East Anglian Beer Festival

Point conceded, I'm just stating *my* opinion.

Yes, but the server is still wasting time putting money into the correct holes in the till, sorting out change, and handing it back, rather than just binning the tokens and getting on serving the next customer.

Hey, don't get me wrong, I think they're a pain in the arse too, especially when I'm a punter. But I do realise their 'pros' outweigh their 'cons', especially in our particular situation.

Again, the 'pros' outweigh the 'cons'. We do actually enjoy the atmosphere.

Your statements are those of someone who is obviously ignorant of the realities prevailing ('can't understand', 'I don't see', 'there should be', 'don't necessarily'). All this *would* be possible, *if* we had lots of room, *if* we reduced range of beers, *if* we reduced the customer area by increasing the area behind the bar, *if* we had qualified electricians prepared to install and uninstall more lighting for free, *if* we didn't reduce the numbers of customers because we'd reduced the number of beers and the customer area, and increased the prices to compensate.

Ah! That's another of the joys of the festival! The 'Ceremony of the Taking Out of the Spent Tokens from the Slop Buckets and Placing Them into the Plastic Bags'. Not to be missed, all the servers vie with each other to have the privilege of performing this :)

Oh, the 'Old CAMRA hands', God bless them. Why should theft of cash be less likely than theft of tokens? If some scroat is going to steal, they will, regardless of tokens or cash.

I never suggested it would be.

That *was* a joke, didn't you see the smiley?. Whatever, the punter's certainly not always right, and I thought most (CAMRA) festivals were run for the (financial) benefit of the organisers (CAMRA).

No, I never suggested that at all, I was referring to our particular festival. As you said 'The GBBF has both differential pricing and a cash bar'. There's lots of room, good lighting, not too much of a problem. Of course, at busy times the punters still have to wait whilst change is sorted out, but it seems more practical there than the alternative.

The GBBF

I agree, but not always. By using your earlier argument, (but altering your statement to reflect the use of tokens instead of differential pricing)

No, I think I knew what I meant when i originally wrote it :)

Regarding a festival's pricing vis a vis a pub's , we begin a festival with a fixed amount of beer/cider.We know what it's cost us so we can then decide what to charge. Whether we price differentially or not makes no difference overall , we sell practically all the drink anyway.When a popular beer sells out the customers switch to something else,no problem.Eventually there's only 2 or 3 left. A pub's trade is ongoing which makes things completely different - all the beers are in unlimited quantities so this doesn't happen.The publican charges according to his costs. We buy our beers for the festival from a variety of sources , many are special offers and as I've said before there isn't much correlation between ABV and price. Indeed last year the Young's London Ale was one of the cheaper purchases yet it was 6.4% ABV. So we stick to the one price. At the end of the festival we are less tired, the customers have been served quicker and we have taken the same amount of money as if we had priced each beer individually.

Pricing related to strength at a festival can work as a campaigning tool for milds and light bitters.

Festivals need not only be about making money.

John B

I state again - we found NO evidence that anyone's buying patterns would be any way influenced by price.The milds in fact sold very well as did the light bitters.We always suggested weaker beers be sampled before stronger ones for obvious reasons. One thing that must be borne in mind is that all our beers were cheaper than those available in the town pubs anyway.

That is why strike through cards are better than cash or tokens :-)

Computer users have platform wars! Beer Festival organisers have payment method wars!

Yes I agree. The strike through card saves so much time. The bar staff simply have to serve beer and spend five seconds or less marking off the values on the card with a marker pen. In a busy beer festival this is a blessing for everyone - staff can waste so much time in getting the right change, and would far prefer to be pulling pints rather than faff about with cash. Customers don't have to worry about fumbling about with tokens, or worry about tendering money and checking change

- they simply hand over their card, and it gets marked.

So - no problems about checking change, no problems about having to ask customers who proffer a £20 note "have you got anything smaller?", much faster than dealing with cash giving staff more chance to serve more customers, less opportunity for dishonesty (always a problem where takings are not rung into a till and receipts not given). And at most festivals, the balance on your card that you might be left with can usually be donated to charity.

Additionally, for the customer, it means you can tuck your wallet safely away from prying eyes and the possibility of theft, and just keep your strike-through card to hand. And for seasoned drinkers, pre-payment is quite a useful guide to how much beer you've had. Going back for more tokens/strike-through cards can bring you back to reality, responsibility, and respect for your liver!

I really don't see a problem with strike through cards.

And indeed /shouldn't/ be.

The only problem is that they take time.And I will repeat - the price does not have any influence on choice.We are talking pennies here and nobody is that bothered.If I offered a customer a 10p rebate if he would take a mild or light bitter he would just laugh.And why bother?We're going to sell it all by the end of the festival anyway. It all seems extra work to achieve exactly nothing.And from my own experience,turning up at 9.30 am to get things ready and working through till midnight - and the same thing the next day - is that by the middle of the evening your concentration is down a little! It's difficult enough when someone orders 5 beers to remember which they are and even how many he's buying!If each beer was a different price as well.....we would be short of volunteers. Because at the end of the festival you've sold exactly the same amount of each beer whatever pricing system you use.

On Sun, 21 May 2006 21:11:35 +0100, John B

We do of course campaign for these styles.But in a festival we try to achieve a mix of all styles and gravities and I think we offer a great selection.Milds and light bitters are always very well represented and in fact sell well. But once the festival is under way, what you see is all you're going to get.There really isn't any point in differentiating the prices if there's only so much of each beer and it's all going to go anyway.

You are still looking inward. The campaigning point I am referring to is the fact that in the 'real' world

- out there in the pubs - the lower gravity beers are generally cheaper. Promoting this differential in beer festivals may attract drinkers to try them in the pubs.

John B

I'm getting a little confused.

People are talking about 'tearing off' and having to dispose of tokens. Why? Round here the method is a £5 token marked in a 5 x 10 grid (ie each 10p) which get struck out by marker pen.

When things get busy it's a lot quicker to strike through the card than walk to the 'till' fiddle about with the notes and give the right change. You don't have to worry about things like 'was that a £5 or a £10 I've got to give change for' and the customer can see you doing the cancellation in front of their eyes so there's absolutely no room for dispute.

As for the idea that you should have 'proper tills' - that's completely bloody stupid: Impractical and unnecessary.

Some have tokens with perforated strips where you tear off the exact amount of tokens. I think Norwich does or did, I missed last year.

For those who do use cards or tokens, do you not find it is very messy and time-consuming giving refunds in various denominations of change at the end of the evening?

Punters might get annoyed having to queue for token refunds and then queue for glass refunds.

Or do few punters bother claiming refunds?

Maybe what is needed is a Dutch-style strippenkaart.

At Ipswich (and other festivals round here) both are done at the same place, so only one queue.

The two I've run this way (which weren't open to the general public) glasses were your price of admission. No refunds on tokens was somewhat inexplicitly stated from recollection, but that was basically the policy. Since it was a one-day festival we started giving away any unsold beer about

I've never been to a festival where the tokens were perforated. I expect it would cost too much to produce them.