Pubs and breweries: choose the right location and brand for your market

Gaining the insight you need to choose the right location and brand is crucial for pubs and breweries today.

Here, we’ll provide you with a quick overview of market movements in the pub and brewery sector. Then, we’ll outline how location intelligence can help you make better-informed commercial decisions.

What makes location and brand so critical for pubs and breweries in today’s market?

27 pubs are closing on average each day, with a total of 52,750 shutting down during 2015 alone. Much of this is down to changing consumer preferences. Pubs are no longer the hub of local communities, and younger generations are increasingly choosing to stay home rather than go out and socialise. The UK also has a growing ratio of non-drinkers (for both personal and religious reasons).

In addition, local demographics are changing rapidly due to factors such as gentrification and an ageing population. This has made many pubs unsuitable for the demographics of the localities in which they’re based.

This prevailing wind has led to a process of consolidation for many pub and brewery chains. You might be looking to reduce your overall number of locations. However, chances are you’re also aiming to open or designate certain locations to ensure continued market coverage.

How location intelligence can help you choose the right location and brand

Location intelligence turns the process of choosing new venues from an art into a science, by removing the guesswork.

Intuitive location intelligence software lets you combine high-level pre-loaded datasets with your own company marketing and sales data. This helps you really get to grips with the character of an area.

Analysing metrics including census data and real-time social media sentiment will help you estimate demand within a defined area.

If your company represents multiple brands, you can then select the option best suited to the local market. Base this on the generic tastes and the estimated income levels of key demographics in the area.

Once you’ve decided on feasibility and which brand might be best-received, you can start looking for your ideal location.

Location intelligence software helps you make this decision confidently. For example, you can automatically overlay heatmaps of local footfall. You can also calculate accurate travel times (including via pedestrian routes, car or public transport), and more.

Periscope® – the innovative Newgrove location intelligence platform – comes with a host of features adding an extra layer of convenience to this process, including:

· Match-It: Use this to quickly identify locations with attributes that match your most successful venues, or others that correlate with your Periscope® recommendations.

· White Space tool: Deploy this to instantly identify locations within a defined area in which your pub or brewery brand currently has no coverage.

· Revenue Predictor: Factor this into your location planning process to estimate how profitable one of your branches would be in any hypothetical location.

In today’s volatile market, you need location intelligence to choose the right locations for your pub or brewery chain with absolute confidence.

Discover the locations and brand-related trends that could help take your pub chain or brewery to a whole new level with Periscope®. Request a 10-minute demo today.