LINE CLEANING WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY IS LINE CLEANING?

SO, WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY IS LINE CLEANING? OR RATHER, WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY SHOULD IT BE?

PADDY TREACY, OWNER OF NORTHERN LINES, EXPLAINS ALL.

Of course, when I say ’responsibility’ I mean: who should pay for draught lines to be cleaned?

I’ve worked in the draught maintenance side of this industry for 11 years—for a Ca- nadian brewery as one of their in-house line cleaners, for a brewery in the United States as one of their Field Quality Rangers, training and auditing line cleaners and distributors on draught quality, and for the past fve and a half years I have owned my own draught maintenance company, Northern Lines.

Canada is very different to the States when it comes to line cleaning. In order to understand those differences, you first need to be familiar with the “Three Tier” system in America—brewer, distributor, & retailer.

The brewer is the maker of the beer. They sell their beer through a distributor, which may change county-to-county.

The distributor is a bit more complicated. A distributor is a network of brewers whose beers are sold by the same distribution network for that region. Most regions have 2 or 3 distributors: one owned by Molson Coors, one owned by AB-InBev, and possibly one ‘Independent’ distributor, which is of- ten owned by a large local brewer. In each county, a local craft brewer would have an arrangement with a distributor to sell and deliver their beer to the fnal tier: the retailer

The retailer is the on-premise licensee bar or restaurant or the of-premise retailer selling packaged products. Now that we have that clarifed, let’s get back to talking line cleaning!

There are two types of states: Distributor-Responsibility states and Retailer-Responsibility states.

A distributor-responsibility state is one where the distributor—or more comparably in the Canadian market, the brewer—is responsible for the line cleaning. A retailer-responsibility state is one where the retailer—the licensee, (restaurant/bar)—is responsible for the line cleaning.

In nearly all states it is mandated by law that the draught lines must be cleaned every two weeks. In fact, in several states it is legally mandated to be done weekly!

In Ontario, we have a law which states that breweries are not allowed to offer financial or material goods/services to a licensee free of charge. This includes glassware, coasters, umbrellas, and line cleaning. This means that by law, Ontario is a de facto Retailer-Responsibility province. That law is 100% ignored.

This leads me to my main question— who should be responsible for the line cleaning?

If you go to a bar and have a pint of beer that tastes bad do you think: “this pint tastes like the draught lines are dirty” or do you think: “this beer is bad”? I would wager that most consumers would tend toward the latter.

No one wants a bad beer, but those two sentiments speak to two very diferent perspectives:

If I think “the draught lines are dirty” that tells me that this restaurant is dirty and that would look poorly on the establishment.If I think “this beer is bad” then that tells me I don’t like this beer and/or this brewery makes bad beer.

SO WHO LOSES OUT?

Well, the unfortunate thing is that everyone loses. If I have enough bad beers at a bar, I will think: “that bar has bad beer” or even “I don’t like draught beer” and if I try draught beer from a brewery and it is inconsistent due to poor draught hygiene then I will think: “that brewery makes bad beer”.

But this is where we get to the primary dilemma: If I am a brewer, I obviously want the licensee to pay for line cleaning. After all, they could take my beer of tap next week, then the next brewery to go on tap benefts from the investment I have made into the cleanliness of that line. Would you ask your tomato supplier to clean your cutting boards?

If I am a Licensee Owner, I want the brewery to pay for line cleaning. After all, there will always be another brewery willing to jump through hoops to have the privilege of their beer pouring through a draught line at my bar. Since pay-to-play is technically illegal, I can boot the brewery of that line whenever I like with no recourse!

The problem is: when no one wants to take responsibility, it’s the beer, and ultimately the consumer, that sufers. I am neither a brewer nor a retailer, I am a line cleaner. I am dedicated to the cleanliness of the lines and to the quality of the draught running through them. Our mission is to pour beer as the brewer intended.

There is an apt phrase in Czech that comes to mind when I think about this interrelationship: Kvalita točeného piva závisí na 3 neoddělitelných faktorech. Sládkovi, čistých trubkách a Výčepním. Quality beer consists of 3 inseparable parts: the brewer, the line and the Tapster.

What do you think—should breweries or licensees pay for line cleaning in Ontario? Keep it Clean!