How Charlie McVeigh pioneered the craft beer revolution, built and sold The Draft House to Brewdog, became lead investor in Butchies Fried Chicken, The Breakfast Club

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3:22Thank you so much. Hello there, people and listeners of The Hungry Podcast. I'm absolutely thrilled to welcome Charlie McVeigh to the podcast. Charlie is very much the man who kind of, well, one of the kind of, I'd say, founding fathers of the craft beer revolution. I mean, before there was Brewdell, before there was Camden Town Brewery, before there was Beavertown, I think it was 2006, was it? I've got my research right, that you founded Draft House. which Charlie went on to build 16 pubs, which he then successfully sold to BrewDog in 2018. Charlie's featured on the program Million Pound Menu, which I actually watched, well, when that came out, back in, I think, 2019, whatever it was, which was like the food and drink, kind of Dragon's Den food and drink brands.

4:09And I think one of the big heroes out of that was Black Bear Burger, which I just think is amazing. It's an amazing burger. um currently charlie is an investor he's the investor in food stuff um so toby sav has been on this podcast um so yeah charlie sits as as the chairman for for those guys um investor in butchies fried chicken unreal fried chicken and the breakfast club i think that's uh i think that's everything a very illustrious career also bruiser you might not have seen the the bruiser thing b-r-e-w-s-e-r No, what's that? It's a craft beer marketplace business. It's a culture business.

4:49Really interesting business. And I'm on the board there, and it's run by some really unbelievably – they've all just got PhDs. You know, they're sort of hyper-brainy. So what does Breezer, when it's a craft beer marketplace? One of the catch-lurgers is it's not beer 53. uh but it's not similar to beer 52 it's easy to cancel your subscription yeah they have relationships with the top 120 um genuine independent craft beer breweries and the nice thing about it is it's it's it's it's capital and process light they're essentially a marketplace so when you when you join as a subscriber um the you can choose which brewery you want to send you a case of beer, and then they send it to you.

5:42Caruso does not send it to you. Whereas in Beer52 and the others, they are buying in beer and they're distributing it. So it's a very cost-heavy model. And our one is both lighter in terms of cost and fulfillment, but also better because you can choose what you want to have, or we can choose for you. You can push the randomizer button, or this is what I like, and we'll send you a case. will get the breweries to send you cases, you know, on a random or program-based. And they've been growing, like, businesses have been set up with very little money, and they've been growing like crazy. I think they've now got 2 ,000-plus subscribers, but it's growing all the time.

6:23And I think it could, like a lot of these things, it's hard to tell, but I think it could become, you know, the dominant craft beer subscription business because it's, I think, a much better model and you can get much better beer through it than you can through the others. So what you said there is you said, I think it could become the dominant craft beer model. Obviously, you've got Beer 53. I think there's a few others. Beer 52. Beer 52. The joke was it's not Beer 53. It's not a Me Too. It's not. but but i i do want to and we can use that as as as uh we can almost talk about uh draft house and and then actually this this new movement with um bruiser but i listened to a podcast um as i said i was in valencia airport i was in burger king probably sway more than i'm now it's very hot uh when we're recording this um it's sort of boiling on june day just for listeners um but yeah i was in an airport in valencia on friday and i was in burger king and i got a wopper burger and um it was four hours and i was like fuck this so i put the podcast on you did with mark oh oh the scottish bloke really good conversation he's great he's really really good he's called uh mark mcclure i'm gonna butcher his surname it's called a spectacular podcast because he wears spectacles so it's like spect spectacle you're uh podcast and he's called he's gonna kill me he's scottish very very good very scottish very glad swedish and uh and very he's an excellent interviewer he's a very talented brand guy yeah and yeah it'll come to me his surname you're right it's muck something but he he like he there was a quote that you said on that uh podcast and i literally almost spat my diet coke out and i was on fucking hell like that set my curiosity off like fireworks and he basically says he said a business is essentially a fiction and i think it was by um the guy who did um sapiens yes i guess yeah our names the probably the names are escaping yesterday but is it you hal navari or something whatever that very so so you said that and i think actually for ideas to spread and businesses to spread there needs to be a story at the nexus of it and there's some ideas and i thought okay why did craft beer boom like why did it because some ideas don't take off like you've got uh so like obviously outside of so you say something like google glasses is one that just didn't take off um in food and drink uh you know hard seltzer weirdly it boots off in the states it hasn't really got going here um meatless farm they just went bust yesterday the vegan this vegan meat story um and part of me thought is like is there because this the story is unbelievable or is there something with the story and i'd love to like sort of know is what was the fiction you created at drive to think i think starting with with craft beer per se first of all not crazy about the term craft beer although it is it's it's sort of a handy term and i think it's it's it's ended up uh you know capturing more than just what i think it started off being um so started off being sort of indie rebel brew you know guys leaving their job and going going you know brew beer in a bathtub and and and and and trying to build a business and build a brand and brew incredible beer and have fun and all the rest of it and then it's it's ended up being sort of corporatized i think uh so i i think i think and a lot of people um you know they see camden town or they see beaver town and you know great brands great beer but they you know they belong to the big guys um and i think i i think i think that's uh that's part of the issue but i don't know i think i think i think it's interesting there are two different aspects to this so on the one hand you've got you know what was craft beer all about at the beginning.

10:27It was essentially about, you know, catching up with the trend, the global trend towards sustainability. So, you know, the trend for sustainability, the trend for provenance, knowing where things come from, the trend for, you know, things having an independent nature rather than being part of the corporate machine. And I think craft, those are the kinds of things that, you know, when, when all those guys started in the u.s started making those beers uh that was what really that was what really resonated people was the fact that you know they're not you're not buying a beer that's being advertised on tv you know you're buying it where you know a significant proportion of what you're spending on the beer is going to pay for that tv outlet you're buying you're buying beer that's that's that's really high quality it's got incredible hops in it incredible malts in it to be brewed, you know, on a small scale and, you know, small batch, whatever.

11:29And I think that really resonated with people. And I think once it got to some kind of critical scale, I think people started to switch over from, you know, Stella over to all these kids who were making this incredible stuff and felt like they were part of a movement. um i think there's another type of beer which which is it's a slightly different story but it's but it's but it's kind of similar and it really hasn't caught on at least not with the younger generation which is cascale uh and a lot of people your age don't even really know what cascale is cascale is like you know the original beer which you pump uh the guy with the flat cap and the pump you know in a pipe you know yeah drink drinking drinking his pint of cascale cascale is a probiotic products very healthy uh it's it's it's it's the original english beer uh so it's got tremendous provenance uh it's it's actually a lot easier to brew in some ways than than than cask than say lager uh or or um you know keg pale ale uh and and yet it so and it has all of those kind of amazing characteristics and yet it hasn't caught on with young people young people don't get it they haven't they haven't the whole that whole craft beer market hasn't sort of segued into drinking car scale so you know there's an example of something which which should i think in my head is actually is actually a better story than craft beer uh and it hasn't it hasn't caught up um and uh yeah maybe it will if i'm i'm i'm working with um uh beginning to work with a guy called jamie Alsop, whose family used to own Alsop's Brewery, which was a massive brewery, you know, 1900 to probably 1960, and then got sort of eaten up by one of the big breweries in the 60s and sort of disappeared as a brand.

13:20And he's actually bought his family brand off of, I think it's Bass or some more. And he said he relaunched it a couple of years ago. We're planning to, in Notting Hill, we're planning to launch a uh a car scale pub like a pub that really focuses on car scale and kind of tries to in not in a boring way but tries to educate people about why car scale is better uh and kind of kind of also have the vibes of a of an old school nodding hill pub rather than you know what we got now which is not that um very far from that so you know it i think i think that's the that's the interesting thing is is is how what you know why these things get cultural traction yeah yeah i mean i find it fascinating because it's like why yeah why does and you're so the the back to the business is essentially a fiction it's like why does a story like we have well why does craft beer i know you don't like that word but just put it in sort of lameness and why why does that yes it's the shorthand yeah so why does that boot off and then another idea doesn't boot off or like i said it doesn't boot off and i think for people listening to this who are founders who are going to want to disrupt categories who are going to want to create a movement and almost so be the kind of the storyteller what like one of the reasons why cascale has not taken off uh is and and and this is you know is this this is probably uh yeah this this probably indicative of the challenge is that it's more complicated to manage in the pub so it only lasts once you tap the keg it only lasts for max 72 hours and then it goes off uh whereas whereas keg beer lasts forever yeah that's the joy of cascales is you know when when it's gone it's gone you know you you you it's when it's fresh it's delicious that's disgusting it goes off it goes off very quickly uh so it's kind of like how do we you know how do we educate pubs and how do we educate people to create demand for that so that you can get enough throughput so that you can always have great really fresh uh car scale in pubs and kind of i think it will happen but it just it just it just takes time but that's been always been one of my things we always had a lot of car scales on and i have to say from time to time we did throw away quite a lot yeah we used to have a promotion in in draft house called give us a stay our daily cask and basically every monday we would charge 2.75 for a pint of cask ale because we would have opened a lot of casts tapped a lot of casts over the weekend and then on monday we'd want to just clear it all out and start again you know so that was the that was the vibe yeah so so so back to the kind of the early days of draft house and obviously well there's so much other stuff to explore but i just think in terms of this storytelling piece it's it's fascinating because i think i really believe in perry's kind of been a big uh a big purveyor of this is that a brand is ultimately a story and the story pulls people in and ideas of stories so i know in that first year uh you you i think you had a pub and it was like was it selling italian food maybe and you said that first year was like really hard like a trough of sorrow almost it was were desperately hard and then something happened whereby it began to gain momentum like what if we were to zoom in on that like what were the specific one or two things that changed in maybe the way you've got to go back a little bit further so we had a very successful nightclub in in i had a very successful nightclub um i tend to say we but there were a couple of other investors um and if they're listening hi guys uh but um called woodies uh in notting hill and and uh it was it's a kind of legendary 90s venue, sort of epicenter of bad behavior.

17:19The general manager, the guy who ran it for us, was an Italian guy. And he said to me, I found a site and I want to open an Italian pub. I was like, at that point, nothing had really gone wrong. And so I also had the pub next door to Woody's house going really well. And I thought, well, anything I do, you know, being a total idiot, I thought anything I do is going to be successful. What's wrong with an Italian pub? Turns out there's a lot. Nobody likes really. Well, nowadays, actually, people like Retti and Peroni and stuff. And in those days, it wasn't really a thing. People don't go to pubs to eat Italian food.

17:56And we were unable to change that habit, change that perception. So we had to close that pub down. and we ended up, one of my other managers, it turned out was a complete beer fanatic. In the very early days of what became known, it wasn't called craft beer at this stage, but there were brands like Sierra Nevada and others from the US being imported into the UK in very small quantities. And he had been to Canada where there was a lot of craft beer happening and he was sort of drinks to that. anyway cocktail fanatic who's an expert on anything anything liquid uh and he said look let me have a go so so so we we sort of dialed the pub right back repainted it some traditional pub colors you know kind of gastric puppy kind of colors you know like dark reds and olive greens and you know all that stuff i you were too young to remember but that was kind of what pubs looked like in the 90s uh and uh very simple menu just like burgers dogs you know whatever again you know that wasn't really a thing back then um you know everyone was trying to gastro club foods they were trying to do high-end food i mean yeah we would have still like you know junk food basically dirty food uh uh just because it's it's kind of just wanted to make it as simple as possible and do something if it would work with beer really well.

19:29And, yeah, so we put some interesting beers in the bar. We should dial back the decor. We got Adam, who is this chap, the beer fanatic, hired some great people who were really, you know, interested in what we were doing. And, you know, before you knew it, I don't know, three, four, five, six months in, it was really busy. and it was just it was booming uh and it was because we were doing something different but not that different yeah still a pub uh and still salt beer and uh a lot of the beer was english but and meanwhile just as we were about to open the pub so wind back three four five six months uh this guy called duck and sandbrook uh walks in and says um we're opening a brewery around the corner uh behind your pub you know do you want to come and have do you want to come and have a try of the beer and now that's like oh no another fucking brewery you know and now yeah there's so many yeah then yeah and this is like uh i remember when that was i think it was probably like 2007 or 8 then it was like wow someone's opening a brewery that's seriously cool yeah epic you know we was we were so excited so we all sort of ran around and got you know drank lots of pints of duncan's beer and uh and uh had a fabulous time with duncan realizing duncan was a top bloke uh and uh and then so we sold his beer for many many years as of one that was a car scale one of our car scales uh duncan uh it's called wandle off the river sandbrook's wandle uh and uh so all those things were they all sort of came together and and and people just started to build a real loyalty to the department the people who work there they it wasn't boring and go there you know for a really like refined experience of drinking beer uh hopefully uh yeah the staff the team were being boring about beer they're just having fun and but just going you you should try this.

21:35It's amazing. And, you know, when something new came in or whatever. And that just wasn't something that ever happened in the pub. You know, pubs, you just went in and there was like Stella, Carling, you know, Guinness, and that was it, you know. And so this was just something completely different, but it also felt kind of the same. It just felt like this is the natural progression of how a pub should evolve. And that became the, that was called the Westbridge Public House and Darling Rooms. And I know you're dying to jump in, but that became, that was the westbridge public house in darling rooms uh and uh that was the that was basically the the seed the germ uh of of draft house and then the next one we opened was on that was on battersea bridge road and down the road we opened another pub on on on northgood road in battersea south battersea uh in nappy valley as they call it uh that that that was the first draft house um i've got one more story to tell on that so so so the draft house itself the name came because our second pub was supposed to be uh in westfield uh in in shepherd's bush when they launched westfield in 2009 we were we were supposed to be their pub you know because the woman who was doing the curation of the sort of food retail offer in in westfield was a regular in in westbridge in in our you know in our cool little crap yeah but uh and so it was massive site and we got very excited we raised the money uh did also decide it was going to cost us like 750 grand to do it was a hell of a lot it was just really squeaky bum time terrifying project and this was sort of end of 2008 uh and then we didn't quite get the lease over the line and signed by the end of 2008 and And then 2009, you're probably too young, but it was just the end of the world financially.

23:30It was like the financial crisis blew up in January and all of our investors ran away. So we ended up not doing that part, but we had decided because we thought in Westfield, there'll be lots of, you know, wives dragging their sort of slightly disconsolate husbands around. River Hyde had said, yeah. And they'd be like, look here, I go west, you know, how can I get out of this living house? We wanted to have a name that was, you know, a Ron Seale-type name that would do in the center of the tin, and that became the Draft House. Although we didn't end up doing that site, thank God, actually, as it turned out.

24:08Although, in fact, I think if we had done it, it would have been hugely successful because, long story, but I sent up a site that was one of my main mistakes in business. But we ended up applying that name to the site in Norski Road, and that was the beginning of the Browd. bohemi our beloved sponsor are helping build the fastest growing challenger food and drink brands look if you're a small brand just starting out and need your first indie stockist your first hundred stockist to wholesale bohemi are the platform to categorically speed that up but if you're a big brand wanting to get bigger bohemi are also insane they make field sales marble smooth silky slick they're just epic ollie's ollie's been on this podcast twice actually they saw a 29 percent uplift in sales when using boemy to check major malt listings availability insane 29 percent uplift by downloading an app insane lucky saying my boy aaron duff is coming to podcast in a couple of weeks he uses it to manage a team of 30 people and they've lucky to have unlocked 500 draft listings by using boemy look you've got to get involved with this stuff it's absolutely insane and it will categorically change your life it's just the sickest platform i use it all the time islands for people listening in terms of creating that story what what you've said there there's there's a lot in it and i think the first thing is you don't just sit down and create the story and then away you go so you've got to take a lot of action first mess around not mess around but try a lot of stuff throw a lot of stuff at the wall see what sticks and then the story will come out of that and i sat with a guy called um called alex smith he's like a brand strategy guy and he basically said that he said it's like the first couple of years is a lot of serendipity it's trying different stuff it's trying the italian food realizing that doesn't work reversing back and then you then eventually find your way so i think that's really reassuring for listeners but then also the way the movement started is or for at least for you guys one picking up is you just injected that fun sort of storytelling bits at the point of purchase and there's a brand And there's a brand, I don't know if you've heard of them, called Perfect Head.

26:17So basically everyone said Matcha is too niche, waste of time. It's a matcha drink. They've got them in testers, I'll say that. Waste of time, don't bother, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They basically, Matcha was quite a series. You know the green powder? Yeah, I know, mate. Yeah, yeah. They've come in and made it fun, injected storytelling. And now they've got investment from Stephen Bartlett. they've just unlocked a shitload of listings all through just taking something that was not necessarily serious but quite like um almost a bit like placid and then just injecting fun to it and i think there's a lot in that even like because your your chicken rules everything everything around me t-shirt is like a wu-tang clan reference yeah yeah like that's just even that storytelling do you know what i mean but there's these little moments of it how did you you said you spoke to um someone called is it first first my fruit five three sorry right um Chris Carley yeah so uh who did our brand yeah because that you talked about well I again do research you said we had to codify the brand I think you could have a unreal business you could have an unreal product but if you don't create a brand it's like having Ferrari with no engine do you know what I mean it's all gonna get going yeah I think I think what we did and I think what Butch's has done uh which is up my fried chicken brand uh which um founded by not my brand but I'm an investor and it founded by Garrett Fitzgerald is you know there was a lot of trial and error and a lot of blind alleys and a lot of mistakes.

28:03And I think both brands have had the luxury of being profitable early, but not necessarily needing to codify the brand, formulate the brand at an early stage. Just started off doing something that was profitable. Yes, we made mistakes. Yes, things went wrong. Yes, you know, running a business is just one catastrophe after another. But actually, in the end, these were profitable businesses underlie. So as a result, we had the time to actually create something that functioned and that worked and that clearly customers liked, despite the mistakes, despite everything else. we had sales that were growing we had profits that were growing and so if you have that then you know you say well actually there is something here and maybe we're going to do another one in our case it was Norska Road in Garrett's case it was running a spectacularly profitable and successful street food stall on Broadway market and then deciding to go into bricks and mortar but he sort of perfected the product perfected the earlier duration of the brand which was completely homemade uh just in this stall and it became quite famous butchies and uh as a result um you know when you then sit with someone like frith car from studio frith who k-e-r-r uh it's a surname of f-r-i-t-h um who's a genius but but you know you and we also worked with a couple of other people earlier on, but you have something to codify, you know.

29:51So, I think what seems to me to happen quite a lot at the moment is people say, right, we're going to set up a, you know, we're going to start, I don't know, brand making bricks, you know, but we're going to make this incredible brand, you know, around bricks. I'm going to start with the brand uh and then we're going to kind of the actual business is going to follow on from the brand we're going to invest a lot of money in the brand we're going to invest a lot of money in social media and marketing and so on uh the product is going to kind of follow on afterwards and hopefully we'll make money but we know that initially we're going to lose a lot of money because because that's the nature of that kind of business um and uh i think i think that's what i instinctively my philosophy of business or whatever you want to call it you know my mo in businesses to try and make money uh early on uh try and start off being profitable and then grow from there i don't really i i get i get restless and and and and unsettled uh around lost leading lost leading businesses uh and uh so yeah that so there's almost what is so reassuring for for for me and just such a truism is it's almost like the story back to the story piece is the story follows the business and i think a lot of people probably myself as well would think right i'll just create a banging brand story on canva and away we go then the business will follow and i think um i think it it goes back to like having a great product as in food and drinks i see this happens with every single guest who's elevated and made done really really well they've all said product first focus on the product and all the other bells and whistles you can focus on next whereas i think it's quite it's very romantic to start a food and drink brand or a food business but but i think you can get pulled into the into the grim weeds of not making money and the biggest example is that is all this meat stuff this vegan meat where it's like you know and it's is is that a boom or bust is there have people well i've been bullish with that do you know i mean i think i was reading an article today about about um frankenbeach and uh we're saying that actually the the process is always going to be lab-based and very expensive to make it it's always going to be very hard to make money out but this it's it's it's not it's it's difficult apparently it's difficult to make it at scale uh because um the i think it's because and i didn't fully understand the article but because it was quite technical but i think the i think i think the idea was that the process of creating a a culture which then grows into me that kind of site, that's the Franken element, right?

32:47The Frankenstein element of this thing can readily generate poisons, things that can be harmful. So they were saying, for example, that there's one enzyme that's created in the frankenmeat process, in that kind of culture meat process, which can render women infertile, you know as an example uh and so they have to make sure that you know that because it's different from slaughtering a cow chopping it up and selling it you know um obviously also not you know ideal from the cow's point of view but but you know it's quite a straightforward process uh and this is like highly highly so i think get it i think getting that to the point of real scale and profitability is is it's more difficult than than than it would appear um and uh let's split a bit let's split a bit aside but you didn't you did mention no but i think i think that's right and i think they're coming up with uh coming up with a great product i mean in the case of retail it's which is what draft house was you know it's a pub essentially a retailer it's coming up with um you know a tremendous experience for the customer um and then building a brand around that it's great but of course you obviously start off with the brand i mean you have to it's got to be called something you know hungry is called hungry i mean hungry is not is not stephen bartley yet yeah uh so what is it called the something ceo diary of a ceo yeah i mean it's not diary of a ceo maybe it will be one day but it has to be called something and that brand has to have a significance has to have a meaning uh so it's not just you know you can't just call it the wine label or maybe you could but the wine label uh podcast uh just the podcast i mean it's actually quite a good name but but probably wouldn't take you know yeah yeah given how many there are um but so yeah i think I think that, you know, I guess what I really mean is you've got to build something that's profitable, and then you've got to be very open to how you evolve the brand, and then codify the brand as you go along.

34:54And, of course, any brand, and I think this is why so many restaurant businesses get into trouble as they get to scale in the UK, any brand needs to be reinvented all the time, needs to be moved forward, needs investment. I mean, that's Perry's business. When we talk about Perry, we're talking about Perry Aidan Taylor from Big Fish. He's been on this podcast three times extraordinarily. This is my first time. May there be many more. And I think that constant reinvention, preserving the essence, the ethos of the brand, but moving it forward all the time in line with culture, the wider culture, in line with the product as the product evolves.

35:34and of course evolving is a risk it's much easier to stay as you are and it's a lot cheaper but ultimately you have to and one of the things that kills businesses is just going right we've perfected it now let's just keep spending the same amount of money on marketing and the business will keep growing and let's cut the costs while we're at it. And then before you know it, you're catching a falling knife and the whole thing is going bust on you, you know, so it's challenging, you know. What's meant is that Mark interview was in 2018. Yeah. Five years ago. And I was thinking, and there was some stuff in there that you were talking about, Albert Schloss in Manchester.

36:20I went to Union up in Manchester. Yeah. I can never say Oldrington, Oldrington Market, whatever it is. Oldrington, yeah. Yeah, so that's now like become more of a thing. So you said something that says AI, coming down the roads which is mad and it's like we'll talk profit is what you're saying yeah yeah that's what that's what i want to talk about that later but what one one's what i'm basically saying is is it's so true like when i listened to the to the podcast you with mark five years ago you're like oh my god like the landscape now is so different and i think we're like the food um almost the concept of uh street food was was just beginning to sort of bubble in the zeitgeist whereas now it's like everywhere yeah um so and i think it went by having though this interview today and the conversation you had with mark is like if you don't constantly reinvent you just become stale and pallid and just sort of just go in evaporate into the ether going into that like how do people reinvent without losing their core essence and their soul because i think i've seen it happen before firsthand where you try and reinvent yourself and you're like it just it's yeah it's like putting on the wrong clothes i think i think that the key thing is to be to dance you know like nobody's watching right so the whole point about business and brand is you know you've got to be just you can't be what you there's got to be a part of you, there's got to be a part of your headspace as a business and as an individual, if you're the CEO or the founder or whatever, which just loves doing what you're doing, it's having fun, and it's always thinking forward.

38:03And, you know, just because you've, you know, you've had an absolutely fucking terrible last three months and, you know, sales have gone down and you're losing money and somebody key in the business has left and, you know, and there's all these terrible things are happening, which is basically, welcome to running your own business. You have to be able to carve out that headspace, which says, I am so excited about how Coca-Cola is going to evolve this year. And I mean, it can sometimes be, sometimes a really great marketing and brand evolution can happen by mistake. you know uh for example like like when kfc ran out of chicken you know and they created one of the it was one of the you know out of the recovery of that which you know the f asterisk ck uh campaign you know which was basically fuck we've run out of chicken sorry guys you know but we're going to be back uh and they did it with so much wit and joy and and excitement and uh you know and and and and humility uh importantly um that you know when they did get chicken back their sales were up enormously i mean like vastly up because they just they just caught and that's a big company i mean young brands is one of the biggest restaurant businesses in the world if not the biggest uh and uh and they were nimble enough to when they had a problem in the you know tiny little uk market uh they they they absolutely nailed it and they they that their uk business was not in trouble before it was fine wasn't amazing it's amazing now and that's because of what they did with that recovery so that that can happen or and in a way that's that's a gift hey guys quick one the biggest festival in challenge of food and drink is heading and coming very very soon bread and jam is literally at the glass and brief for food and drink brands is so banging they're in the eighth year everyone's going to be there it's going to be a great time um i'm actually doing a live podcast with the wonderful giles brooke 18th 19th of july business design center in islington london you've got to grab a ticket there's opportunities to do huge pitches meet the right buyers ocardo selfridges tesco sainsbury so much more and it's just good crack it's great fun and if you want a ticket head to bread and jam fest.com but i'll also put a link in the show notes so please do yourself a favor and grab yourself a ticket is there an example of how you did that woodies or or the draft house with this because i think what's joyful to hear is is as you said like business is hard there's loads of failures it's you know every day this kid is going to mess up fuck up kind of thing but to create a space in your mind to have that sort of frivolous kind of fun and as you say dance like no one's watching is there an example of how you reinvented without um losing yourself you have to constantly you you have to constantly say what is the right thing to do here for the brand for the business of team for the customer it's and and it's yes you want to yes any you know any business person has to control costs but it's It's not generally in anyone's interest to slash costs in a business because you're in trouble, you know?

41:31Generally speaking, and it's also probably not in anyone's interest to double down hugely and spend loads more money. You've just got to be clever about how you plan out, like, okay, we're in the shit at the moment. What do we need to do for the next six to 12 months, next two years? I mean, we're just in the middle of an exercise at Butchie's, which is called 2025. And what that means is 20 sites by 2025. And that's a two-part exercise. Part one is what do we do for the next three months? And part two is what do we do for the next three years? And they're completely different exercises. The next three months is like, what are the things we need to do to build the foundations with the brand, with the product, with the team, so that at the end of those three months, we have the platform to go and do the three-year thing, which is the 20 sites.

42:24We're at six at the moment. And then, you know, you get to the end of that three months and another three months plan. And so it's what are we doing tomorrow and what are we doing in five years' time, you know? And both those things are equally important, you know? And if you get either of them wrong, you will fail, definitely fail. uh and and that's why this whole does does like nobody's watching that's the five year that's like we we need to do the right thing now we need to do the right thing you know consistently and we need to we need to think of you know we need to operate within the parameters of our brand you know what are the things that make uh that make this business special so in the case of butchies for example uh you know it's it's it's you know what one of our brand things is one of our brand principles is is make money every day but we also have hellbent homelessness you know uh and uh and we have still got love for the streets actually which is hellbent homelessness uh and how do we make those two things work together for the next five years so that when we get uh to the end of the three months the next three months what's the next step what's the next step what's the next step so that so then hopefully we smash that we get a 20 size in two years you know uh doesn't always happen and most businesses fail you know and you have to accept that it's um one thing i heard you say i think it was the guy from piper crispin and is that 7 17 and 70 which is the almost the hurdles the roadmap roadmap as you scale and one thing and i could be wrong and that's why i love doing these podcasts is you get a kind of really you know test and tweak ideas but one thing i believe is that sometimes scale can kill magic and it can kill like you know the thing on your t-shirt so cream chicken rolls everything around me like that's such a beautiful like little bit of wordplay it's obviously on brand with butchies starting east london like you know wu-tang clan like that's that's amazing but it's such a beautiful little thing sometimes as brands scale and this is what i've learned from you know speaking to william chase he was like as soon as you get bigger sometimes corporate people can come in it just kind of eviscerates the culture you seem to have done that you managed to bring bring people in who were from i think weatherspoons and stuff like that and managed to get that part right yeah talk to me about that well that's that's right and i think that in the end you know delivering the brand through operations i mean if you're a retailer yeah delivering the brand through operations

45:17requires systems. It requires being systematic. It requires having really brilliant people who are great at managing the team, recruiting, incentivizing, motivating, monitoring the team. Because when you get to 20 sites or whatever, Charlie, bless him, can't be everywhere. I can't run around going, what's going on in Milton Keynes? What's going on in Manchester? and what's going on in East London, West London, whatever. So you need systems. And you have to accept that. But then it's what are the rules of those systems? And do those rules adhere to the fundamental principles, the brand? And if they do, and you can deliver that, happy days.

46:05And if they don't, either it's better, in which case great we've learned something and let's adjust the principles and you know believe me people adjust that you know principles are not set in stone or fucking hell no we're not doing that like we're not we're not going to start selling stellar because it's cheaper you know because that would be an idiotic thing to do just because it would help us to get to scale and and abmbev which makes tell is going to give us a million quid because you know so the draft house will sell will sell stellar uh you know that even though that might make sense to the fd you know it's it's certainly not going to make sense to the customer or the team most importantly team would be like it'll quit if you start to sell it you know so so i think i think it's like systems are really important i think getting great people in like richard peachman he's the guy you were talking about you hired out of out of weather springs to kind of systematize the business but the whole point of that was to create a system which allowed us to replicate uh you know the original draft house in lots of locations so that lots of lots of wall people could have the wonderful experience that we gave people in in in westbridge in the first one uh and but you know the lots of businesses have failed on that and i'm not saying that we were successful all the time i mean you know either we were at times we got too prescriptive and too like systemy uh and at other times we let it go too much and you know certain parts would be dirty or, you know, like everyone's having too good a time drinking on the job or whatever.

47:36And it was a bit chaotic, you know, and the customer walk in and go, actually, you know what, I don't really want to be here. So, and so, you know, retail discipline, which is fundamentally what we're talking about, is it doesn't matter whether you're the coolest brand in the world. You're the coolest brand in the world. You need retail discipline even more because otherwise people are just going to poke holes and they're going to walk in and go, yeah, there's no real trouser here. you know, it's all about, and I think that's key. I think what's, yeah, what you're saying is fascinating, because as I say, some of the guests who I've had on, who are the founders, there's always going to be this moment where the founder is often brand, I think, predominantly, not always, but a lot of the time the founder is the brand.

48:17I think a brand is often an extension of the founder. They hit this point of scale where they need more systems coming in place, and what happens is is the person comes in tries to like disrupt and i'm seeing this happen firsthand disrupt the status quo and you basically get like a a thing where the brand doesn't lie up and lie in align with the systems ben branson from seed lip said he you'd see it happened three times or three hires or it just it just went wrong yeah will chase said the same thing from tyrols what were you with with um uh richard peachman your rich patients what like what did you ask him in the interview like how did you ensure that he he came in to deliver the systems but was also gonna deliver the brand as you say because that's i think that's a real hurdle for people listening i think he was i think he was in love with the brand anyway right a fan right okay and i think he was desperate to leave Wetherspoon's because Wetherspoon's is such a I mean it's a brilliant business I have a massive Tim Martin fan but it's a very very rigid and and company culture because they're in a thousand sites or whatever and that's the way it has to be right and I think he wanted to get into a more entrepreneurial entrepreneurial environment he's somebody that places a premium on cool uh which I actually don't but he did and so he wanted to work somewhere cool and that was really important to him in his own definition for cool I mean I don't really know what cool but uh and i think he would recognize that if he if he was listening um but i think he uh ultimately and then he and then he kind of started he's like actually this is all a bit shit you know like you know just to use a perry phrase uh yeah these guys really have no idea what they're doing uh and it's completely inconsistent uh and you know one pub's doing it this way one manager's doing it that way you know and and from a customer point of view there's no consistency even from you know one manager to the next on shift you know uh and yes people are having a good time but but not always because if you don't have rigid you know rigorous systems and some people you know you can get you can end up with hr issues you can end up with all kinds of stuff you know uh and it's fine if you've only got one or two parts or three parts and you can be there all the time um but if you can't be there all the time you need those systems and richard was brilliant at that uh but we you know we made some mistakes on recruitment along the way and i think i think it is something where quite often if you're if you're the if you're the founder you know the entrepreneur uh you always have um every founder both has some some kind of blend of messiah syndrome but also um uh imposter syndrome right oh yeah so so so and like the dial is moving all the time between messiah like i know all the fucking answers and how dare anyone challenge me uh and then the other one is imposter syndrome i don't really know what i'm doing i haven't done this before you know i'm really worried because we're running out of money uh and it's just a shit show the whole thing and it's and what am i going to do and i don't really know how to ask you know the question and when you're when you're in the that that side of the dial um you know you can you can hire people because you think oh well they've done you know this guy has been the operations director of of of weather spirits right or you know mitchell's and barler uh another huge pub co uh and so he must know what he's doing right he has to you know he's done it before and I don't know what I'm doing because I'm just making it up right uh and then the guy comes in and and you know he he tried to your point he kind of wrecks it because he tries to make remake it in his own way and you're kind of like standing off you're going I'm just gonna let this guy run it and obviously I everything I've done is shit and everything he's gonna do is brilliant uh and of course he understands the brand and everything else of course he gets the team uh and then it's a huge you know huge like you know just massive clusterfuck uh and then you have to somehow get out of that situation get some of the people back who've left you know that kind of pull it all back together again uh if you can or maybe you go bust you know at that point so i think that is that that that you know whereas richard instinctive first of all is humble so he so as a person uh so he listened uh i think he realized quite quickly a lot of what i was saying was shit but but you know he still listened and then he he was very respectful of the brand uh and uh and but together you know the the the two of us uh and then later rfd you know we did we did make it a better business you know through systematizing it but also through being respectful the brands were evolving things over time not wrecking the whole thing on day one not trying to completely change everything day one so yeah i think it was i think you could go you know but but hiring the right person and there there is always probably always going to be an element of luck in that because you know a lot of people are very impressive in interview and they might have great references but they may not actually just be the right guy for whatever reason and you need listen there's there's like you need the right guy for every role if you're going to be successful it's scary how much you need that you can't have people who are a bit shit or not quite right uh and then and then you have that the the other dial on that is okay so left side of the dial is i give them a chance and see see how they do maybe maybe they can they can get a bit better right side of dial is fucking firing right now you know and that's a rough dial that one because you don't know and the longer they're there that person is not quite right the more everyone who works with them is like getting pissed off uh and if they're not improving it's like it's cancer and then you just yeah why didn't i do that yeah but you don't know some people turn around so it's difficult and making those decisions is difficult what you say about the the the pendulum swinging and i think you've hit this you've so hit the nail on the head charlie with the with this messiah versus um versus imposter syndrome i mean i feel like i feel like that pretty much every day whereas women i'm like i know zaya well fucking doing the next room i'm like what am i doing and what's that um and so so but i think i think brands start and there's a huge healthy beak dosage of naivety and i really believe brands are a bit like um i see the brand progression is like as a as a journey of almost like a toddler growing up so as a toddler you're super curious you walk around try stuff then as you get older i.e scale you almost become like that insecure insecure 30 year old at the school disco i.e the imposter syndrome the hot licks of imposter syndrome come piling in and you're like fucking hell like someone else like someone tell me what to do like tell me what to dress like tell me what to and i've seen that happen and then the as you say and this is as you say the pendulum swings because it's one minute the founder is like right this person's coming in from wherever and they're gonna set a place for them fireable listens to them and then but then then they've got to defend the team of the old guard i.e and be the messiah a bit and it's you get this as you say cluster cluster fader fuck whatever we said and um i think what's what what you said i'm really trying to get into the nuance of so many people listening to this we're trying to we'll be going on that journey and as you say if you don't get the right person in the right role then it could go bust so so with with um richard you said he was super humble so that's a good thing to look for he listened top his nails i mean i i richard richard's eyes will be burning i'll have to tell him that he's being mentioned and we'll see what he thinks about it but he but he's a tough guy but he was humble you know in the sense that he listened um and uh and you know together you know we made we made that we made we we made the business what it was um what was your messiah slash imposter syndrome like how did you navigate that as the founder um i well i definitely thought and i and i only really realized this quite a long time after i sold the business i definitely thought that i was the only person who could run the business right i thought there was something special about me you know in terms of i don't know tone of voice and on on i wrote all the copy for example in the business and i thought that i only i had the right tone of voice in the copy and no one else could do it whenever anyone else did it it was shit uh and you know that i was even though you know i've been talking about you know how you delegate and how you how you create systems to allow the business to grow i'm still in everything so there was no decision that i wasn't it you know i mean that's that's that's caused a huge exaggeration i mean i wasn't ordering every pub to be a supplier but but any any anything any decision particularly one that i thought was a fun decision like we had to get involved and even if it was someone else's job to make a decision it's like yeah i'll deal i'll deal with this you know this is really this is gonna be really cool you I'm just going to get involved here and just throw my weight around.

57:53And I mean, there's a great – I was talking – a friend of mine runs a coaching business. She has – she's got 25 coaches, so she really knows about all this stuff. She said, one of the questions you need to ask a founder of a business is, do you want to be rich or do you want to be King? And the When you work with someone, it's interesting. I mean, obviously, once again, you know, talking about the dial or the pendulum, nobody's exclusively one or the other. But, you know, King is someone who has a court. You know, everyone's around them, is looking after them. They make all the decisions. It's top down.

58:44It's like Putin's army, you know. Ultimately, you know, there's no decision-making going on in the ground. It's all being made. It's all topped out, you know, and so delegation. uh and uh and there's also a big ego thing going on right uh whereas rich is how do we make this business incredibly uh efficient and scalable so that it can grow uh and i can make lots of money and every decision i make is going to be about how do i make more money out of this business uh of course that can also kill the business because if you're if you're forgetting to the earlier to the earlier conversation if you're forgetting about you know the soul of the business which you know the brand or whatever if you if you make too many sacrifices on that front um you can lose it so i think i think these are all these are all interesting things to think about when you're either you're thinking about investing in a business or helping a business in some way or running it.

59:46What am I? What are my instincts? And if I was to go under a bus tomorrow, what would happen?

59:58And that is, it's a good question to ask yourself. Yeah, you know, I've been thinking about it. And it's like, I've almost thought with this is, I kind of, because I've seen, and I think one of the things I definitely believe is you're nothing set so you can right now for the next couple years i want to have keep this kind of super small and make money like that's the goal 100 but eventually i may do a brand but it's asking yourself the questions the hard questions and it's like are you are you doing this are you are you do you want to be the king because people on linkedin are posting about the fucking king do you know i mean there's a lot of all that stuff to deal with now and i wrote about this in my news i was like do you actually want to build to scale a business and build a huge business or do you want to build an amazing brand that makes people happy and you take 100 grand a year like that there's there are two very different things i think people want to be get pulled into this king thinking but yeah it's a really interesting well i think there's also that there's also the idea of a lifestyle business yeah which is related to that it's not quite the same thing but a lifestyle business is one where you enjoy yourself every day when you wake up as fun everyone thinks you're cool you know uh and uh you don't actually make very much money but you make enough to live.

1:01:14And, you know, that ultimately is never going to be a scalable business. But it's also not, you know, you might be the, I mean, there's no right or wrong. Yeah, yeah. The kind of person for, not you, but one might be the kind of person for whom running a lifestyle business is great, you know. So that's, for example, if, you know, if you run a shop and it's a really successful shop and everyone likes going there, it's an independent shop and it's famous for being independent or independent restaurant, for example, you know, that's great. And you can make a lot of money out of a really successful independent restaurant.

1:01:49Yeah. But you're never going to make millions. You know, you might make 100 ,000 a year, 200 ,000 a year, but you're not going to make millions. And ultimately, the drive to make a lot of money is what drives the need to scale. And of course, you know, your background is in peanut butter, as I understand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. dead uh and my background is in retail right in pubs and they're two very different things scaling a product getting it into getting into the supermarket and building that that network of retailers who are going to stock it is a very different beast and these sort of things you need to invest in and the things you need to be good at you know sales distribution etc are very different from uh the things you need to be good at to open pub after pub after pub after pub and have them will be successful uh and you know it's just a different it's it's it's it's a very different thing i mean very broadly speaking you know if if if you if you create a peanut butter brand you want it to be a big peanut butter brand and you want to if you if you're a rich guy you know you want it to be in in in thousands of shops so you can sell it to unilever for for a billion right and likewise if you're a pub guy you at least want to be able to show that you know at various key milestones you want to be able to show that the business is is profitable in it okay it's a 30 so it's an hour but we've got another 70 locations where we think this is definitely going to work based on the evidence what we've created so far uh and you know so mr mr brewdog or mr whoever mr weatherspeed why don't you buy my business because it's a hundred site business and you can you know currently it's valued at 30 sites you know you can you can you can have the rest you know and therefore you're going to pay a premium for for all that business because we've got a system we've got a brand we've got a customer base we've got social media following we've got all these things you know uh and and i think that is yeah they are very different i think i think and i and i don't understand i've got involved a little bit in some businesses which are product driven you know like peanut butter driven uh get it the but also i think to your point is you can change you can reinvent yourself so it's a um a business called love rule uh they do like the it's basically a vegan kind of bueno this genius business got loads of distribution started out he was in um manav was in marbella lifestyle business selling this with his wife did that for four or five years good made good dough out of it but then they thought right comes the uk they've got investment from julie jewels um who's a co-founder of grenade you know grenade bars or protein bars i should say um and now and now they've got a full-blown team they've codified this is i think you can change and i think i think what i'm trying to get to this people listen to this is it's about asking yourself the questions and having self-awareness i was read somewhere that luke johnson who was the guy pizza express with me i think guy got the guy who bought pizza express when they had very few sites and with david page they turned it into a huge business yeah so i read somewhere he said he once gave you a book the moon underwater in search of the perfect pub basically said there's no definitive pub it's all about their eccentricities right i love that i'd love to know i will ask you some of your favorite part i mean i love a pubs like I think William Blade's got a quote that a pub is basically a church with warmer conversation and warmer people.

1:05:33William Blake, I don't know how to believe it, but yeah, I don't think it's a church. I mean, I think what the essence of a great pub, and I'd like to think we did achieve this from time to time at the Drafthouse, but I think it's a place where when you go in, the molecules kind of slow down a bit. There's something called entropy, which is where it's a sort of sealed environment and gradually the molecular structure just kind of slows down. And I think that is the thing. It's a sort of depressurizing experience going to the park. you know at its best you walk in sit down order a beer have a chat you know maybe there's someone at the bar being stupid you know and you have a chat with them maybe there's some hot girl walks in you know whatever it is you know and uh i think it's just it's an environment where random things should happen and random conversation uh and where you should feel you know at home uh happy and as I say, relaxed and it's a relaxing process at its best and not really anything to do with I mean, it's an advantage to have great beer it's an advantage to have great food and all those things but I think that that is what makes a pub great and I do think it's, you know there's this whole narrative around is the Gen Z equivalent of the pub, the coffee shop.