Oxford BF pricing

They probably aren't coming in at the price you think they are.

Add 8 years inflation (plus various other price hikes) to those prices and see what happens.

It depends on the overheads.At Melton for example we have the premises free of cost and the owners actually provide physical help.So we can price our beer/cider quite profitably at £2 a pint throughout the range and no entry charge except late evening when the band is on.Also we can leave the casks on the stillage for an extra day to settle because the hall is ours for the week. We also have a first class buyer/cellarman who purchases the drink at very keen prices (we even had a firkin of Youngs Special London Ale,6.4% ABV which came in at £60)

I know the venue (Oxford Town Hall) is expensive, but even so... 160 firkins = say 10,000 saleable pints, gross margin per pint £1.50, gross profit £15,000. Plus say 5,000 visitors over the festival, average £2 each, total gross profit before costs £25,000. This seems an awful lot to me.

Best regards, Paul

-- Paul Sherwin Consulting

You must check your assumptions! When I was involved in running a beer agency some 10 years ago, the average price per firkin was over £60.

I also have to say that some beers at this year's Great British Beer Festival were sold wholesale to us at over £2 per pint. If that is the case for that amount of bulk purchase, then it must be even more so for a small festival buying only one firkin.

Beer is not the only cost at a festival. OK the volunteers are free so there is no staff cost, but you also have venue hire and stillage costs to name but two.

I am, however, dismayed by your implication. What is the problem with a marginal surplus going to the Campaign for Real Ale? Isn't that what not-for-profit companies are for - so that profits are not distributed to shareholders or other third parties, but are ploughed back into the company itself? If you don't like this idea, don't go to Camra beer festivals!

At least that's helpful!

What did the organising branch say?

Christine, one of the reasons I no longer attend GBBF is that it has become a cynical money making / publicity generating event. I always assumed that local BFs were essentially non profit making occasions. Of course, the costs of the event must be covered, but do you really think BF attendees should be ripped off to provide funds for central CAMRA expenditure of questionable value? Nobody asked me if the beer heads campaign was sensible, still less the painfully naff Ninkasi campaign :-(

Paul

-- Paul Sherwin Consulting

Sounds terribly naive to me - how many effective campaigning organisations are there that exist without money and publicity? On the whole I don't think anyone was ripped off at GBBF. Yes there were some over-priced beers on sale but they were well signed and I simply purchased others.

You miss the point about Ninkasi. Of course it was naff - it was meant to be. The point was it got plenty of coverage in the national press and raised CAMRAs profile especially with younger people. The point about advertising and promotions are that they need to change to attract different audiences. "Safe" advertising that offends no-one is like bland beer - no one notices it.

So, you're voting for a doubling of the membership fee this coming year and another large increase the year after then?

Call it £100 for 72 pints. That's (near enough) £1.40 a pint. Say you get in thirty barrels - that's 30 * £100 = £3 000 Sell it at £1 per half pint (£2 per pint) that's £4320 Minus your initial outlay (£3000) gives a profit of £1320

You're running it in a "sensible" location that doesn't charge a fortune, let's be generous £320 gives a grand clear profit on the beer alone, to say nothing of what you make on the food and glasses.

Or am I missing something ?

VAT for a start!

Ok - you know more than me - figure that in then :o)

Guess again.

As was pointed out earlier Message-ID:

the buying in price of some beers exceeds your estimate by over 40%

Less wastage.

Underestimate.

In many halls the food is part of an in house concession and you make nothing, plus sometimes having to "compensate" them for not being able to sell the normal slop they call beer.

Glasses is a very finely judged game, get it wrong and you not only lose money but you also have a storage problem for the next 12 months or more. I could quote the calculations I have used to get that near right (for a decent logo) but I won't as that is business sensitive hard won information.

Apart from the things I've already covered you could start with VAT, Environmental health and depreciation on the equipment used.

Don't tell me, you've never been involved in running an event like this and you wouldn't know where to start. :-)

Far from it. Amongst other things I've twice fund-raised for & helped organise a three week trip for scouts to the USA. OK - to recalculate

Call it £140 for 72 pints. That's (near enough) £1.95 a pint. Say you get in thirty barrels - that's 30 * £140 = £4200 Sell it at £1.25 per half pint (£2.50 per pint) that's £5400 Minus your initial outlay (£4200) gives a profit of £1200

To take some of your points: Your wastage doesn't arise. You deliberately under-order so as not to have wastage. Location charge - as discussed in another thread - find a sensible location. There are lots that don't charge a fortune. Food - as location - find somewhere that doesn't demand a concession. Glasses - buy a load of placcy ones from Tesco. VAT, etc- even allowing for 50% we're still over £500 in pocket.

From these figures I shall be running a beer festival to help finance the scout trip planned to Alaska in 2008 !

Ah, a man who has been through the training school. So how many pints were you looking to get out of the 72 pint container?

You miss the point. It's what you get out of a cask and the spills. Or were you going for the shady method of tipping back?

Neat trick, sometimes you drop lucky. Rare though.

Drinkers favourite.(Not) Even our outdoor events at the Organic Gardens used glass.

Not really you see that bit about venue prices for somewhere that matches your criteria is your stumbling block. As I said sometimes you drop lucky, but not often.

Could I ask for a more realistic budget, please. The whole idea of a beer festival looks too good a fund raiser to ignore.

MB

I, and mnay other brewers, would love to get £140 a firkin - micro brewery beer is certainly a very cheap product given the costs and effort that go into producing it (ironically this applies no matter how well brewed or otherwise the beer is...)

We supply a number of the CAMRA festivals with a range of beers from breweries across the UK, and I would say that an average price of £60 for an average abv of 4.5 is probably about right. This is of course plus VAT, and is based on a large number of beers from the smaller, newer breweries who charge a higher than average price, even to a 'middle-man' like ourselves. It is also often the case that there is slightly more wastage at a festival than in a cellar, but even so I would still guess at around 67 - 68 pints per firkin (plus allow for overfilling / underfilling, which may make a difference to this figure).

It is also the case that a festivla very rarely - if ever - sells the last pint in the last second of opening - often beer will be left over, which also needs to be factored in.

Costs of Festivals are increasing faster than inflation, mostly due to higher charges for the venues & insurance. The new licensing regs may increase costs as well, but this remains to be seen.

I don't know who gets the profits, but I doubt many CAMRA branches are rolling in money (?) - and they put in a LOT of work to arrange the festivals, so you can't begrudge them a few quid for branch funds..

Given all the above, I do suspect that sometimes festival prices are set so as to avoid undercutting the local pub trade - but this is a point of view based on no hard facts!

Steve Banfield Buntingford Brewery

Brett... a écrit :

Hear hear. Having seen the members of the press in action on the GBBF floor during trading sessions since 1999, I must say I'm not impressed by the approach of beer used by british journalists. Not to mention the arrogance shown by quite a few of them towards the festival staff (feed ME lines to blurb in front of the TV camera ?!?) Naff campaigns it must be, because most journos coming over are pretty naff themselves, or at least unable to churn out much else than naff, superficial pieces... So if naff it must be, let's at least have some naff going in the right direction.

Paul Sherwin a écrit :

I wouldn't be that definitive about it making much money, Paul.

Manky Badger a écrit :

Deliberately under-ordering is a tricky exercise. Some festivals manage to be drunk dry, but most end up with some cask ends anyway. Not to mention the pint or two that are drawn during cellaring.

Besides, pints and halves tend to be full pints and full halves at CAMRA festival, possibly even slight overmeasure, so you never get 72 actual pints out of 72 nominal pints. Even using kegs of filtered beer, you rarely get the full nominal capacity of the keg out of it

Finding a sensible location that :

- accepts to host an alcohol-based event (most venue managers refuse from the second they hear "beer festival")

- allows for a decent number of visitors, not too many, not too few (there's usually a fire limit, which often seems ridiculously small in regard to the size of the venue)

- is convenient to deliver beer into (I guess yon don't exactly fancy carrying 50 or 70 kils or elevens up a few flights of stairs, right ?)

- has good public transport connections, ie. is central enough in the considered city / town (and that's a definite must, if you consider yourself to be a responsible organiser)

And then consider yourself very lucky. I some cities it must be possible, but it's all too painfully obvious that it's very complicted in cities such as Oxford (which we are talking of here). I know for example York branch considered literally dozens of venues after they lost the De Grey Rooms, failing to find anything suitable for 18 months or so.

Adding this factor on top of all the others is reducing firther you chances of finding anything

Now that's a field where I've got quite bit of experience, plastic thingies...

We have touse plastic glasses here at Lausanne Beer Festival (http.//

Please do, and please tell us about your experiences afterwards.

Cheers !

Laurent