from today's Sunday Times (I've posted the whle thing as the Times tends to make its stuff subs-only after a day or so.)
The piece is about Cain's getting branding & market advice to focus on the respected reputation they have built as a quality cask brewery, under the "Cain's" name, while trying to cash in on that by branding all own-brands clearly as Cain's beers (not just Sundowner, or Dr.Duncan's, etc) & also going for the keg beer market locally. IIRC local CAMRA has already spotted a Spoons which has swapped cask for keg Mild, after JDW had agreed not to (the pece doesn't specify if the JDW deal to supply 17 pubs with mild is cask, keg or both) Incidentally, I had a stunning hoppy and roasty pint of their mild (cask!) at Cain's tiny Globe pub (opposite Liverpool Central Stn) a couple of weeks back cheers MikeMcG from _________________________________________ The Sunday Times - Business February 29, 2004
Progress report: Cains THERE was a problem for Cains, the Merseyside brewer: too few drinkers were buying its beers, writes Philip Smith. Now it is set to launch a range of own-brand beers to capture the big market for keg beer in Liverpool. The problem The brewery is 150 years old. But despite its long history Cains beer was sold in few Liverpool pubs when the Enterprise Network visited last year. Its £35m sales came mainly from supplying own-label beers to the likes of Somerfield, Safeway and Sainsbury. Just 17% of sales came from Cains's own branded beers, and most of that was real ale.
The problem was that Cains did not brew keg beer. "Only two pubs in ten can take cask beer," said Ajmail Dusanj who, with his brother Sudarghara, bought the brewery in 2002 when it was making a loss.
Branding was also an issue. Many of its cask beers were sold under names such as Doctor Duncan's, Dragon Heart and Sundowner. The result, said Sudarghara, was that the Cains brand was being diluted.
What the experts said The experts agreed that Cains had to move into the keg market, but most urged the Dusanj brothers to make better use of the Cains brand. The brand's equity, they said, was being diluted by the use of different names.
Tim Evans of BT said: "The move to keg is understandable, but the trick is to carry this off without diluting the brand's core qualities."
Liz Grant from UK Online for Business said: "Cains has to position its cask and keg products carefully as they are aimed at two different audiences."
BDO Stoy Hayward's Rupert Merson added: "Cains can price its keg beer high, taking advantage of its reputation as a maker of cask beer."
Action taken Cains's keg beer was launched last April and was an instant success, accounting for 14% of total sales.
The beer is brewed at the Toxteth site, but the kegging and bottling is outsourced. Canning is done in-house - for both Cains and other brewers' beers. The company invested £100,000 in a nitrogen droplet machine that ensures canned beers are poured with a good head.
Cains also pioneered a new approach to marketing. "We produced a boxed set of six bottles - two of ours and four from two other brewers (Bateman and Black Sheep), and packaged them together for sale in Makro stores.
"It was one of the first partnerships of that kind that a brewer has done," said Sudarghara.
In addition, Cains won a contract to supply its mild beer to 17 Wetherspoons pubs on Mereseyside.
Conclusion
Crucially, the company has rebranded its beers under the Cains label. In April it is relaunching its Doctor Duncan's IPA beer as Cains, and the other sub-brands will follow.
Sales remain at £35m, but Cains is at last seeing a small profit from the shift in its market. The company is providing less low-margin, supermarket own-label beers and more higher-margin Cains beers. ______________________________________________