Thanks for Ignazio Cabras, David Higgins and David Preece for all your efforts in editing this volume. Thanks also to Claire Markham for doing most of the work on our chapter, “The village pub in the 21st Century: Embeddededness and the local”, accessible from our University repository: http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/.
In our chapter, we argue that “the local” as village pubs have traditionally been called, is increasingly having to serve a wider target audience and offer more diverse products and services to remain commercially viable. Throughout the book, there is clear evidence that the brewing industry globally is seeing both a groundswell of new entrants and microbreweries at one end whilst the big firms are consolidating into fewer increasingly dominant global brands. From the other chapters, it is interesting to see that the problem of “tied” pubs is not unique to the UK and also to learn that the fermentation of alcoholic drinks dates back some 7-9,000 years in China and perhaps a similar date in Mesopotamia. Beer brewing itself was also established in Egypt from about 5000BC.
The book can be purchased from the publishers, Palgrave: http://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137466174#
You might also be interested in another paper that I have written with Victoria Ellis on Microbreweries in the UK which appears in the British Food Journal: Microbreweries paper for BFJ FINAL