The Beau’s Rumour Mill

My sister just called to let me in on the latest Beau’s rumour going through the circuit. We’ve heard some pretty crazy rumours over the past 2 and a half years; my personal favourite is that we are actually a part of [Insert Global Conglomerate Beer Company], but there have been a pile of others.

It seems about every 3 months or so, some beer rep thinks that the best way to grow their brand is to tell restaurant managers something scandalous about Beau’s in the hopes that the restauranteur will be so outraged that they take our tap off on the spot and reward this rep with a new account for letting them in on ‘the truth’.

This never, ever works. Instead, it kind of backfires. The rep spreading the rumour is politely asked to leave, then, the restauranteur calls us up and tells us what X brewery just said about us and we both have a good laugh. X Brewery suddenly starts wondering why their sales go down and they aren’t closing as many new accounts.

Jamie and Jen (our two reps) have a code they work by…

1) Don’t talk bad about other breweries
2) See rule #1
3) I don't want to catch anyone not drinking in their room after lights out

Actually, that last rule we stole from Monty Python, but its still valid I think.

From time to time we do bump our friends off a tap, and the same happens to us – the restauranteur gets to decide whose beer they want; its their place after all. But we have never lost a tap from someone who came in to spread crazy gossip, and I doubt we ever will. And I’ve never complained about it to the offending brewery, because I’d hate to think I helped them figure out that their evil strategy isn’t working.

Lets hope they don’t read this blog entry!