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Beer history

Quick, Clint — to the Pub Grub Mobile!

Though there had been pub food before the 1960s (see the forthcoming Big Project for more on that) it was in this decade that it really took off, and Guinness got stuck in.

The story is told in the Spring 1963 edition of the in-house magazine, Guinness Time, and also in a short essay by Edward Guinness in The Guinness book of Guinness, 1988, neither of which can be considered entirely objective. Anyway, here’s how it went.

In partnership with the National Trade Development Association, in November 1961, the brewery published a book called The Guide to Profitable Snacks (many copies are available on Amazon/Ebay — we’ve got one on the way). It contained recipes and costings for bar snacks in an attempt to address a specific problem whereby, as Edward Guinness put it

many ladies started [providing food] with enthusiasm but were disappointed by the lack of return either due to inexperience in providing what the customers wanted or more often as she had no idea how to cost the operation and fix the appropriate retail price.

In 1962 Guinness followed that book up with a film, Food for Thought, which is sadly not available anywhere online, starring Pearl Hackney and Carry On star Eric Barker. (You’ll know him when you see him.)

These were successful enough but Edward Guinness felt that face-to-face demonstrations would be even better so, in October 1962, the newly-formed Snack Demonstration Team hit the road in this fabulous Mystery-Machine-alike:

Guinness Snack Demonstration Unit van.

Four days a week for the latter part of that year, lecturer Jo Shellard (an actor turned caterer) and his assistant Clint Antell toured the North West of England (where pub food was particularly wanting, we assume) speaking to groups of publicans ‘and their wives’:

The van contains the full equipment for showing the film-strip, tables, cutlery, cookers and other items necessary for the demonstration. it also contains sets of the basic snack equipment required by licensees, priced from £5 per set upwards. In addition, the van carries supplies of the book… and notebooks for each member of the audience, containing a précis of the lecture, recipes, and space for the licensees’ own notes.

The talks got busier and busier and Edward Guinness reckoned that, by the time the GSDU was demobilised in 1966, more than 20,000 people had attended its lectures. One licensee in Blackburn, he said, told him that he’d doubled his lunchtime takings by offering soup and a ploughman’s and thus luring local workers from the factory canteen. By this time, most big breweries had a catering training division, so Guinness’s work was done.

The motive for all this was never quite selfless — ‘Guinness prospered if the trade prospered’ — but ads like this from a few years later make you wonder if they didn’t also take the chance to push Guinness more directly, as the classy choice to accompany meals:

Guinness Ad for steaks from 1966.
From 1966. SOURCE: Illustrated London News.

We wonder if there’s anyone out there who remembers attending one of Jo Shellard’s demos — they’d have to be at least in their 70s if so. When the book arrives, we’ll let you know what recipes it contains, and how closely it resembles the pub grub cliches we know and love.

One reply on “Quick, Clint — to the Pub Grub Mobile!”

It all seems so modern. It makes me think not only of the pulled pork & gourmet street burger scene that goes with craft brewing now (especially in Hackney/Bermondsey) but also the Snack Demonstration Team reminds me of The Hairy Bikers tour of Britain and Jamie Oliver’s travelling Cock in Cider pub. Is anything truly new?

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