Running A Pub Crawl

From UKRag Guides (wiki)

Article Originally created by Kirsty Clark for Leicester Rag in November 2001. Please note there are some Leicester-specific examples, such as contacting Everards for sponsorship etc. These will be edited down with time - however pease remember you'll have to adapt this to your own town/rag. Note Added by Sean Murricane

Contents 1 Before 1.1 Set a date 1.2 Set a time 1.3 Provisional Route 1.4 Write to the pubs 1.5 Budgets 1.6 Start chasing pubs 1.7 Start recruiting stewards 1.8 Tickets & Posters 1.9 Keep Chasing! 1.10 T-shirts 1.11 Once the route is finalised 1.12 Risk Assessment/Insurance 1.13 Now comes the publicity part 1.14 Stewardling list 1.15 Float 2 On The Night 2.1 Registration 2.2 Briefing the stewards 3 After

Before

The first thing that you need to do is to give yourself LOADS OF TIME!!!!!! You can never plan too far in advance, as bar managers are hard to get hold of with a decision; and it is this part that is the most time consuming.

Set a date

You will never be able to do a student Bar Crawl on a Friday or Saturday night, the pubs will just tell you to ‘go away’ as they will be busy enough on these nights. The last 3 years have been on Wednesdays ending at Reagans, the year before it ended at Kudos (now Creation), still on a Wednesday and before that it ended at The Palais de Danse (now Life) but this was before my time!!!!

Once a date is set, you can write down a week-by-week plan leading up to the event of what needs to be done, so you don’t lose track of time.

Set a time

The pub/club opening hours vary from city to city, so in a small university town you may have to call it a night (during the week) at 11pm, in somewhere like Manchester there are many places still open til 1am. Remember not to start too early, a lot of people have their meals served up at halls around half six, so won't be up for starting a pub crawl til eight. Some of the girls like to spend some time getting dressed up too of course.

Provisional Route

Make a provisional list of the pubs that you want to have on the route. We had around 18 pubs this year, a smaller more selective route may be more ideal so each pub is busier, but invite loads of pubs to make up for those that won’t take part. As Everards sponsor us we have to have their pubs on the route for free. Whereas other pubs are asked to make a donation in return for us bringing hundreds of students through their pub and being on promotional material. This year we upped the rate from £50 to £75. The pubs on the route will ultimately depend on the end venue. At this stage talk to Ents if you want to use an event such as the union bar/club on the night.

It's not a good idea to try to have your crawl too long, because it makes it difficult to move people on/ cover the route you intended. Aim for around half an hour for each pub and up to ten minutes for transit, depending on how far apart your destinations are spaced. It's best not to annoy your local pubs by telling them that you will bring 40 students through their doors, only to have to by-pass them entirely due to lack of time.

Write to the pubs

Once the list is drawn up get writing to the pubs. If the pub was on the previous pub-crawl then they can have a less detailed letter. A new pub will need a letter detailing what RAG is all about and you will need to sell the idea to them more. Everards pubs do not need to be contacted until the final arrangements are set, Everards will tell their pubs they are taking part! Copies of the letters sent this year are in the file.

Set up a chase sheet. Once the letters are sent you can give the pubs a week before you start ringing them and chasing them for answers.

This year we had a meeting early on with Commercial Services, the Union Manager, the Student Development Officer and the Union President, to discuss the event and came up with the idea of a stamp card that was issued to pub-crawlers. By getting the card stamped as you went round you then went into a prize draw with your completed card to win a holiday that was donated by the Union Travel Shop.

If you want to do any kind of prize element to the evening get hold of the sponsorship people to get hold of prizes for you.

Budgets

Do a budget form!! Once you have read this you should know what you want, how many pubs you are aiming for, how many people should be taking part, how much they should be charged etc.

Start chasing pubs

If the person you need to talk to isn’t there, get their name, find out when they do work. You will need to go to a lot of the pubs to collect money and issue receipts and when you go to the pub be prepared to sell the idea to the manager you meet, it is like a business deal you are offering them in a way. We want their money and they want us to bring them custom, everyone should gain, but some managers need more convincing than others.

When you start chasing you will find that a lot of pubs are more willing than others. Places like the Loaded Dog can’t wait to pay up, whereas you find a lot of pubs are brewery pubs run by managers who can’t make decisions like this, so it is not worth the hassle of going to head/regional office. Small trendy bars that are owner run are more likely to take part. But all the student favourites, Time, Revolution and R Bar should be willing.

Start recruiting stewards

You will need three types of stewards:

• Pub Stewards – that are assigned to a pub and make sure that all crawlers that go to that pub are untied if three-legged and just generally keep order, if possible, but at no point should put themselves at risk, they are not bouncers.
• Wandering Stewards – there will be 2-3 of these who wander around the route all night checking that everyone is OK, there are no problems between pubs and can be contacted and are able to go to a particular pub should they be needed.
• Registration – people will be needed at the start to give out route maps and take money for people that have not already bought a ticket. There will also be someone in the RAG office to act as Base Camp should the wandering stewards become unavailable.

A good rule is with stewards, the more the merrier. After all, if there aren't any jobs they need to be doing, they can just have a good time on the crawl.

Tickets & Posters

Order double stubbed tickets from Ents – find out how long they will take and then this can be added to time plan. By now you should have all the information you need to put on them.

Contact Everards with details for posters – these too should be known by now.

Keep Chasing!

Set yourself a time limit for chasing, if you haven’t got a decision by a certain date they aren’t in, it’s their loss!!! If you leave it too long you won’t have enough time to do other essential things.

T-shirts

If getting t-shirts, get quotes and decide how many you want, we were over ambitious this year and got 1000. A possible suggestion is say get 500 and offer it as an incentive to register early so that you get a t-shirt. This year we used a company called Acorn Printing in Coventry.

It can help to have your T-shirts printed in a fairly generic way, so that if you don't use all of them, you can run another pub crawl next term/year and use the left over T-shirts.

Once the route is finalised

When the route is finalised (around 2-3 weeks before the actual day) you can get on and design specific items. The time you leave to do these will depend on how long things take to be done i.e. time in the print shop, t-shirt printing etc. Never believe delivery dates always allow yourself extra time!!!

Things that can now be designed when the route is finalised are:

• Route Maps --- these don't have to be to scale and sometimes a hand-drawn map works best ... UEA Crawl Club used handrawn maps for years, they have their own unique charm and obviously a map that you draw will be the one that suits your needs best. colour is of little use in orange street light and costs/complicates too much anyway.
• T-shirts --- keep designs simple, try and keep to one colour, for different routes, stewards or timings use different colour printing or tshirts, printing plates cost a lot and each colour needs a seprerate plate...
• Stamp Cards --- use different colour inks for differnt times or tasks, make the stamps clear and reusable designs, make them big enough too.

Risk Assessment/Insurance

At this point you will need to risk assess the event and write a short statement with regard to stewarding to the Student Development Officer who will pass it on to the relevant people so we can comply with the Union’s insurance. An example is on file.

See also Disclaimers

Now comes the publicity part

Posters should be on their way from Everards, but this is not the only method. Write an article for Ripple, use Lush FM and put something on the Website. We have found that writing to Sport’s Captains and advertising it as a Club Social works (letter on file.) When the posters form Everards come through you can wallpaper the Union with them, put them in Halls and in departments if you can.

Once the publicity is up you can sell tickets, which should have come through from Ents. Give some books to the shop, sell them in the office, set up a stall in Queens Hall Foyer.

Stewardling list

Now you can formalise the Stewarding list and assign people to pubs. Bare in mind which pubs are near to each other and which ones are more rowdy and may require more stewards, but usually 2 people per pub is enough. Keep the stewards informed by e-mail and ask them to attend a briefing before the registration starts on the night.

Make the Stewards passes that will act as their ticket for the end event (remember to tell the organisers that this is the case so they are not refused entry!!) Also make a list of everyone’s mobile numbers, so that everyone can contact each other on the night. On file is an ‘Idiot’s Guide to Stewarding’ which were useful guidelines for the night and helped with briefing.

Float

Organise a float for the night to sell tickets to those that have not bought them in advance.

On The Night

Registration

Decorate the registration area (usually the Venue) so everyone knows where they are going.

Briefing the stewards

Brief the Stewards around half an hour before it starts, so you can send them on their way before the masses arrive. Issue them their passes, t-shirts and any other gubbins you think they need!

If everyone knows what they are doing there should be little to do on the night.

After registration tidy up and man the RAG office as Base Camp.

Enjoy the night!

After

• Send Thank You letters to the Pubs and Everards (examples on file)
• Thank the Stewards
• Do a Budget Evaluation
• Update this guide with anything else you've learned
• Give yourself a pat on the back you will have made stacks of cash for RAG!!!!
• Breathe and get back to your degree!!!

GOOD LUCK!