The Financial Times on beer… a tale of market capitalism & how to avoid last orders
The FT like other ‘broadsheet’ papers tends to focus on wine when it looks at drinks. The same is true of the Telegraph and the Times, although these two do find space for some beer writing now, as does the Daily Star with Adrian Tierney Jones, beer of the week.
However during August in the Saturday magazine it has published a series of articles on beer including Jonny Garrett on the UK hop industry, Jaega Wise on pub games and culture and on 30th August Melissa Cole on the future of craft beer.
She quotes SIBA’s Andy Slee ‘where independent beer is freely available next to global beer, independents generally get 30 per cent of sales, but they’ve only got six per cent of sales overall, so there’s a suppression of demand…people want to support local businesses but they just cant get it.. pointing to global brewers ability to restrict choice
The interface between capitalism, markets & what beers appear on bar tops and why is surely on brand so hopefully more FT pieces will appear.
Meanwhile regulation of the market to promote local business, jobs and social culture should be something that interests a Labour Government. Before departing for No.10 Starmer’s local was the CAMRA Award winning Pineapple pub in Kentish Town. He no doubt thinks there are other things but Labour should keep in mind that Farage was at a CAMRA beer festival (in Essex) in August. Farage’s image is of course of a beer drinker but in private its fine wines in restaurants..
Leave a Reply