UK Government’s “Responsibility Deal”

As part of the UK Government’s “Responsibility Deal”, the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) and other industry members signed up to a pledge on alcohol unit reduction. It sought to help people drink within the recommended guidelines and foster a culture of responsible drinking by removing one billion units of alcohol from the market by Dec 2015, principally through improving consumer choice of lower alcohol products. The BBPA supported this pledge by promoting the lower alcohol beer category to consumers through the media, providing journalists with samples of a range of lower-alcohol beers, leading to several stories promoting lower-alcohol beer to consumers. The BBPA further assisted by communicating this pledge to its members and generating support across the brewing industry.

There were 34 signatories to this pledge including 11 brewers, with evaluation done through the Public Health Responsibility Deal monitoring and evaluation group. The UK Government confirmed that the industry has met the target to remove a billion units of alcohol from the market ahead of the 2015 deadline through product innovation and the development of the lower-alcohol catogory. In total 1.3 billion units of alcohol were removed up to 2014, with brewers responsible for 1.2 billion of this amount.

The BBPA is now working with other partners representing different sectors of the on-trade to develop the pledge and encourage the promotion of lower alcohol products as widely as possible. As the BBPA also represents a number of pub companies, activities were able to include ensuring that the house wine available to customers was below 12.5% and stocking a wide range of lower-alcohol products and promoting them to customers. For tenanted and leased companies, a further activity includes featuring lower-alcohol products in tenant-facing magazines and online licensee portals, discounts and deals on lower-strength products, articles highlighting the customer demand for lower/no-alcohol drinks and permanent price offers on lower alcohol drinks.

Initiatives pursued within pubs to promote products to customers have included introductory prices to encourage people to try different drinks and in one case a ‘driver’s shelf’ in the fridge of non-alcoholic options around Christmas. BBPA organised a joint event with the All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group and the Portman Group in March 2015 to highlight the achievements of the billion unit reduction pledge and showcase the range of lower and no alcohol drinks available. Those attending included MPs, journalists, the Public Health Minister and representatives from members companies.

The ‘There’s A Beer for That’ (TABFT) campaign showcasing the beer category has now taken over from BeerGenie in providing information to consumers about the range and choice in the beer category including non-alcoholic and lower-alcohol beers. TABFT has a detailed section on its website outlining the characteristics and examples of non-alcohol beer. They regularly profile non-alcoholic and low alcohol brands as part of their promotional activity and held a successful version of the weekly ‘Beer Club’ Twitter event focussed on the non-alcohol beer category. In addition, they have developed a Twitter based ‘beer match’ tool, which suggests beers that pair well with food. The 1000+ beer database that matches are chosen from includes low and non-alcohol beer.

By 2014, 8 companies in BBPA membership produced beers up to 1.2% abv and 14 produced lighter beers (i.e. 1.2%-2.8%). In the UK in 2014, on-trade sales volumes of <1.2% abv beersin the UK were 2.3 million litres, and sales of 1.2-2.8% abv beers were at 2.7 million litres. From a survey of BBPA members, in total pub companies owning over 14,000 pubs have either actively promoted lower-alcohol products to their customers within their pubs or to their tenants, whilst companies owning 3,400 managed pubs have ensured that these lower strength beers are available in their pubs. [/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]