Friday, 17 June 2011

Being part of the Hospitality Industry, supposedly

I just got a reminder that we should rush to nominate ourselves in the Hospitality Association's annual awards for excellence. There's a category called Best Bar. Here is the entry form.

Now one of the criteria is the quality of food on offer. Fair enough. A best restaurant contest might include the quality of the drinks list as a criterion. Although they'd probably call it the "wine list". (In fact I've checked and the best restaurant category does judge on the "wine list".)

Now if food is one criterion is it strange to expect that the quality of drinks on offer might make up a high proportion of the remaining criteria? Individual consideration for beer, wine, non-alcoholic drinks perhaps? Or at least one criterion?

Incredibly it seems you can be the best bar in New Zealand, according to the Hospitality Association, without the judging panel asking what drinks you serve.

Good on you HANZ. Keep lobbying for public holiday surcharges. At least our membership gets us a discount on our sky subscription.
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5 comments:

  1. Greig McGill17 June 2011 at 09:52

    Nice Dom. Keep doing what you do, it's great to see someone speaking out on this sort of bollocks.

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  2. Phil Cook18 June 2011 at 14:57

    Reminds me of the Capital Awards last year. Us Malthouse staff were nominated in a few things and the awards shinding coincided with our staff-party day, so we were all in attendance. Despite having a couple of bar/pub-related categories, despite having some really nice food, despite having decent wine and spirits (all on a promotional basis, of course) -- I recall the beer selection as being 1) Steinlager Pure, 2) Steinlager Edge, 3) Corona. So you had the curious sight of a little crowd of Beer Nerds resorting to cider.

    It doesn't make any damn sense that beer is still the neglected stepchild of this business. I'm with Greig; cheers for speaking out.

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  3. Kieran Haslett-Moore20 June 2011 at 14:14

    but surely Phil that beer selection caters to all tastes. You have your premium, your mid strength and your super premium right there! ...


    Yes there are segments of our industry that have along way to go.

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  4. Dominic20 June 2011 at 14:40

    Before we let HANZ off the hook though... there was last year's HANZ regional AGM, where I was greeted with a low carb Stella. Just when you thought commercial beer couldn't get any worse...

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  5. Anonymous15 July 2011 at 13:00

    That's because you're supposed to serve the standard DB line up and nothing else, so why would your drinks be different to anyone else's?

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