Heineken prepare to serve up perfect pint in your local

HEINEKEN’s Cork city brewery is now producing one million pints per day to restock Irish pubs.

And as pubs prepare to reopen, a 90-strong in-house technical, dispensing and quality team is visiting all 7,000 customers – at a rate of over 1,000 on-trade outlets per week – to clean every beer and cider dispensing line across the country.

A cleaning operation of this scale and speed has never been undertaken before. Over 1,330km of lines are being cleaned – that's roughly the distance from Heineken Ireland’s brewery to the company’s HQ in Amsterdam.

The company is delivering more than 2.5 million pints of its world-famous premium draught beer to more than 2,000 pubs this week to ensure everyone’s first pint back at their local is at peak freshness.

The brewer is also in the final stages of the largest quality operation in its 160-year history.

As a result of the swift lockdown in mid-March, there were over 100,000 kegs of its beer sitting in the cellars and dispensing taps of shuttered bars across the country. Heinekan Ireland has collected this unused product and is in the process of repurposing it as agricultural fertiliser and as fuel to produce green electricity.

The company has committed to fully funding the sustainable repurposing of the expired draught beer and cider in opened kegs.

Sharon Walsh, commercial director, said their passion for quality has been leading the way in their response to the coronavirus pandemic, particularly now as the sector gears up for a responsible re-opening: “As a proud partner of the pub trade, we have been playing our part to support the sector. Like everyone, we have had to change how we work and adapt what we do in these exceptionally challenging times. But, one thing that holds true at Heineken is our unwavering passion for quality and the value we place on the personal relationships we’ve built up with our customers, spanning many generations of publicans.

“That’s why we are deploying this vast in-house quality operation and committing to replacing and bearing the cost of unused product to the tune of 10 million fresh pints.

“This is a large investment for our business at a challenging time for us all but it will be worth it to ensure that everyone’s first pint back at their local is at the peak quality and freshness consumers expect from Heineken. As we all look forward to welcoming customers back and take the learnings from other international markets, we are confident that the re-opening of the vital pub sector can, and will, be a safe one and that, once again, the Irish pub will serve as a comfortable and enjoyable space for responsible socialising.”

She continued: “The re-opening of the sector is just the start of the long road ahead to recovery. Brewers, bars, restaurants and hotels will face challenges for some time and we must all pull together to protect this vital sector as we all reawaken to a very different economic and consumer environment.

“There will no doubt be a new normal in how the on trade pub environment looks for at least the short term, but one thing that won’t change is the quality and freshness of that first pint our consumers can enjoy.”

* Pictured are Heineken Ireland delivery men Damian McVicar and Robert Mahony at Peggy Kelly’s pub in Dublin’s Harold’s Cross with the first delivery of freshly brewed Heineken beer ahead of the start of the partial reopening of the hospitality sector on June 29. Photo: Marc O’Sullivan