Blantyre-based Dunns Food and Drinks has teamed up with local producers in Scotland, like Ramsay of Carluke and the St Andrews Farmhouse Cheese Company, in a bid to help them drive sales, which they hope will then boost the local economy. Local produce will be showcased to top restaurants and bars in a high quality [...]

Figures obtained by the DRAM from each one of Scotland’s licensing boards reveal a massive drop in on-trade licences from 13,003 (inclusive of registered clubs) in 2007 to 7,383 today. But before everyone jumps to the assumption that the number of pubs have almost halved in the last five years, licensing lawyers say the original [...]

When it comes to hotel occupancy Scotland leads the way in Europe. Five Scottish cities have ranked in the top 10 European cities with the highest hotel occupany rates. No other country in Europe has five cities in the top 10. Edinburgh had the second highest occupancy rate (80.1 percent) in Europe during the past [...]

The gin category is certainly alive and kicking. Jason Caddy reports. Scotland continues to provide fertile ground for all kinds of new gin products, and in the last few years there has been an explosion in homegrown brands. Inver House Distillers launched its own Celtic Botanicals gin, the Bruichladdich Distillery on Islay launched the island’s [...]

Scotland now has a scheme to grade bar staff on their whisky knowledge, called The Whisky Ambassador. It aims to improve knowledge of whisky among bar staff and enhance profitability for licensees. The scheme is a first in that it is not brand affiliated, and is the UK’s only accredited whisky training and CPD award, [...]

Ooberstock Limited, a new online wholesale business, launches next month. The Ooberstock system enables drinks owners to upload product information, including images, along with prices and any promotions to a dedicated brand portal. Prices and promotions can be set as standard across all distribution channels or flexed to reflect an outlet type and/or by postcode. [...]

The value of Rangers to the Scottish on-trade is more than £40m, and that is a conservative estimate. The figures seen by DRAM, show that fans spend around £19m around a home game while the remainder is spent when an away game is on. Therefore Scottish pubs and hotels, particularly those in the West of [...]

Belhaven owners Greene King Interim Management Statement for the 37 weeks to 15 January 2012 revealed that retail like-for-like sales were up 8.2% and food like-for-like sales up 11.1%, in the last seven weeks, with core brand own-brewed volumes up 7.4% Rooney Anand, Chief Executive, said, “This was another strong performance driven by the strength [...]

C&C has revealed that its flagship Scottish lager brand Tennent’s saw falls in both volumes and revenues in the three months to the end – November. Volumes fell 15.7% while net revenues were down 3.2%. However the company said “While the reported volume and net revenue movements in Tennent’s are weak, the underlying economic performance [...]

AB Inbev led the way last month by cutting the ABV of Budweiser, Beck’s and Stella to 4.8% from 5%, now Molson Coors has revealed Cobra is to reduce in ABV too. The ABV of packaged Cobra is moving to 4.8% from 5%. Adrian Davey, MD of the Cobra Beer Partnership told DRAM, “The quality [...]