Small Business Q&A: Bart Storan manager of the ‘Support Your Local’ campaign

Bart Storan, manager of the ‘Support Your Local’ campaign, talks to Kehlan about what the campaign is aiming to do for pubs, off-licences and drinks-makers.

Q. What is the ‘Support Your Local’ campaign aiming to do?

Support Your Local is aimed at representing the 92,000 jobs the drinks industry in Ireland upholds. That means your local pub, local off-licence, local brewers and distilleries.

Really, what we’re trying to do is remind people of the role that the drinks industry in Ireland plays and to take the lead in addressing the concerns that people have about the industry, particularly on the subject of alcohol abuse.

In recent times the industry has come under increasing fire from Government, with excise duty and other taxes.

We want to work with Government to find alternative solutions, in which the answer to alcohol problems in Ireland is not about continually increasing prices.

That means looking at cheap alcohol in supermarkets; a ban on price-based advertising in Sunday newspapers and a statutory code on the merchandising of alcohol.

The use of taxes to solve the problem is just a blunt instrument, so that’s part of our remit.

Q. But there are also other jobs surrounding the drinks industry.

If you go to our website supportyourlocal.ie you’ll see that 219,412 tonnes of barley are used in Ireland every year for the drink industry. That means farmers to grow it and drivers to deliver it.

But people often forget about milk as well. Baileys buys in nearly €300m worth of milk a year from Irish farmers. So already you can see there is a raft of businesses involved in the industry.

Bottle-makers, printed label manufacturers, cardboard-makers — they all rely upon a healthy drinks industry to survive. So it is a huge domestic industry and one with a lot of heritage.

We are seeing whiskey tours and craft beer tours beginning around Ireland now. Tourists want to know the story of the industry and how the drinks are made.

So there is a lot to be said for making sure there is a positive future for the industry.

Q. Are we changing the way we drink in Ireland?

I think there can be no doubt that we are changing the way we drink. Positive initiatives such as the clampdown on drink-driving and smoking in pubs means that there has been a shift in what people want or expect when they go out drinking.

People are drinking more at home now and that means that while the price of the pint goes up in the pub, the price in supermarkets is able to be more readily absorbed. So what we’ll see in the near future is more pubs closing in the rural areas of Ireland because that price can’t be absorbed by the publican.