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[quote:p35i43fw]Selling beer to the pubs is best done by professional salespeople on a direct business-to-business basis, IMO[/quote:p35i43fw]
I agree all selling should be done by the professionals on a direct business-to-business basis. But if all you do is sort out a room and persuade people to go into it you should not be getting in the way of the salespeople.

"a_friend_in_mead":r43e1nkg wrote: But if all you do is sort out a room and persuade people to go into it you should not be getting in the way of the salespeople.[/quote:r43e1nkg]If you specify that the salespeople have to be in a particular room at a particular time, of course you're getting in their way. You can't guarantee that either the breweries or the pubs will make any extra money off the back of the event, so the risk of making yourself look like an interfering tosser is massive.

Yes both of those would be a huge risk

However there do happen to be some distributors and brewers who are inclined to be involved in this kind of ‘consciousness-raising’. The problem though is that if it was organised by one of them (I am thinking in a fashion similar to Deveney’s beer festival) it would likely lose the ‘trade’ aspect of it.

Selling craft beer in Ireland is incredibly difficult. I have done the ‘soft’ sell so many times, (i.e. raising with bar owners/managers the concept of having better beers in their bars/restaurants-not specific beers-just better beer) and it is something I have seen other site members on here doing. I don’t know if the ‘soft’ sell would work in such an overt and organised fashion. The alternative is to go really really over the top and did a bombastic ‘Love Craft Beer’ event.

There is generally a problem that if someone in the trade organises an event others in the trade will think they are organising it purely out of self interest.

Septemberfest works so well because bord bia are seen as an honest broker. ‘Love Craft Beer’ is a good idea for a general festival. The beernut is right that a more targetted festival has many problems.

"9BeanRow":2btzyu1o wrote: The alternative is to go really really over the top and did a bombastic ‘Love Craft Beer’ event.[/quote:2btzyu1o]
That's a very catchy name too.