Publican Live, the UK’s largest and busiest exhibition dedicated to the pub trade, returned to Olympia on the 1st April for its 11th year, offering future-proofing business solutions to help the licensed trade not just survive but thrive in difficult retail conditions.
Thousands of publicans flooded through the doors at London’s Olympia thirsty for inspiration, innovation and education from the industry’s leading voices. This year’s show was focused on attracting the key buyers from the licensed trade and the quality of visitors this year was extremely high with visitors looking for ideas to boost trade.
"This show has provided us with an incredible platform to meet top-level industry decision makers on a one-to-one basis and I'm absolutely delighted with the outcome."
Caterered4theKids Managing Director, Carl May
This year’s show focused on the needs of today’s licensee, providing a packed programme of educational seminars, tastings and demonstrations which were obviously appreciated by the visitors as they were constantly full over the three days.
“The new look show, along with the welcome addition of the Wine Village and Sampling Piazza proved Publican Live to be a great success for the WSET this year!
The interest shown at our sampling theatres – especially at our food & wine matching sessions – showed that the audience in attendance this year were passionate enough about their trade to want to make a difference and equip themselves with all the tools available in order to ride out the current storm. The WSET team are already looking forward to attending next year’s event and again proving the power of training and education in relation to the bottom line."
Chris Kelly, Marketing Manager, WSET
As well as providing a forum for debate with informative and inspiring seminars covering everything from food and drink matching to good cellar management the event also offered attendees a first glance at hundreds of pioneering new products and services including several new areas: The Food Market, the Wine Village and Cider Orchard.
“The show feels leaner and fitter with more decision makers coming through the door providing us with genuine leads. The people coming to the show are serious about their businesses and the atmosphere is different, it feels like the industry really is pulling together
to move forward.”
Peter Ambrose, Regional Manager, The Beer Piper Company
Special guests included world champion bartender, Jamie Stephenson, whose daily cocktail demonstrations proved to be a real draw as did 2008 world champion darts player John Part who was accompanied by no.1 referee, Russ Bray, on the Unicorn stand.
Publican Live 2009 takes place from 31 March – 2 April 2009, at Olympia, and will again be the ultimate business platform for the £24 billion pub trade.
2009 Publican Live website….coming soon
