Introduction
Cask Trade is delighted to be supporting The Drinks Trust for a second year. We caught up with the new CEO, Nicky Burston, as she and the charity embark on a major new fundraising project – Face it Together.
Congratulations on your new role as Chief Executive Officer of The Drinks Trust. You joined the charity during the pandemic. Tell us about that.
I joined The Drinks Trust the week of lockdown. I had been in the drinks industry for quite a few years, but I knew the former CEO, Ross Carter, from my previous life and at the time I was a consultant, and he asked if I could do a couple of days a week for him as part of the fundraising team.
I remember really clearly ringing the first donor on the list, and I didn’t feel I could ask for money, so I pivoted, and I asked him how he was.
2020 was such a phenomenal year for us. After starting in the fundraising team with the Drinks Trust, I moved into an operational role halfway through the year to help the charity through such a phenomenal year of transformational change. One of my first tasks was to upgrade the helpline to 24 hours a day, offering better access and services. I then became Head of Beneficiary Services and went from two days to three days to four days and then five days a week. I was the Head of Charity Services by the time Ross decided to move on last year.
How did the pandemic impact the charity?
It was the perfect storm. Ross joined The Drinks Trust in 2019 and did a big piece of work on the new services and rebranding from The Benevolent to The Drinks Trust. This was unveiled at the annual ball before lockdown, and then lockdown hit and hospitality was one of the biggest sectors affected by lockdown. There was no furlough at the beginning for those on zero-hour contracts, and people’s salary uplift from tips had not been taken into consideration. Thousands of people struggled and were not able to make ends meet.
In one year, we went from helping 450 to over 5,000 beneficiaries to whom we offered grants, and we carried on offering those grants into 2021.
We changed the operations and the team, and had a much more sophisticated grants process. We also launched new services, including video counselling and mindful drinking.
How are things looking now for the drinks industry, five years on?
The sector is still desperately trying to recover from the huge impact on business. We have had the rise in National Insurance and increases in the National Minimum Wage, together with cuts in business rate relief. It is all hitting the drinks and hospitality business very hard, especially as people are trying to recover from debts incurred during Covid.
As The Drinks Trust, what we are interested in is the impact on the people. We have lost talent in the industry from Brexit and Covid. Their financial resilience has run out. Now we have the cost-of-living crisis. The sector is pounded constantly, despite being the third-largest employer in the UK.
Consumers see pubs and restaurants packed, but Tuesday to Thursday is now the new Monday to Friday, especially in city centres, and the business costs remain the same. Businesses can’t invest in wages or training and development. Everyone is still in survival mode.
What happens in hospitality affects the whole drinks industry all the way through. Fewer sales, fewer deliveries for drivers, and less alcohol is being consumed. The other complications for producers are the packaging restraints and the recycling laws, as well as the multiple duty rates on wine. The biggest cost to all organisations is people, and people are struggling.
We take advice from an organisation called the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and the 2024 report stated that 22% of adults of working age will be in poverty this year, which is very scary.
50% of our beneficiaries are in work, but it’s not enough, and they can’t make ends meet.
It’s brutal out there, and people don’t understand that there are a lot of people dedicated to the industry. Gregarious people who greet customers with a smile and professional warmth, but what we don’t see is that there might be a lot of struggle behind those eyes.
We don’t want people to leave the industry, we don’t want pubs to close. We want our drinks industry to thrive, and the people in the industry to thrive, and that’s what we are here for.
Tell us more about your new Face it Together campaign.
Face It Together has two key objectives: a fundraising mechanic to help us get to a million to help those in troubled times. It’s also a rallying cry to position The Drinks Trust in the hearts and minds of those in our industry as their charity and to bring people together. Individual efforts together as a force for good, that’s what we are good at.
Whatever you can do to help us, no effort is too small. Be that a cake sale, a sponsored walk or donating a percentage of the proceeds from a special cocktail.
The five faces in our advert represent different people we have helped. These are real-life examples of how life can change on a sixpence and how we can help change and save lives.
What changes would you like to see in the drinks industry that could benefit the people who work within it?
I would like to see more recognition of the importance of the drinks industry to the UK economy and policies that encourage investment in the sector.
And as a charity, we are working together with other organisations to ensure that drinks and hospitality are framed as an aspirational career, so that newcomers can easily understand that it is a meritocracy where hard work and commitment can yield results and one where talent and enthusiasm are recognised and rewarded.
Everyone needs to work together to inspire our young people to want to work, thrive and innovate in drinks.
It’s really important that we help people stay and thrive in the industry we love; the onus is on us to help each other. The well-being of people who fall on hard times isn’t someone else’s responsibility, it is our responsibility.
If we don’t look after the people who are making our drinks, delivering drinks and serving drinks, our industry will be decimated, and that’s unthinkable.
We want to look to the future, bring people into the industry, and reframe drinks to make it an aspirational career.
How can people support The Drinks Trust?
No effort is too small. Become a monthly donor for £10 a month. You can leave us a legacy in your Will. Anyone can join the walk in September, or you can create your own event, like a quiz.
For further information on the Face it Together campaign and to help The Drinks Trust reach £1 million, click here.
Cask Trade will continue to support The Drinks Trust in 2025 with a fundraising event in June.
