Slim pickings for femAle drinkers

Encouraging women drinkers to think differently about ordering ale

According to recent media reports from CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale) and others, women real ale drinkers represent a growing but still woefully under-developed portion of the ale drinking market. While some women say they don’t like the taste of real ales, this does not entirely explain the deficit – particularly as there has been a significant increase in ales whose brands and tastes have been targeted more at women (Waggle Dance honey ale and Outstanding Blonde to name two).

A key issue CAMRA has identified is that many women perceive drinking ales from pint glasses as un-feminine. Large glasses can be ungainly for more petite women to hold, ordering a pint is seen to be behaving in a blokey manner or as one of the lads and many women consider a full pint of beer to have too many calories as well as too much alcohol per drink for their tastes.

While a number of breweries and pubs have been experimenting with different glass designs to overcome this cultural aversion to an unfeminine product, I think there is a subtle change that could be made to the way ales could be ordered that would make it more psychologically acceptable for women to drink beer. My proposal is to introduce the concept of a “slim pint”.

A slim pint glass would be - as you’d expect from the name – a full height but narrower glass incorporating a more curved profile or other design styles for greater aesthetic appeal. Alongside new designs, introducing the word “slim” gives breweries the hook to reinforce messages about beers served in small volumes having less and alcohol units per round, being easier to hold and looking more elegant etc without actually changing the product itself. I hate to draw this particular analogy but it’s a bit like using the word “diet” without the misleading promise that it will help you lose weight.

The use of the term “slim pint” should fit easily into use when being served (“three pints, two slim-pints and a two halves of your finest please”) and, being not a very masculine term, it shouldn’t cannibalise the sales of full pints to an excessive degree. Niche targeting by using image conscious terms and language should broadly restrict its adoption to women, metro-men and venues that wish to avoid an overtly macho-orientated image.

The design of a slim pint glass should be stackable and fit standard glass-washers in order to make adoption by pubs as easy as possible and keep production costs to the same level as most existing glass ranges. Another advantage for the pubs would be the slightly increase in profitability that could be applied as they currently do with half-pint measures.

References: http://bit.ly/ctMdk0; http://bit.ly/biX5bT