I couldn't have put it better myself.

In message , Steven Pampling writes

Leicester buys supermarket soft drinks and sells them dirt cheap, I believe we were offering shandy as well. I have no idea how successful the shandy was (worked the cider bar all sessions) but there didn't seem to be massive demand for the soft drinks, though we did sell a reasonable amount of apple juice on our bar.

Dorking beer festival (amongst others) used to give free soft drinks for designated drivers which also tends to suggest there's very limited demand at most festivals.

(and now prepare for Tweedledum&dee to post a lengthy rant about how we'd sell more lemonade if only it cost more than the beer and was served in a branded lemonade pitcher;)

Well, G-Mex has been looked at for the NWAF and let me tell you it's just too bloody expensive. We are talking many thousands of pounds here

- if it was remorely feasible, we would almost certainly have used it. All is not lost, though as another venue if being seriously looked at. If 'Daisy Hill' would like to come to the next Regional Meeting and identify him/herself (but you just know it's a him, don't you) we could certainly talk about it.

As for people attending Stockport because there's little alternative - altrenative to what, exactly? The message seems to be 'no alternative beer festival' - well, so what? The vast majority of our customers are ordnary members of the public, and the existence or otherwise of a beer festival in Macclesfield or wherever is of supreme indifference to them, I suspect. Sorry, Daisy, but you'll have to do better than that to make your point.

John C

I know, but I have so few pleasures in life these days - at least allow me this.

John C

This is tiresome. Haven't you some beer to enjoy?

John B

Hi All Daisy Hill asked

Most of the country?

Well, no actually.

John C

Fair point.

Perhaps Stockport festival is the least bad way of obtaining an interesting choice of beers without actually leaving town!

Oh yes, agreed, it wouldn't rival Olympia, but it's still a lot bigger than Upper Campfield Market.

OK. You know your audience better than I do.

Y'know, John, the whole tone of this thread seems to be that "CAMRA knows best". When is anyone going to come up with a better response to the OP than "well, /we/ have a really successful beer festival, it gets lots of punters and we cover our costs"?

That would be a fair response /if/ CAMRA were a commercial organisation and its sole aim in life was to make an honest bob by running beer festivals. Great! Mission accomplished.

But it's not, and it isn't. It's about Campaigning for cask beer, oh, and for decent pubs too, remember! The OP's point was that GBBF in particular, and by extension, beer festivals generally, are /not/ helping to promote the regular drinking of quality beer to a wider audience.

(And as for supporting pubs! well, they're clearly taking sales away from pubs, to some degree.)

Have you got any evidence that the people who sup ale at your festival are thereby persuaded to sup ale, or more ale, in pubs?

In message , Daisy Hill writes

But which pubs? I don't care how much trade vinegar merchants, bland national pubcos and the like lose during festivals. The good pubs are usually jammed full of festival goers for part of the day and don't seem too unhappy anyway. The biggest threat to them is all day festival opening and there's a whole group of whiners pushing us to do it ;(

It may be cider (so not exactly what your asking for) but I have a pair on near stalkers popping up in every cider outlet we told them about and half the beer festivals since we first gave them the info at Leicester's festival. A definite switch from keg to real cider.

What makes you so certain we aren't affecting beer drinkers?

Not fair Steve,

Not everyone has our advantage of a balanced, Midlanders, view of the UK .... ;-)

Weatherman

Excuse me?

I was brought up to believe Sheffield was "North Midlands" but the people round here are still sort of "southern" :-)

I'm /not/ certain. The OP contends that we aren't. It may well be that without beer festivals, beer sales would be in even steeper decline.

In message , Daisy Hill writes

One thing to consider is that long running beer festivals are less likely to show any measurable effect if they're maintaining gains from earlier years.

I find it fairly implausible that the bulk of the Friday night crowd at most festivals care a lot about what they're drinking. But they may well go back to their locals and question the quality on offer, if that improves beer quality its a win but one that's diabolically hard to measure.