Harveys at the Stadium

[Lawro's Lip]

If true,the club clearly do not understand their customers.

 

[dougdeep]

Anyway the club should be supporting local manufacturers the same as it should support local teams.

 

[Hillian1]

A quick question to the Real Ale drinkers.

Before they announced Harveys was going to be sold at The Amex and everyone thought it was going to be John Smiths anyway, would you have not purchased anything then?

 

[dougdeep]

A quick question to the Real Ale drinkers.

Before they announced Harveys was going to be sold at The Amex and everyone thought it was going to be John Smiths anyway, would you have not purchased anything then?

I'd have drunk and eaten at the Swan.

 

[Gordon Bennett]

Have we ascertained that there is even a modicum of truth to this yet?

Exactly!

Wasn't there a thread the other day about the new caterers and someone said (could have been TLO?) that it was widely understood that Harveys and Piglets Pies were non-negotiable and would have to be retained by the new caterers?

Still, its nice to speculate about something else for a change!

 

[Titanic]

A quick question to the Real Ale drinkers.

Before they announced Harveys was going to be sold at The Amex and everyone thought it was going to be John Smiths anyway, would you have not purchased anything then?

as I said in a previous post, I hardly ever buy Pukka pies or John Smiths, and certainly wouldn't as part of a match day routine.

 

[The Large One]

Given the commercial success of Harveys at the AMEX it would be ridiculous to axe it. There is no way way I would consider drinking John Smiths, it is f**King sh*te!!

The one benefit would be local pubs getting my business once again. I would certainly boycott any attempt to foist a crappy cream flow beer on us. They would certainly lose my pre-match custom, and I would leave the stadium earlier after games too.

Likewise.

Similarly, the transport egress plan - such as it is - would be a mess.

However, I was under the impression that the club was insisting that the caterers were obliged to include Harvey's and Piglet's in their contract. Of course, if they can't reach a deal which satisfies all parties, there could be problems.

 

[Hungry Joe]

I think people need to take a look at which breweries own which products. At present all the alcohol, bar the ale, is supplied by Heineken UK. Where I work we are also supplied by Heineken UK. I can assure you that as a company Heineken are spending a lot more time pushing real ales than John Smiths (which is one of their products) at present. It really would not be in their interest to stop stocking ale at the Amex, the South East area rep is not an idiot and is more than aware that ale is a huge seller at the Amex. If Harvey's was to go it is likely that it would be replaced by one of Heineken's other ales. At present the ale breweries available through Heineken are (off the top of my head):

Brains
Greene King (sorry, Lewes residents)
Deuchars
Wells and Young
Butcombe
Thwaites

So a decent enough range, hardly Harvey's or local but still some acceptable alternatives.

I'm sure you're right. On a purely personal political (if the UKIP connection is true) and taste level I already prefer a few of those to Harveys Sussex.

 

[Titanic]

Have we ascertained that there is even a modicum of truth to this yet?

It MUST be true, Granny Whatsherface said it.

 

[Vegas Seagull]

Is this part of any increase/speeding up of sales outlets?
I would buy more lager if I didn't have to queue in WSL for 10 minutes every time. THEY know any slack will be taken up by people like me

 

[Albion Dan]

A quick question to the Real Ale drinkers.

Before they announced Harveys was going to be sold at The Amex and everyone thought it was going to be John Smiths anyway, would you have not purchased anything then?

I would have just drunk at The Swan or Lewes and arrived just before kick off every game.

 

[Bold Seagull]

John Smith's is the biggest selling bitter in the world. This can mean one of two things, although probably a combination of the two...

- A lot of people buy it through choice.

- A lot of people who like bitter will buy JS if it's the only option available to them.

1. it's cheap
2. it's cheap
3. it's cheap

10 cans of John Smiths for £9 in most cases. In your cheap franchised pubs like Weatherspoon's, it's always the beer on offer, or offered in conjunction with other offers. That's the reason it's the biggest selling bitter in the world (allegedly).

If Harvey's or an Ale go, I wouldn't touch JS unlike what you're saying, I'd most likely switch to drinking red wine, and then probably wearing chino's, a sports type casual jacket with a nice tattersall shirt...

 

[Dick Knights Mumm]

A quick question to the Real Ale drinkers.

Before they announced Harveys was going to be sold at The Amex and everyone thought it was going to be John Smiths anyway, would you have not purchased anything then?

There is nothing different about real ale drinkers is there. Just swap that for anyone who prefers eating/drinking a quality product to mass-produced stuff aimed at the lower end of the market. Some people will, some won't, some will occasionally.

 

[leigull]

A quick question to the Real Ale drinkers.

Before they announced Harveys was going to be sold at The Amex and everyone thought it was going to be John Smiths anyway, would you have not purchased anything then?

I'm not a massive drinker, but the whole get to the ground an hour or two before kick off, and stay for a few hours afterwards wouldn't have been established without the initially good choice of beer and food we had last year. That was always crucial to the stadium project and helping with the queues. Yes people may still stay for a crap pint of JS after the game to let the queues die down, but I think a lot would cease getting there so early, or staying any longer than necessary for the queues to calm down.

But again, will wait for confirmation before judging anything just yet.

 

[Southover Street Seagull]

Just who is buying the world's most popular bitter then? And why?

The same people who buy bland lagers and ciders. To quote Wikipedia:

The majority of John Smith's sales are of the nitrogenated Extra Smooth version, although a cask conditioned variant is available nationally, although it is most commonly found around the beer's Yorkshire heartland.

This is as far removed from cask conditioned ale as Strongbow is from Westons Cider.

 

[The Large One]

A quick question to the Real Ale drinkers.

Before they announced Harveys was going to be sold at The Amex and everyone thought it was going to be John Smiths anyway, would you have not purchased anything then?

'Everyone thought...'? Speak for yourself.

The fans fought for - and got - real ale. When the club announced that there was going to be real ale, I never thought it was going to be John Smiths.

 

[Man of Harveys]

Just who is buying the world's most popular bitter then? And why?

McDonalds and Subway are the most popular food chains in the world. Does that make their bland, middle of the road product the best, and by extension anyone who prefers a higher-quality local product a "snob"?

 

[CheeseRolls]

Whoa some thread this. If there is any substance in this, I am not convinced there is. I may well vote with my feet and spend my discretionary cash elsewhere.

This is not some grand gesture, just a matter of choice and I suspect there are plenty more who will regularly make a similar choice, if there is a drop off in quality.(not just me and Dougdeep)

I don't eat or drink at any other ground I visit except in the direst of circumstances, so why should the Amex be different ?

 

[Brovion]

IF this is true and IF the club has transferred all the revenue risk to the caterer, then the club will not lose any revenue in the short term. However, they will lose a lot of goodwill, at the margin more people will leave at the final whistle and therefore the transport queues will be worse. I believe one of the reasons for our phenomenal crowd numbers, STHs etc. is that the whole 'product' was great when we moved to the Amex. If we just go for the short-term, bottom line options this will start to be undermined.

PG

It's a valid point. They're always banging on about the matchday 'experience' which for some people is now going to get worse. And I'm NOT just talking about the beer drinkers, I'm also talking about the people who benefit from the fact the ingress and egress is staggered by people wanting to get there early and stay late because of the acceptable catering. (Which everybody, Barber included, admits is unheard of for football grounds). If the Albion are doing well no one's going to mind too much, but when we start struggling people will start making excuses: The beer used to be good now it's shit, the transport queues used to be good now they're shit, etc.

 

[Bold Seagull]

A quick question to the Real Ale drinkers.

Before they announced Harveys was going to be sold at The Amex and everyone thought it was going to be John Smiths anyway, would you have not purchased anything then?

It made the whole thing even more special. We had our own local ale. Brilliant. The whole notion of locally made pies, locally brewed beer in a brand spanking new stadium retained a sense of community. I sincerely hope we don't lose sight of promoting and encouraging local business, even if the profit margins are slightly less.