Putting your wares on the table

The bar counter is a key element in a pub. It allows it to showcase the products that are available and highlight any new launches or lines being promoted. The customer can scan the rows of handpumps and taps, peer at the contents of fridges, cast their eye along the spirit bottles on the top shelf or even peruse the display cards of snacks. In many cases, product names and logos are created to make an impression in a bar service environment. Deprived of that shop window by the introduction of mandatory table service, pubs have to find other ways of selling their products.

The easiest option is to do nothing. Most customers tend to drink the same thing, or simply order a generic product, and they know what is on offer. The occasional question as to what lagers or white wines they have can be easily answered. Even if they can’t see the bar from where they are sitting, customers are likely to pass it on their way in, or to the toilet, and get a general impression of the range. The risk with this approach is that it will lead to a concentration on familiar, best-selling products, and anything more niche or marginal will be sidelined. It also makes it very difficult to introduce anything new.

The obvious solution is to produce a printed drinks menu, although for hygiene reasons this may need to be a disposable paper item. Yes, you can also put it on a website or app, but that won’t be available to everyone, and a sheet or paper is more visible and in-your-face. Wetherspoon’s have been doing this for years. This will force you to analyse your drinks range and possibly rationalise it – maybe you really don’t want to list that bottle of Sheep Dip whisky that’s been sitting around behind the bar for years. It could possibly make it more likely that people will choose some of the more obscure bottled beers or spirits that ordinarily they wouldn’t notice, and if pubs are so inclined they could even add tasting notes.

But what a fixed list will do is militate against having a rotating beer range, which supplies the bread-and-butter business for many small breweries. Many customers will scan the row of handpumps or keg taps for something unusual that takes their fancy. Of course a pub can produce an update of its drinks list each day, or print out an additional guest beers supplement, and in smaller bars and pubs a beer board may be visible to most customers without much difficulty. But there can be little doubt that, overall, the introduction of table service will lead to reduced opportunities for guest beers, especially in the more mainstream pubs where the pumpclip on the bar is what sells them.

Some people have said that the introduction of table service creates an opportunity to train bar staff to become more knowledgeable about the products on offer. However, at present, when pubs have their backs against the wall financially, this comes across as a pious aspiration. It also always seems to be very beer-centric – why shouldn’t they also know more about the range of wines or whiskies? It’s something that might be reasonable to expect in a specialist beer bar, but it’s not realistic to imagine that a server in a sports boozer will be able to explain the difference in flavour profile between Stella and San Miguel.

In Sweden, to buy any alcoholic drinks in the off-trade beyond weak beers, you need to visit a state-run Systembolaget store, where in the past you had to order your drinks from a printed list and have them brought to the counter from a store-room, Argos-style. Nothing was on display. Maybe having table service in pubs could be seen as a dress rehearsal for a future alcohol display ban in this country, in the same way as already applies to tobacco products.

As I’ve said before, there is nothing inherently unfeasible about table service in pubs, but it can’t be denied that it is much more labour-intensive than bar service, which is something that pubs will struggle to achieve in the current climate, and which in the longer term will inevitably push up costs and prices. Cooking Lager has some interesting things to say on the subject here.