Birmingham Beer Festival

I've quite enjoyed Birmingham Beer Festival this year. As well as working behind the bar, I’ve also been entrusted to run the festival games stand and as well as the merchandise and membership stand. I seem to have regained the gift of salesman, encouraging people to have a go at rolling the barrel and parting with their cash to buy old t-shirts. I've volunteered in a novel number of ways and have hoped that I've earns my wages in beer more than some, as they are usually very generous when it comes to offering beer tokens. But there seems to be less sponsorship at these events, and you have to wonder how much money they need to make in order to break even. Are they overspending on volunteers; especially since this year the bottled beer stand was allowing tokens instead of cash. Fewer and fewer volunteers seemed to know what CAMRA’s policies were or what to do in some situations. And that's very worrying if they're not training their own volunteers.