quality improves profitability both in better yields and increased sales. For many outlets 60 per cent of their wet sales are beer. Cask Marque is in a unique position to assist the trade in gaining the necessary knowledge to maximise profitability.’

Though the decline in sales of cask ales is showing signs of slowing, there is, says Nunny, still a lot to do – especially in the training field. ‘We need to look at the whole pub experience, not just how the beers are stored and served. Training is becoming central to our industry’s survival. Investment in people is crucial to the success of our industry.’ Is all this enough to reverse the trend in cask ale’s decline? ‘No, but we owe it ourselves to bring the best possible product to market. We can learn so much from the wine trade and perhaps educate the public to see that there is a fine beer for every occasion. We’ve rather taken beer for granted in this country. And that applies to the people who work in pubs too.’

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