The Buyer is a new business website and social media platform offering insights, opinion and tasting analysis for sommeliers, buyers and decision makers across the premium on-trade sector.
The-Buyer.net is a new independent media start up partnership between myself, formerly editor of Harpers Wine & Spirit, and Peter Dean, former national journalist and co-founder of Seven Publishing, now the biggest content marketing agency in Europe.
We have teamed up to plug what we see as a gap in the current drinks media to provide more insight and trading analysis in to the buying and selling dynamics within the premium on-trade, including restaurants, bars, pubs and hotels, and their suppliers and producers.
We particularly want to work with both sides of the premium on-trade to highlight best practice, and identify better and more efficient and profitable ways buyers and sellers of drinks can work together.
The-Buyer.net will place a particular focus on helping drinks suppliers and producers better understand the needs and strategies of the major restaurant and pub and bar groups, particularly in the growing casual dining sector.
Businesses that might not currently look to the drinks industry for solutions and opportunities other than the products they offer.
The site will cover wine, beers, and spirits as well look at the wider consumer trends and changes in spending behaviour and their knock-on effects on the premium on-trade. By premium on-trade we mean food driven rather than wet led outlets where wine is being bought at £4 to £5 wholesale.
The-Buyer.net is the culmination of our many years experience both in publishing, but also working with and around the drinks and on-trade sectors. Over the last nine months we have talked extensively to drinks suppliers, producers and on-trade operators about what they are looking for from their trade media. And what, more importantly, they feel they are missing.
The vast majority identified a clear need for more analysis and a better focus on how these fast paced sectors can grow, hand in hand, and make the most of their collective potential. We hope we can go some way to helping achieve that.
Peter, for example, is a rare breed in that he is a drinks journalist who is also a wine collector, so can see the trade from both sides of the fence. We hope to be able to provide not only comprehensive coverage of key trade tastings, but to assess them through the eyes of a buyer, and look at the commercial as well as stylistic opportunities they might present.
Together with the tasting analysis and coverage you can already read here on on the site, Peter will also be driving a lot of the tasting coverage through our various social media channels. As we know a large part of our potential audience, particularly on the on-trade and sommelier side of the trade, rely on social media and their smartphones to keep in touch during the day.
This will include a new Insta-Taste initiative where drinks tasted or seen out in the market can be photographed and then shared instantly both on The Buyer’s Instagram feed, but also immediately updated on to The-Buyer.net.
We also hope to put on our own events and tastings, which will be focused very much on offering both buyers and sellers in the trade new practical, commercially driven initiatives to be involved with.
The-Buyer.net is our opportunity to do something different and independent from major publishers. So we are happy and free to consider any ideas, and would genuinely welcome your advice and insight in to what you would like to read or get involved with.
We are here to work with you and hopefully have some fun along the way.
Can we also take this opportunity to thank every one in the trade, too numerous to mention here, who have kindly given their time and support over the last few months to help us produce what hopefully they were looking for with The Buyer.
* If you would like to get in touch then please email us through editorial@the-buyer.net or via our various social media channels including @TheBuyer11 on Twitter and Instagram.