Juggling Act

For Pamela Gregory, wine buyer for over 2,000 outlets, including the All Bar One and Edward’s chains, "brand" is not a dirty word. In fact, brands inspire as much confidence in the on-trade as in the off-trade. Robyn Lewis reports

PAMELA GREGORY is, by her own admission, a juggler.  Not a circus juggler or "street artiste" outside Covent Garden tube station but a woman who manages to juggle the wine buying for over 2,000 outlets in the UK.

She works for Mitchells and Butlers, the UK pub and bar operating firm, formed from the demerger of the Six Continents group in April of this year.  This means she manages, on a daily basis, to grapple with around 20 high street restaurant and bar brands such as All Bar One, O’Neil’s, the Toby Carvery, Browns, Hollywood Bowl and Edward’s.

On top of this there are over 200 Vintage Inn pubs nationwide, each one different from any other and then there’s the German branded bar chain, Alex, to keep up as well.  "The difficulty is the juggling of all those brands," she says.  "You are constantly throwing and catching between them every minute of the day; every time the phone rings virtually.

So when I go to a tasting I have to go with a very open mind.  As I go through each of the wines I’ll be thinking, ‘Yes, that could be Browns, that could be All Bar One, that could be O’Neil’s.’ Obviously, each of the brands has a very different personality and so I know that a wine that works for O’Neil’s is never going to work in Browns, but for me part of the intrigue of coming to work at Mitchells and Butlers was the broader scale.

I mean this is real – the big stuff – and it’s fascinating, it really is."  This democratic approach to wine is practical, and vital, if Gregory is going to do well in her capacity as buyer for major household names, but her previous jobs have been at the other end of the wine scale.

Firstly at Harrods, "which is, you know, the absolute top echelons", and then Conran. One wonders how she has managed to make the jump.  "Again, it’s about keeping an open mind. I’m always asking colleagues and friends for their opinion, people who aren’t involved in the wine trade, accountants or something, and just asking for their impressions because they are the real world.

The other great attraction to working for a company like this, is the diversity.  There are pockets of stuff going on all the time – brand development, new opportunities, new trial sites, this, that and the other. I mean, there is no typical day for me.

In fact, in my life at the moment, a typical day is me saying ‘OK that’s what I’m going to do today’ and then I actually end up doing something else instead."  As you may have gathered, Gregory is an incredibly busy person yet, since she started with Mitchells and Butlers just over a year ago, she has already managed to nearly complete two major projects – and that’s throughout the upheaval of the demerger.

The first of those projects was to overhaul the entire portfolio Gregory inherited when she began the job. She felt it was outdated so she "rationalised the portfolio and created a cleaner, more tailored approach to wine".

Her second project was to reassess the house wine for every single one of those 2,200 outlets. No mean feat, but one which she is already about to finalise.  "Effectively we have decided to kick the whole lot out and are bringing in two wines that will hopefully address the needs of the bulk of the business," she says.

 "What it stands for is a massive improvement in quality and consistency throughout.  Now, the blends are controlled by us, have been made by me and the prices are rock bottom.  It ended up being an even more exciting project than I had imagined because we have ended up with an Argentinian entry level wine, which simply hasn’t been done in the on-trade before.

You know, 40% of the on-trade is driven by French wine but our consumer research showed that the people out there aren’t hugely enamoured with French wines and, while they do consider French wine to be the best in the world, that’s only at a certain price.

They see French entry level wines as disappointing, so yes we are bucking the system but a lot is going in our favour."  It won’t be the first time that the Mitchells and Butlers wine portfolio has "bucked the system".

It is already heavy with New World wines, in contrast to what you might expect from the on-trade and is white wine orientated. Of that, Gregory claims about 20% is Pinot Grigio.  Chardonnay has definitely lost ground and is now associated with being something buttery and oaky, which you know and I know isn’t the case. 

I think the industry is partly responsible for that as they follow grape varieties, but I don’t really agree with it. In terms of our business we’ve looked at the way we merchandise wine and discovered that, for us at least, country is absolutely key, followed by grape, followed by brand.

The country is everything because that’s what people associate with. What on earth do most people know about the grape?" So, what is it then that sells wine to people who know nothing about it?

In the off-trade, big brands and their price promotions are important but when buying from a list of more expensive wines, what is it that makes people buy one over another? "Big brands are still important," says Gregory.

"The on-trade comes in for a lot of criticism, which is chiefly driven by the big brands – presumably because they don’t have such a foot in the door in the ontrade as in the off-trade. My feeling is that they are very important and we do need them because they provide confidence, a hook for someone when they are faced with a list to say, ‘Yeah I know that, that’s OK.’

We did a really interesting exercise last year with All Bar One. It was felt by some at that time, that their offering had gone too far in favour of brands and there was one that everybody seemed to want to take out.

But when I looked at the sales it was their best seller so, obviously, we had to keep it in.  The compromise we came to, was that we left it in, but hiked the price up quite significantly – over a pound – and then we introduced a similar style of wine, an unbranded one at a lower price.

 And what happened? Everybody continued to trade into the more expensive brand because of the recognition. It’s a bit frustrating really.  I mean there are so many wines out there but people seem adamant to stick to what they know."

Other important factors that Gregory cites for on-trade wine are a pronounceable name ("If I had a dollar for every time someone offered me an unpronounceable wine and I’m saying ‘Yeah it’s great but no one is going to order it."); packaging ("We’ve been doing some research into packaging for the new house wine and it was incredible how the label affected their perception of the wines. People buy with their eyes."), and quality.

"In terms of brands particularly, the quality really has to be important.  My feeling is that customers, generally speaking, when they go into a restaurant or bar expect to be paying over the odds for a beer, a gin and tonic, a glass of wine or whatever.

What I think really, really upsets customers, is if they consider they have been ripped off with something that is low quality or inferior and that’s why, in terms of brands in the on-trade, the quality has to be good and I won’t compromise that."

Since Gregory now has a wine portfolio she is happy with and the house wine venture is all but finished, what is next on her list of big projects?  "We’ve always got loads and loads of brand development going on and whatever the company does, we in the wine department have to respond.

At the moment there is a lot going on with All Bar One in terms of trials and revamps.  For us it is an old brand, 10 years old – and it’s a really great brand, I mean in that 10 years no one has really touched it.  But we have to recognise that things need to move on.  So, we are looking at small things, the colour of the walls or changing the food and also we are looking at merchandising.

That wall of wine in All Bar One, the library, looks really great but my argument has always been that it is very daunting and we need to bring that alive, make it more tangible so people don’t say, ‘Oh, I can’t be bothered to read that, I don’t know anything about it.

Give me a beer.’ Hopefully in the next six months or so we’ll have come up with a really good formula to be going on with.  I am also involved with a company-wide initiative to try and educate staff on the basics and we are going to do some trial work with WSET as part of another initiative, so we’ll see how that goes.

Again it’s a big old juggle and there’s only so much I can do."  On top of all this frenetic activity Mitchells and Butlers is expressing interest in acquiring the Scottish and Newcastle estate which will be a further 1,100 outlets for Gregory to juggle, though surprisingly she seems happy with the prospect.

"It’s rather exciting really," she enthuses.  So it looks as if the next interview Gregory does will be as a woman juggling over 3,000 outlets.  And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she managed it all just as effortlessly, while crossing a tightrope on a unicycle.