How Jez Galaun Sold Brixton Brewery to Heineken

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1:00Hey guys, absolutely puzzling that Mackenzie Jones are extending their partnership with Hungary. So gassed. In case you have been living under a rock, who are Mackenzie Jones? They are FMCG recruitment specialists. They work with some amazing brands, Lucky Saint, Real Superfoods, Hunter and Gatherer, and Purdy and Fig. Also with some of the big poppers, the big boys, the big G's, PepsiCo, Unilever, Campari. I've known Billy for Yonks, Paul for the last year. He's a top bloke. They're just super kind and lovely. and they're just dedicated to our wonderful space our wonderful industry of buccaneering challenge brands and that they're so much more than recruitment business check out the podcast it's epic um i've even even introduced mckenzie jones from some amazing brands and they've really helped them scale if you're looking to hire just reach out to them have a chin wear get in touch do yourself a favor thank you there's a horror story in food and drink that absolutely no one talks about it surreptitiously scurries through the underbelly causing throbbing headaches wasted money huge amounts of pain dodgy barcodes so many brands do the hard work they create the product name the brand open the bank account and then they cut bloody corners online and they order a dodgy barcode not sort your barcodes out is like scoring your own goal before you've even laced your boots and got on the pitch it's a souffle of aggro you know you've got to relabel products waste time i've even had a pal who's um who lost the planet organic listings they had the wrong barcodes but thankfully not all heroes wear capes gs1 uk are the superhero and they are the solution barcodes from gs1 uk are globally recognized uh trusted and accepted by all retailers and marketplaces giving you the confidence to sell your products anytime any place anywhere but gs1 uk are so so much more than that they really are kind of a spring well of advice for buccaneering brands 95 % of their community are smes you can get free tickets to events and invites to talks big big picture opportunities he's like to pack organic boots and sainsbury's and help you know with advice like exporting it's just so so so much and look don't say don't treat you and there's an oh so special offer through the podcast get 20 % off your first year's membership with gs1uk by using the code hungry20 at checkout thank you so much hello there people and listeners of the hungry podcast today i'm absolutely thrilled to welcome jez girl on onto the podcast i hope i've said that right mate a few practices spot on um jez has very very kindly um welcomed me to his tap room brixton brewery tap room um and we are yeah gonna dive deep into the story today just a bit of context um for listeners so brixton brewery was set up in 2013 um with three other co-founders they've grew the brand um until november 2017 when they sold a 49 % stake to Heineken.

3:55And then in January 2021, they've sold over 100 % of the company. So yeah, mate, super excited. Thank you for having me. Can we take these headphones off now? Pleasure. Thank you for coming down. So I kind of, we're going to meander with the time stamps here. Sure. I think what's interesting is lots of people listen to this podcast with the the exit in mind they think of the exit and and actually some of the feedback i've had from listeners is like how do you actually sell a food and drink brand it's this mirage in the distance that they seem to be sauntering towards and meandering towards yes but it's like okay how do you actually sell a food and drink brand and i would love to kind of dive deep into that and really pull and pull at the weeds of that because i think it's fascinating but the first thing is what did it feel like on the evening when you go to sleep on the day you've sold 49 % of your business to Heineken in 2017 like what are the voices in your head and what's the feeling in your in your soul you have mixed feelings because you know you basically you're bringing someone else into the family um you know the brewery started in 2013 as a family business you know two local couples we bonded over newborn babies and you know we're part of this incredible amazing community in Brixton that embraced us and we made the decision to allow you know a major shareholder 49 as you mentioned into the business you know not you know a small shareholder but that's you know pretty significant and because we take the name Brixton and you know we don't take that lightly we want to make sure that we do things right by our team the community where we are so we put a lot of thought into it if I'm honest with you people have asked me and like was it a tough decision and honestly it wasn't because we knew the opportunities it would provide for the brand and the business and our staff and we wanted to fully embrace that you know we also felt it was a massive endorsement of the work that we'd done up to that point you know for someone like Heineken to come out of the blue and knock on our door and say hey guys we like what you're doing um we want to support your growth do you want to have a chat you know we've always been very open-minded here and you know we said yes um but you know saying that you know the night before I don't think we had any second thoughts to be honest with you we were convinced that it was the right thing to do for us as individuals for our families for our staff for our beers um i don't think it's something you can say no to to be honest with you so you said they'd given you opportunities that you couldn't have garnered if you'd carried on going it alone as you're at this crossroads which is it was fascinating what were some of those opportunities for yourself your staff your team brixton so for us because we are brixton brewery and we are so intrinsically linked to the community here you know i think of us having this umbilical cord that attaches us to brixton yeah you know we moved here as founders in 2006 um separately of each other we met a few door a few years later living a few doors down from each other on the same road you know like ships passing in the night for a number of years and um you know we had grown so we started in one arch in 2013 we spread into a second arch then we had a third and we were looking around and we're like well we're quite landlocked here um but we want to keep brewing in Brixton and to scale up is when you're at your most vulnerable basically as a business because you're making a huge investment you're taking on big overheads you know rent staff all that kind of thing and you're hoping that you're gonna keep you know finding people to sell your product to that you're gonna make a hell of a lot more beer basically um we looked around at various sites in Brixton that were not as big as the one that we actually ultimately moved to uh that opened in summer of 2018 uh that were kind of in between where we were at at the time and where we're at now and we tried to sort of you know project you know is this the right move for us and that kind of thing and we were confident that we could pull it off but it just happened to be around the same time that we were looking at doing that Heineken knocked on our door so we became a little bit more ambitious and we actually went for the biggest site that we could find whilst remaining in brixton and they you know fully got behind that they got the importance of us brewing in brixton you know because it's you know just so important to the company culture um they related to it um and they also gave us access to their distribution so we knew that the extra beer that we produced we'd have customers for so um that was really helpful shall we say so heineken came is almost like they they could pour gasoline on on the the the flames the nascent flames that you've been bubbling or growing yeah absolutely i mean we basically didn't grow as fast as other breweries you know there's a big cohort of breweries that started up in 2012 2013 and some such as um so people like um four pure five points uh beaver town i think were a year before us um you know a few in the north like uh northern monk i think siren were around the same time people like that uh magic rock i think we're around the same time in Huddersfield and you know some people took bigger risks than us um and grew more quickly than we did um you know I'd say we were probably quite conservative we always believed in the brand and our potential and you know wherever we sold our beers you know they sold really well like we basically since we had our opening party in 2013 which was in the arch next door where we were like a bit worried no one was going to turn up but you know we sold out a draft beer by 5 p.m you know We like to say that we've been struggling to keep up ever since because we've been growing, obviously, putting COVID aside.

10:35But, you know, I think it was just so important to us to stay true to the original values of being a community-based brewery and business. And that meant keeping brewing in Brixton, basically. And I interviewed Charlie McVeigh. Do you know Charlie McVeigh? I do, yeah. last well the podcast went live yesterday but we interviewed a while ago and he said something was just fascinating which is it's actually from the you know that sapiens book no yes yeah this is a business is essentially a fiction and i've been writing about this in my newsletter it's like actually movements everything is a fiction the constitution's a fiction the bible's a fiction and the reason um the nithandials whatever you have the andethils yeah the reason they they progressed was because of stories allowed things to move together communities together and we were talking about like why do some ideas spread and others don't and now ultimately it was this the story of craft beer the story of we want a better tasting product we want a better tasting um uh a beer and we want to do things collectively and as as we said before we recorded when the um what's this phrase you said when the when the thing rises the boats the rising tide lifts all boats yeah exactly yeah yeah and that to me is i think that is why craft beer um really took off because people were helping each other yeah as you said before we recorded is you'd a buyer comes knocking your door you recommend the brewery down the road yeah so what i really believed happened is is this story of craft beer really but what i'd love to know is why do you think there's a plethora of breweries all individual doing good things why do you think what's different about brixton that's like heinecum knocking on your door versus others um interesting question um i think they'd actually done some research and they looked into various craft brands yeah and they had um a company that talked to people and showed them the brands and i think they already had a conviction about us but they wanted to kind of confirm it and i think they were looking for a brand that is tapping into consumer trends for provenance authenticity identity um and you know i think we ticked all those boxes even though we were very very small it was very obvious to anyone who cared to come down here and look that you know we were doing things in a very authentic genuine um you know value-driven way um and you know i think craft brewers in general do that you know there were some there are some craft brands that you know were basically created to scale and sell and i think you can sniff those from a mile off to be honest with you um and they may not be a brand of the future uh they may be who knows um but you know i think heineken felt that you know the values that we have in brixton the place and the business would be enduring and strong and you know um allow us to reach our potential effectively um and you know i think we've proven that over the you know the last five years of our partnership we've grown 20 fold in that time so you know we're now the UK's fourth biggest UK on trade craft brand so we you know we came from a very sort of low base you know and other breweries had kind of grown more quickly than us because they took more risks or you know for whatever reason but you know we're now kind of reaching our potential um I think we're still just getting started to be honest with you 10 years in but you know I'm very excited about what the next 10 years can bring um and you know i think you know it's nice that we all sort of had local breweries around us and near us that you know we could share ideas you know challenges problems i think the industry is very collaborative um we continue to have a very open um collaborative approach there was a local brewery the other day that came and used some of our equipment to test some of their beers you know we'll borrow ingredients when we're short from other breweries and you know them from us and and that kind of thing so that does definitely still exist and long may it continue um because that's kind of one of the things that attracted me to the industry you know i think we started out or we as craft brewers start out as sort of because beer was so um what's the right word kind of it became a bit bland to be honest with you know in terms of styles and you know craft brewers came along and i think of craft beer as a bit of a like a disruptive technology it came along and it disrupted the status quo um i'm not saying we did necessarily in our own little way we did but you know there's obviously people that did the hard yards before us um that you know we're kind of riding um in their slipstream as it were um and it reawakened consumer interest in beer you know much like it had done in the u.s you know the trend started in the US before it came to the UK but you know when it arrived and people tried the beers that you know use more interesting ingredients like US hops and that kind of thing I mean I can remember my personal eureka moment and it was quite similar to a lot of brewers they'll if you interview quite a few craft brewers they'd probably tell you the same story and that was you know one of the pioneers was the colonel in bermondsey and um evan o 'riden you know discovered us hops started home brewing with them was like oh man these are pretty interesting flavors and i can remember going down to the colonel on a saturday morning a friend of mine lived in borough at the time it was probably around the late 2000s the late noughties i think and you know i had a bottle of this beer and you know it just tasted so different and so incredibly amazing and there were two things that really really struck me about that well one was the flavors you know and i looked and you know there was a hop called citra that i'd never heard of you know and the other thing was he was sharing a railway arch with a cheese producer and the brewery was in the corner and my perception until then was like you know brewing is this big industrial process you know you go down you know big kind of a roads or or whatever and you see these massive breweries and you're like ah you know that that must be how beer is made but actually he was making a really valuable product as in you know the value to me as a consumer like the flavor the taste the appearance um the satisfaction i got in the corner of a railway arch and that for me just blew my mind and it was that that kind of lit the spark in my mind that it was going to be possible to do something in brixton and i actually couldn't believe that no one had done it before us hi there guys super super quick one um i write a weekly newsletter called hungry friday feast it goes live at 8am every friday i'm pouring my soul into this bad boy it's probably my favorite creative endeavor i've ever done i basically pick apart all the biggest lessons all the biggest learnings from all the wonderful guests and throw it into a feast or a newsletter we've got over a thousand two hundred subscribers come and join the party i'm going to put a link in the show notes it's right at the top and subscribe and if you are already a subscriber please just forward it on to a friend do the amount of favor it would mean the world to me anyway back to the old episode boys and girls what's fascinating is i know you cut you you had innocent like in the early noughties as like the chat the rambunctious challenger brand you had maybe like goo puddings but i think craft beer was the first movement that gave it any or any category carte blanche to like be the david versus goliath story yeah um i think obviously brew dog were great that the the kind of um very in your face marketing campaigns against the big guys but that allowed for you know like manny life you've got the peanuts over there peanut butter to to um be premiumized and to offer new things we're talking before we hit the record button um bakery bed baking baking yeah the way that coffee's kicking mate but but baking or the plethora of all these um bakeries across london but i genuinely believe the kind of the first person or first category to to fly that for a flag was um was craft beer and i also think in terms of it's really interesting towns and what i want to kind of tease out with you is is have we gone too far and this isn't just in in craft beer but in general but as we were saying before we hit record i genuinely believe three of the biggest they are like the most interesting towns but actually it's three of the biggest brands in london are probably brixton camden and notting hill you haven't got a notting hill beer yet uh there was one actually it didn't stay the course it was too uh too arty farty too bohemian yeah or in fact there is a portobello brewing company ah there you go but i think i think a big part of this is is there's um there's brixton works because brixton is so you walk down that road and it's like something you've never seen before in a beautiful way it's such an eclectic hodgepodge melting pot what are your thoughts on like i don't i'm not going to say names but there's a fucking there's a there's a beer brand or a gym brand in every city now what do you think um i think i think it's great that there is to be honest with you because you know they do have a role in the local community um you know they give you an experience a local experience and I think people really value a local kind of story um and that kind of thing and I think if it's done in the right way I'm fully up for it you know I just think it's amazing you know there's actually a rum distillery in Brixton here um which you know I think they're doing great things um there's also a gin brand but it's kind of got the name brixton but not much more than that to be honest with you it's like doesn't have the kind of the community connection and the deep roots so i think if you can do it well um and you know you may kind of break out of your your local community i think a lot of the brands that you're probably thinking about maybe don't or or maybe will not have that opportunity but um i think it's nice you know i'd enjoy going um you know it's a bit of a busman's holiday but i enjoy going around you know trying you know the local beer or the local spirit or you know bakery even you know and that kind of thing you know it adds to you know the experience um and i think if it's done well and authentically and you know it's a high quality thing and it's not just kind of slapping the name on on a product kind of thing um i'm all for it yeah and so so britton's a huge part you've as you said you've got i think what you were saying is you've got authentically linked back to the community we've talked about how you're saying it's like a no-brainer for heineken to heineken to come on um they've got access they can give you opportunities that you couldn't do on your own yeah first question is like what size was was was was the business when heineken came on yep in terms of whatever you want to say i can i can give it to you in volume yeah yeah i'm not the numbers guy but i can give you the volume so yeah uh so yes the volume would be great and then i suppose we've talked about the good but what is the bad and the ugly and i and i just want to i think it's really important to address this because you've put your heart and soul into this bad boy you've worked so hard there's all there's going to be sometimes nefarious things that come along there's trade-offs yeah there's a trade-off yeah yeah there are um so in terms of the size of the business and you know this is like annual production in hectolitres which is basically 100 liters of beer um i think in 2017 when we partnered with Heineken we produced 2 ,800 hectolitres and that was all from the arch next door to us and you know we were squeezing out as much as we possibly could like just going as fast as we possibly could and this year I think we're going to sell 60 ,000 hectolitres so it's a 20 fold more than a 20 fold increase and you know we you know we're trying to build the brand in a sustainable way and you know that is you know making sure that it has the support that it needs to be a sustainable enduring brand because i think you can build a brand more quickly than that um but you know you may have to make a few compromises along the way you know whether it's commercials you know you know you might have to you know erode your margins get more distribution which you know we want to maintain our and build and enhance our brand equity so you know we're building things in a considered way that you know protects our margin but also protects the margin of the retailers that we work with you know so that you know we are you know building brand equity investing in you know all the right areas marketing and that kind of thing so you know that's one of the good things that comes from having the support of someone like Heineken is you get you get the ability and the time and you know the luxury to do that in a way because you know they are now owners of the brand I feel like I'm a custodian you know I'm the founder and I see the brand as like an extension of me and the other founders and and that kind of thing and I and I don't want to build too fast in an unsustainable way you know you see brands come into the market and grow very quickly but they don't hang around because you know they they just haven't uh executed their commercial strategy well so like guinness had a brand hop house 13 which was like a craft lager and it was everywhere and everyone was like wow this is amazing this is such a great product launch but they actually withdrew it from the market because it didn't make them any money so you know for me i'm trying to build a brand that has an enduring legacy and you know with Heineken we you know we've got a really good partner to be able to do that now obviously you know there are trade-offs um I remember when when we did first sell and we were talking about it a bit earlier I was feeling all sorts of different emotions like and this probably happened after you know we actually signed the deal and that kind of thing um and then you know I immediately said about um building a new brewery in Brixton because kind of the deal at that time was you know mike and i um co-founder pitched them pitched to heineken a business plan and it said look you know if you really want to support us we want to build a new brewery in brixton and here's the business plan and this is how we're going to do it and they you know immediately got behind that and they said yes you know that makes perfect sense for us but then you have to build a brewery which is kind of all consuming um and really full-on but i do remember and it took me a little while to realize but i was basically going through the seven stages of grief um you know where you kind of your emotions do different things at different times and then you kind of come to terms with things eventually but I do remember like oh my goodness this is actually like what I'm going through kind of thing so there is that um just just to zoom in on that so what what was the darkest day because as as you as you said growing and building a brand is like your baby you've got this link this umbilical cord to the community that somewhat gets severed on what's what's the darkness i don't think it's necessarily a darkness but you basically you feel quite flattered because someone like you know has come along and acquired your brand and and and you know you feel um elated and that kind of thing but then you know you have to process all the emotions that come along with that and you know that you've set your business on on a different trajectory or a different path and you know you you know we obviously made a decision across the four founders basically so it wasn't just my decision um you know it was a unanimous decision but I felt like I was more or less responsible um because um you know I was the one that kind of was in the business the most um and that kind of so I felt the biggest kind of responsibility for that and I just wanted to make sure that, you know, we upheld our side of the bargain and they also upheld theirs and that kind of thing.

27:40So, you know, like any relationship, you know, you've got to get to know each other and work together and figure out how to work. You know, we were working in one railway arch and then all of a sudden we're working with like the world's second biggest brewer and that's, you know, a pretty big step change in many ways. And, you know, especially if you want to, you know sell beer into a distribution network that has a lot of rules and regulations and procedures and processes um you know you you're basically you're very agile as a startup and if when you start working with a corporate who by you know their nature are not agile you know you've got a clash of cultures basically um and you've just got to navigate that and you know if you've got good people in that corporate who can, you know, support you and hold your hand and, you know, you can work together.

28:37And we were very fortunate that we did have that and we do still have that. That is super, super important because, you know, I think otherwise, you know, it's, it could get rocky, right? Yeah. Just what I'm trying to explore is it seems, doesn't, I don't mean this in a, i just mean this it seems almost too good to be true right so it's like you're growing this brand in brixton heineken come knocking on your door they give you this huge distribution huge funding you build the next brewery like it's like you're off to the races what so they come in and what were the specific like hardest things in the actual deal so like what was in the specific deal um you've got to agree commercial terms obviously so um it actually took us about a year sorry that's the urinal flush yeah no no worries that's the authenticity as i say um so yeah you've got to you basically got to in entrust um that you know they are going to be a good custodian for the brand so you've got to put some guardrails around that such as just you know what what are they going to commit to what are they you know what you know what things are they going to do for the business and the brand and um you know just try and ensure that um you know it's not really it's it's it's not really like a legal or a commercial thing it's just more that you want to have an understanding and you want to have all of the conversations up front so that you don't have to have difficult conversations um later on basically so you know are you going to invest in marketing or you know what what customers are we gonna you know target first and and that kind of thing so that you know you really get that sort of flywheel spinning and you know you build on the opportunity and the brand momentum and you know because it's very easy to do a deal and partner with someone you know that's kind of I'm being a bit facetious but that's the easy part but actually executing the partnership and you know building on the relationship because you know our model um was that you know we would supply beer into the heineken distribution network and then the heineken sales force would go out and sell our beer as part of their kind of broader portfolio to their customers um but that you know is also something that you know you need to think about you know because you know in a business like heineken that has a broad range of beers and in their portfolio they're they're gonna have different priorities so you know you're basically fighting for um share of mind internally amongst the sales team and you know the sales team are going to respond to the incentives or the kpis that they are given so you can't take it as a given that you're gonna basically immediately start winning sales and that kind of thing if you have a product that the sales team needs to actually win business um for themselves then you know you're good and luckily we did because you know what as it transpired you know ab imbev had bought camden town um brewery um you know a few years a good few years um before um and you know that was part of the ab imbev budweiser brewing group portfolio and heineken didn't have a UK craft brand in their portfolio.

32:13They had Lagunitas from the US and they actually had a brand that they created internally called MaltSmiths, which had kind of limited reach. So we came along and all of a sudden they were like, oh, well, you know, we can go to customers and we can compete with our portfolio on the same kind of way that, you know, AB InBev would with having Camden in their portfolio. So that was definitely helpful to kind of get started. But, you know, those are the kind of things that, you know, it's worth talking about and, you know, considering because, you know, we were all so small and we didn't have, you know, a big sales team.

32:53In fact, before we partnered with Heineken, we didn't even have anyone in sales or marketing, if you can believe it, because I don't think we could really afford to hire them, to be honest. And there was no one there was no way for them to sit either. you know we had this little mezzanine upstairs and um you know well there was only only so much room but you know so so i think to answer your question i think it's um just try and fully explore um how you think things are going to work not just you know early partnership but what's going to be the sort of the three five-year plan and you know just try and get some some commitments and some maybe some targets in mind up front and and that kind of thing just so that you're basically on the same page and you're both moving forward um if you're going to stay with the business like some founders don't stay with the business but i always wanted to stay and obviously we were a 49 51 partnership so that was always going to be the case the was there anything else you were sort of deliberate um like not dithying around on but like any other things that you before you went into the deal thinking oh how's this gonna work because i completely get like i had a mate who worked for camden yeah he was with me at manny one of our really good mates and he was there the day when they sold to a b and bev and he he was he was in grocery and he said the issue was is you go in when you work for camden you're like i work for camden i'm i'm the i work for camden my i'm part of me is this brand yes so you have that energy and conviction which i think you need in sales but then he was like oh well i'd be like i'd go into a sainsbury's meeting for example but okay you don't want camden oh don't worry mate i've got you some corona i think yeah yeah you don't want corona i've got you some of this it's like you almost feel like uh david brent going and you're selling selling um windscreen wipers or like uh what does sell like tampons or something like that yeah paper paper yeah yeah yeah and and it's like i completely empathize with that i understand that but was there anything else that you were like oh and how did you kind of get over that i i don't think there really was basically because we were so naive we didn't really know what we were doing we were operating inside this craft beer bubble right and you know the brewery was basically everything or 80 of what we produced we sold within five miles of the brewery basically and we weren't even like swimming outside of like the craft beer bubble enough to understand that as you grow and you scale and you start working with bigger retailers the commercials are going to change you know they're going to demand a a different price level um actually i remember in the early discussions with heineken something that actually worked in our i think worked in our favor was i told them that young's the big pub group had wanted to stock our beer and you know they would ask us sort of every six to nine months you know have you got beer that you can sell to us and i knew that there they would demand um you know a more competitive price because they're a bigger retailer and they were giving us kind of access to their pubs and their you know um and i i would always say to them sorry we don't have enough i can sell everything i'm producing at you know my list price effectively and um i told that heineken and they were like hang on a minute you you basically turned young's down and that blew their minds so you know there's things um like that you know that you've got to kind of understand that when you move out of like your sort of your niche and you know your your small bubble and i think this is especially true kind of in craft beer because you have a lot of independent retailers you know whether they be pubs or off licenses or or bottle shops and that kind of thing you know as soon as you want to grow your distribution and start selling to to bigger customers you have to accept that your kind of commercial strategy is probably going to have to adapt um around that um so that you know we we just didn't really we were pretty naive you know we were running a good local effective profitable business and we were building the brand but you know it was basically mike and i and our wives and we were just learning as we went along and um you know i don't think we really knew what the next sort of commercial evolution of the business would look like so we we didn't know enough to kind of maybe say at the point that we did the deal okay this is kind of what we need to think about and that kind of thing um but one thing we did do is we set a volume ambition with heineken and we said look this is what we think we can do as brixton we want you to tell us what you think you can do in terms of volume with the brand over a time horizon and i think that was really helpful because we could track our progress against it effectively um and you know we could kind of also that you know they could say to us well hang on you're you're not doing what you said you were going to be doing and vice versa so that kind of stuff i think is quite helpful hi guys super super quick one so so excited look for years i've been badgering on about hungary the podcast you're probably bored to death thanks for putting up with me but hungary is also an agency and we look after one amazing brand called islands chocolate we've had a great time over the year we've won listings at load of wholesalers we've won milk and more we've got our first grocery listing coming very soon which is very very sick but what i'm thrilled to announce is hungary's merging with hc consulting um my boy harry clark and his wonderful team he's an absolute g they do brand strategy new business business and account management but why i really love working with harry and why we've got on so well over the last couple of months is harry was actually the founder of uh the boozy isolate brand pops so he's been in the trenches he's grafted his face off he's had the sleepless nights he's had the turmoil he's the triumph he knows what it is to be a founder he is a founder and he's got a proven track record in grocery and out of home holy moly dips the gut stuff savile drinks remio gelato so if you're a brand and you're you're stuck you're looking for like new business help you're looking to scale drop us a message we'd love to chat thank you so much back to the old episode this is sorry this is too personal you don't have to answer it at all it's it's what listeners asked me to ask uh let's go for it so so i asked this to juliet barrett from grenade she said she'd made 250 million and uh it was like the worst day of her life uh when she when that money dropped in her bank account will chase from tyrell's yeah he made 50 million and he said but i i literally stick this quote i should probably have it on my own but see he said when you're in the winner's enclosure you realize all the fun was in the race but how much you don't have to go specific specific numbers but how much did you actually make out of the deal because it feels like they've they've they've come in and like it seems too good to be true um i can't tell you the amount but i can tell you it was nowhere close to the numbers you've you know if you you know we were basically operating out of one run railway arch um so you know we didn't start brixton brewery with the idea that we would at some point exit so you know we were building just organically and slowly um and in a considered way um and then obviously heineken came along out of the blue i remember saying to mike you know i've just got this email from heineken and like he's like is it april 1st kind of thing you know we you know that wasn't really what we were looking for um or thought would happen you know we always thought the brand had potential but you know we would just say small in that kind of thing I was like amazed that you know someone like Heineken knocked on our door um but I mean no I I felt it was an endorsement and I actually felt good about it and I think there's a reason I did and that's because I think at the time I was a bit done with craft beer if I'm honest with you like the the movement because because there were certain things going on um and there were things that i just couldn't really feel at peace or come to terms with or reconcile personally and that was um i didn't like the hype culture in craft beer i don't think it really exists as strongly now i don't really i think actually like yeah there are some breweries that you know kind of regarded highly and that kind of thing but there were times when when you say hype culture by that you mean um so as an example so so for example breweries that were making um really strong hoppy beers double triple ipas um and you know really sort of playing into you know um people who are really into those kind of craft you know extreme craft beers like ultra modern craft beers were regarded as like amazing breweries you know like and became really quite hyped and highly regarded and that kind of thing and that's not really what we're about at Brixton you know we're our philosophy was to be a community-based local brewery that brewed accessible styles that anyone and everyone could approach and enjoy but the craft beer kind of bubble or world didn't really embrace that you know they were like okay well no you guys aren't a good brewery because you're not making a triple IPA with 30 grams of hops per liter kind of thing and that's not really what we ever set out to do and there were other breweries that kind of you know did that and you know they would market themselves very effectively and you know they would be talked about all the time on social media um and you know oh they're an amazing brewery and that kind of thing and um people didn't really attach as much um value to breweries that weren't doing those kind of extreme beers but we never really wanted to make extreme beers we kind of have got a saying in the brewery we're always seeking balance so there was that and i was like well you know I'm actually really happy and comfortable with what we're doing and the beers that we're producing and I think we're doing a really good job and that kind of thing but we're not getting as much attention so when Heineken came along and we're like hang on a minute we like what you guys are doing and you're getting attention from a different audience and I was happy about that to be honest with you it made me feel proud that you know someone like Heineken would come along and notice what we were doing, you know, and maybe the beer geeks weren't noticing so much.

43:48And, you know, there was that. And then, you know, at the same time, some of the breweries that were, you know, plauded, plauded, getting plaudits, lauded, were maybe not great in terms of their company culture and values. And that I also kind of, I think. Is that like Brewdog? yeah not just brew dog there's a few others you know that maybe you know had had some questionable practices and um and that kind of thing which i'll actually you know i think i was ultimately kind of vindicated in this because there was a bit of a a me too me too moment in craft beer movement where a lot of these toxic um practices actually came out and you know some of the breweries that at the time when i did the deal with heineken or we did the deal with heineken I was kind of like noticing these things, but I didn't feel like anyone else was.

44:41Eventually, these things did come out. So give some examples of that. Do you have to say the names? I want to say the names of the breweries. Well, it could be, you know, around, you know, poor employee treatment and relations or, you know, misogyny or, you know, or, you know, just sort of having a poor health and safety culture, all this kind of thing. And I've always been proud of our company culture. you know we've been very very fortunate that you know we've got really good staff retention um you know i don't think people like to leave brixton brewery they do leave for life decisions and that kind of thing but we very rarely or career decisions but we very rarely or i don't think we've ever lost anyone for for the wrong reasons kind of thing which i'm really proud of um so you know so you've you've got that thing with the beers and you know some people are like oh well you know you you know you're not a great brewery because you're not making these kind of like extreme styles of beers um and also the breweries that were maybe doing that and you know were a bit you know sort of full of themselves then also had these cultural issues and people weren't really noticing those as well so that kind of um that troubled me i think at the time and then you know even south london i think has been underrepresented um in terms of recognition of our contribution to uh brewing in the capital so you know hackney bermondsey place like that you know we're getting a lot of the attention and you know we've got some amazing fantastic breweries in south london so a combination of those three things just i was totally at peace with it i'm like i'm i was kind of done with it to be honest with you it's mad that's why i loved in these conversation is because it's almost zooming out that craft beer has a similar kind of extremism and tribalism to football like yeah you know and i i've i've been on i've got do you know the guys um louis and james at local the low three beer yeah yeah so i'm we're doing an event with them actually um i i know kia is okay he's one of my really good mates yeah so kia i know because he he used to um sell my beer at heineken oh yeah yeah all right shaggers he's hilarious he's great um so that's that's my only kind of and then i've got mate he's got a brand called jiddler's tipple which is interesting yeah jacob top guy and um but that's my kind of my only link other than consuming it but i've always on the being privy to it somewhat seeing this tribalism but now what you're explaining now so you you get a lot of flack for hashtags selling out as opposed in their eyes yes how do you internally navigate that um i mean i'm totally at peace with it as the other founders are and i can remember being nervous when i told the news to our staff and our team what the decision that we'd made and the way we did it actually or the way I did it was we'd got the keys to where we opened the new brewery we had this 15 000 square foot basically empty building um and I brought them along and um I sort of showed them the building and I said we're opening a new brewery here and I'm going to tell you how we're doing it yeah and then I told them about the news and to a person everyone was so excited got behind it um and trusted us because they just knew that we wouldn't do anything that was wrong and you know everyone and that was a really nice reaction because i didn't know which way it was going to go to be honest with you i didn't know if people were going to shout at me or cry or storm off or anything like that but they got it and that was nice and i think in the local community as well because you know we've got a good standing in the local community and we've been at the time we'd been here for five years I guess when we announced it you know people know us they trust us and you know I think they just believe that we're going to do the right thing we haven't broken that trust or that kind of that contract um with our staff with our community with anyone really um so we were fortunate in that regard but that's just because we yeah we've just always tried to stick to doing the right thing and you know living and extolling um our values um consistently um so that would be my advice is you know just kind of yeah build that rapport build that trust

49:35internally and you know hopefully you know that will give you that kind of loyalty and that resilience that you're going to need to kind of push on and and you know continue continue on your journey because yeah you know when when we did open the new brewery I mean it was I think it was harder than starting the business five years ago it's like it's such an intense period let's talk about that then so sorry five years before we partnered 10 years ago yeah sure so so you what i was doing research this i saw a campaign i think it was your out of home campaign campaign campaign uh grit and glitter yes which i think was it was beautiful across the tubes etc but i actually think grits and glitter that that is the founder's journey there's there's grit and there's yeah albeit very sparse and brief moments of glitter as well so you talked earlier you said there's a clash of cultures and i think there's a clash of cultures even if you don't sell but new people come in and as we said like a brand is like a baby yeah at some point you that brand needs to mature needs to mature yeah people leave bugger off to new things talk about the clash of cultures what was the biggest clash um i think it's you want to make sure that you get people excited and engaged with your brand and um um you know you basically heineken have a sales organization and you know it's obviously by nature it's very commercial um and you know they'll look at you know profitability and all and all this kind of thing and you know different brands will have different levels of profitability and and you know they you know they're basically they're trading beer you know they're buying it from the breweries and they're selling it to their customers so they're performing that kind of trading function and their job was to go out into the market and represent our brand and our beers which you know the highest price on the bar and that kind of thing so you know we had to work together to make sure that they could do that on our behalf basically you know they could go out and explain to their customers why it was the most expensive beer on the bar you know it's brewed on a small scale, uses expensive ingredients, you know, it's for various reasons.

52:10So, you know, you've got to kind of do that education piece internally so that it can also happen, you know, in a sales discussion. So there's that, I think. And, you know, just how you market brands as well, like we're a very small startup, and we're going to do our marketing and our comms differently to, you know a big brand in in the hindcom portfolio now we don't actually work with their marketeers we still have full autonomy and independence in terms of marketing um and that kind of thing but that can also be beneficial because you can see what tools and techniques they will use to kind of you know build brand awareness and um truck drive trial and and that kind of thing um but we're going to do it in a more grassroots way.

53:01So you've got to be quite resourceful and, you know, you won't have the same resources that a big brand will have. So you've got to be still like a startup and agile and, you know, bring in people who have that knowledge and experience, you know, but also like we've always at Brixtonbury tried to not bring in two experienced people. And I think there's a balance because you might bring in people who have kind of got, you know, know all the stripes and you know been around and you know worked in various places and have kind of proven themselves you know with a track record but my preference actually is to hire people that you feel are going to fit well into your culture and show potential so like my most senior people in the business on the brewing side um sales side um and you know marketing and design like they weren't senior people but they've grown into senior people with us and um you know one of our most senior brewers he basically worked not in our taproom but another brewery's taproom um and then you know said could i have a job in the brewery and you know we gave him a job and you know he's you know worked his way up and you know he's very well qualified now and and that kind of thing you know so he's been with us literally from the ground floor uh to where we are now and all the way up um and i love that like for me that is also what motivates me and why i started bricks and burry is to give people that opportunity um obviously you know you what you need people in important roles who have good experience um and there's two ways they can get that is by basically learning on the job with you um or you know if that's not enough and um you know um you can bring people in from outside but my preference has always been to kind of try and hire um at a more kind of junior level and let those people rise with you we that's worked well for us um whether it will do going forwards now that we're kind of a more mature bigger company um I'll have to wait and see but um you know everyone will you know bring something new um but I think if you know if you allow them to grow with you they're just gonna really smash it you know because they're just gonna feel really happy in their job that they've got this amazing opportunity and do you how do you when people do leave how do you navigate that because I think i haven't really talked about i have kind of talked about in the podcast but you have that core team and a lot of people will go it's just the nature of the beast it is how do you navigate that as a leader um you hope that not too many people do it simultaneously because you know you don't want to be running um too many recruitment processes simultaneously in fact i think it was last year I had an operations manager and a finance manager um both um decide to leave within a couple of weeks of each other and that put a huge amount of pressure on me personally because I needed to replace them and I needed to you know do the the recruitment uh the interviews and and that kind of thing and you know we we did replace them both successfully but it is you know a strain at the time um so you know obviously you don't you don't want that you want to try and avoid too many people doing that simultaneously but obviously you know that that kind of stuff's out of your hands um but you know we also want to retain stuff so we work hard on um you know giving them opportunities for progression um you know training uh career development um and when you are growing you do have the ability to do that um quite well um you know obviously there'll be certain areas of the business where people will say okay well there's nowhere more for me to go and you don't want to stand in the way of that either i don't believe in that you know i think you kind of have a conversation you be honest you be up front you don't hide that you know perhaps there won't be a you know a bigger role for you in the future and you give them your blessing and you wish them well and you know we just had a 10th birthday party on Saturday and the two people I'm just referring to both came back both came to our party and partied with us so you're you know we remain friends and we keep in touch and we wish them well and but you know as I said we are lucky to have you know a lot of long-standing employees who have you know come in at a lower level and have really kind of risen through the ranks as well so

57:56what's what what's been the darkest day because i know like if for me it sounds like it's it's all like being hunky-dory and i just know that's not the case because it's like everyone i've sat opposite the table or sat opposite on zoom your your your hope and your vision needs a fuck ton of grit yes and it's gonna get dark and it's gonna get rough i think what's been the worst day I think you've got to be really resilient. And I don't think there's any one particular thing that I could put my finger on and say that's been the worst day. But there have been periods when you're going to come close to exhaustion, burnout, and possibly even hit the wall.

58:43Just because there are so many balls to keep in the air. and I think if you are like the leader of the business and the founder and you've got you know so much to think about and you know you basically you know when you've set your business on this path so you know we we did that by selling to heineken you know you really want to capitalize on it you want to prove that your brand has the potential that you believe it has and that they obviously invested uh on the basis that they believed it had as well but building brands is really really hard work it's intense because there's so many different uh facets and angles to it so you know you you end up focusing a lot on on a lot of small details you know and I think you know I personally have high standards and um you know I I want to make sure that every aspect of our beer and our brand every touch point every beer flavor everything is as good as it can be um and I think if if that isn't the case so for example you might have a quality issue or um i don't know you might have some sort of um i don't know typo i'm thinking of a trivial example like those things you know will challenge you really hard because you want to always be pushing forwards but you're going to have inevitable setbacks along the way it's just the nature of especially in beer you know it's just such a difficult product um and i think dealing with those i'd probably find the hardest is you know you know you're you're basically you have to go into firefighting mode at times and that is kind of really quite draining uh and hard but also you're going to have a team around you that you know will support you as well but i think i think it's when things go wrong is like when i find it really hard boimi 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 boemi are the platform to categorically speed that up but if you're a big brand wanting to get bigger boemi are also insane they make field sales marble smooth silky slick they're just epic ollies ollies been on this podcast twice actually they saw a 29 uplift in sales when using boemi to check major malt listings availability insane 29 uplift by downloading an app insane lucky saying my boy aaron duff is coming to podcast in a couple of weeks weeks he uses it to manage the 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 at ireland how do you keep face as a founder because the founder has to show emotion but if you wear your heart on your sleeve too much and you look stressed and you look anxious then that spreads like cancer through the team and then it just they can eviscerate the culture so how how do you separate the the jazz looking in the in the bathroom mirror thinking god this is intense versus the jazz we can do this Yeah, I think you need to try and communicate a lot, you know, do things like emails with updates, have company meetings and that kind of, you know, to keep people pulling and pushing in the same and the right direction.

1:02:24I think I've got better at kind of dealing with my emotions and you know being more sort of rational you know I think as you gain more experience you get better at that and you know you're kind of you know you can evaluate whether a problem is a problem or not and how big a problem it is and you know come up with a solution and that kind of thing I think I'm quite light-hearted by nature and jokey and um you know i think um i think you've just got to have good working relationships with people you know try and socialize a lot so the tapra where we're sat now i think is a really important tool in the business because staff can come here after work um wednesday thursday friday and um have a beer you know we have a beer allowance per person and I think it's nice because people from across the business will come and have a beer together and you know allows us to bond and sort of share ideas they probably sort of talk about me and things like that but that I think is like in beer I think the culture is really nice because it kind of revolves around tap rooms and socializing so you know we'll get together here we'll have a barbecue in the brewery yard or we'll go and do an activity um or something like that um and that i think really helps because you know you're not just all together at work but you're also together at play as it were as well i couldn't you know that just helps kind of allow those pressures to kind of ease and you know um you know you have a beer together and you know you're all you're all mates again kind of thing you know and you're not in that kind of difficult meeting or discussion and and and that kind of and often you're kind of you're seeing the consumers or the customers enjoying your beers and you know that feeling has never gone away i remember when we opened the brewery in 2013 and we launched it actually down the road at the craft beer co and i remember seeing people buying our beer and i'm like they're actually buying our beer I was amazed at it and I still love that today like I love obviously in the taproom they can only buy our beer but if I go to one of our customers pubs and I see someone ordering a beer like you know often with my kids and they're like ding ding daddy someone's got a bricks and glass and that kind of thing and I you know that is just the best feeling and I think you know that's why food and drink I think is this amazing industry because you get that kind of gratification because you're seeing it on sale and you're seeing people buying it and you're seeing people consuming it and you get a good ego trip from that to be honest with you um so that i think the taproom is a really important tool twofold for that because i don't just see it but the staff see it and they're like what we are doing is important you know people are here and they're proud to basically work for brixton brewery because they know that you know the brand is popular and um that i think is really helpful i think beer is quite unique in that respect and that you can with through tap rooms we did a uh with actually josh from momo we did a hungry momo um drink up in camden actually but which was we'll have to the next one here you're very welcome the but what is interesting is is your staff and team can actually integrate over beer in a tap room yeah which is kind of unique to this category and that you know you can't really do it in in other categories but i think in terms it galvanizes and shortens the distance between the customer and the team and it's kind of a virtuous circle absolutely yeah in terms of before we hit the record button you we said you said two things to me you said i'm still winging it i was winging it back in 2013 and I'm winning it now but then we also said that the founder's journey is you learn more about yourself as much as it's about creating an amazing brand as much as it's about doing something for community etc etc as much as about people coming here enjoying the beers there's actually an internal transformation and journey you go on as a founder which you can't get anywhere else and that's why I love talking to founders yeah Yeah.

1:06:56What, how have you changed from the jazz sales to interview in 2013 when you started business versus 2023 now? What's the personal growth you've gone on? I've just learned so much, you know, as I said earlier, I was in like a bubble and it's a lovely bubble, but it's maybe not reflective of like the wider industry and the real world and that kind of thing. So you grow a lot in terms of your knowledge, especially commercially um you know just sort of making making a lot of decisions you've got to learn to assimilate a lot of information very quickly and try and make a good sound decision because as you grow you know your number of staff and that kind of you know people will be asking you stuff um and you just want to them to have confidence in themselves but also in you giving them direction and that kind of thing so I've had to learn to I think be a leader to be honest with you when the business was small um you know I think when we first partnered with Heineken we were maybe 10 11 people you know small we were all in one little mezzanine there and and that kind of thing and uh you know the business was easier to run in in a lot of ways um and then you know you've got to you've got to grow uh you've got to provide that leadership that direction that vision that confidence um and that's that stable platform that allows everyone else to basically do their jobs well um well just to to go further on in on that because i think a lot of people listening to this are the small brand who are trying to become the big brand yeah what would you say well that you've learned if you could boil it into three principles or like sentences like this is what i've learned about leadership and it's really helped me grow my brand what would they be um i think you should try and document stuff so whether that be a process a policy um a um an instruction manual a distillation of the brand you know in terms of the um the identity and the tone of voice and the values because you know you move from basically an oral history where you're passing it down orally you know and you're telling people but when you get to a certain size that doesn't work anymore because there's just too many people to kind of assimilate that information to so you you need to basically think long and hard about what your brand values are what your brand um identity or your plan is going to be and try and write it down and um you know test it as well because as you get bigger you're less able to change tack and direction and and that kind of thing so you want to like really think very hard about these things and you know project forward you know do I think still want to be saying the same things that I was saying when I started up or do I want to change the message or refine the message and that kind of thing so I think codifying things is really helpful so not just the brand but you know around your HR are because your people are the most important thing in the business um and you want to make sure that you know they understand um the working environment and you know health and safety is really important as well you want to look after your people you know you want to make sure that no one gets hurt or injured you know brewing there's potential to you know get burnt to get you know exposed to chemicals to have a fall or you know there's all sorts of things so you know all of that kind of structure i think is really really important and you build those foundations um and if you do it earlier on then you know it just provides a really solid base to kind of everything else to flow on from so you know we've spent a lot of time just i think documenting stuff and procedures and also like imagine if you know you've got an employee with loads and loads of knowledge um and you know they have it all in their head and they're i don't know off sick or they're on holiday or they leave the business and that kind of you lose that knowledge and you know it's hard for someone else to come in and pick that up immediately and that kind of thing so you know we've documented all sorts of processes and procedures around that that is pretty boring stuff to be honest with you but i think it's it's part of the maturity that we talked about you know is like you know evolving and uh becoming more more grown up more professional whatever you want to call it but i think it's it's important to do that stuff it's it's funny like the romantic notion is the founders the the avant-garde trailblazer the steve jobs the sort of balls balls in and i think that's what is the romantic story but i think more people have is actually it's if the founder sorry if the brand is the soul of the founder or the long shadow i think is is the quote we came up with well there needs to be a way for that to be spread through and systemized and unfortunately it may sound cliche and boring but it is the systems yeah and i think that's really interesting is there anything else on the leadership piece that you've you could pass on to someone i think just be open and approachable and stay humble and um you know if you can be friends with everyone in the business like you can't be their friend all the time but do as much as you possibly can um because you know there's you know there'll be times when you're like oh we need to look at our sales uh or we need to look at our production outputs because we're not getting enough yield or uh when we need to look at our logistics because you know we're not able to support more customers through our logistics platform and that kind of thing so um you know don't take your eye off the ball of anything and always be looking ahead and say you know business is good now but is it still going to be good for what we need it to do in six months time and you know i think planning is really important when we were um independent and small we would plan on a very short sort of small time horizon and then you know obviously you know we partnered with heineken and you know they need you know security of supply chain you know because otherwise they're not going to keep growing the brand if they don't think that there's going to be enough supply to kind of fulfill in that kind of thing so you need to start planning you know brewing capacity budgeting uh cash flow you know all those kind of things like you need to be really disciplined um to make sure that your business can support the growth that might come along otherwise what might happen is it can't and you've blown your opportunity basically with a big customer or something like that because you know they might not trust you to be able to keep up with with them so you know you know a good example i don't You say you work with a big supermarket and, you know, you start selling lots of beer.

1:14:13Just make sure you can scale. And, you know, I think in brewing, you know, where you tend to have your own production facility, that's your responsibility. Maybe other industries, you know, you might be working with a partner who is basically producing on your behalf. And actually brewing, it's a bit of a hybrid, like a lot of breweries contract brew and outsource some production because they can't do it all in-house. you got to make sure that your partner can scale with you but you know all this stuff you know and this maturing is hard but it's definitely worth doing because it'll it'll just help you sleep easier at night as a founder because you're like yeah i've thought of probably most things i need to think about there's always going to be a curveball that comes along that you haven't thought about and will trip you up and even 10 years later we find curveballs that we just couldn't have thought about um and they do trip us up you know we had a weird one the other a couple of months ago where we had this strange flavor in one of our beers and we didn't really know where it was coming from and you know we looked at all of our brewing records and everything and everything looked fine and you know we evaluated everything and we traced it to a batch of hops that we buy from um the pacific northwest in the u.s that had been tainted by wildfires in the u.s and the flavor in the beer was like a little bit sort of chipotle smoky kind of thing and it was because of the hops and um like we didn't know that that was even a possibility kind of thing um so we contacted the the supplier and they were like oh well we have strict stringent robust qc processors you know that shouldn't have allowed this to happen and we're like well it did happen and this is the batch and you know so little things like that can catch you out that you know you've been brewing for 10 years you've been using the same hop for 10 years but all of a sudden something like that which is just a bit weird and out of the blue can trip you up and then you have like a potential quality problem and that kind of thing i think it's i love what you're saying jez and it's it's for listeners it's it's do the boring but important stuff the important stuff is boring quote unquote yeah but it's but it's important and that's how i probably change the most is you know i said i'm winging it but i'm winging it less yeah yeah yeah And, you know, I do, I fully see the value in doing this stuff.

1:16:45Whereas before, I just didn't have the time or the headspace to do it because I was, you know, keeping other balls in the air. But I really strongly believe in this stuff now because I've seen the benefits that come with, you know, doing it well, doing it thoroughly. and then also on the point about the the chipotle hops is that something will always go wrong and i think i actually flew to new york to interview athletic brewing yeah i heard that podcast oh yeah yeah so you know um when john said uh every day expect something to go wrong and that's actually a shame with me because i used to like editing podcasts and all this stuff there's a lot of um stuff behind the scenes that basically always goes wrong yeah and before i used to just flip out and be like for fuck's sake whereas now it's just like i'm getting better at that as well yeah it's having space creating space between uh the pete tongness and almost trying to be like mother theresa versus yeah and i think actually as a leader it's better if you do have that reaction you know you kind of like not take things a little bit in your stride but like don't panic basically um because it's probably not as bad as your initial reaction thinks it is um and you'll find a way to yeah you know you'll you'll just you you get better at solving problems and you know with experience you um you learn what what are problems and what are just sort of little bumps in the road kind of thing it's that there's the stoic quote which is we suffer more in imagination than reality which is something i i know of but i don't always apply it in terms of what's one obstacle that at the time seemed seemingly insurmountable but retrospectively paved paved the way forward and that that's based actually off a stoic book called the obstacle is the way uh insurmountable wow it seemed insurmountable but retrospectively now was the way forward i can't think of one to be honest with you i'll have to have a little think about that but um i don't think there has been one because i just think my attitude is we'll just get it done or we'll find a way or i don't think i've ever found anything insurmountable I've found things exhausting and draining and um but I've never like encountered anything where I thought oh this is not something I can get past or resolve or um find a way forward um and you know I think that's the other thing as a leader in the business is you know be bold and be brave um and you know I'm fortunate that I have the security of the Heineken ownership and before the full ownership it was the partnership and I know that my thinking and my kind of bravery or my decision making is informed by that you know if I were an independent business and I didn't have that kind of safety net I think I would probably feel differently and I massively respect and admire the other brewery founders who don't have that and have done what they've done with their businesses you know and really scaled you know such as um you know in south london there's a few kind of you know breweries that you know have you know invested a lot grown a lot i mean you know beaver town i mentioned earlier um you know logan there you know really really pushed that brand that brand forward and as hard as he possibly could um um you know and you know moved you know breweries a few different times which is when you're you're always at your most vulnerable um why because you're basically anticipating that you're going to keep growing but you may you may or may not do you know there might not be that headroom in the market or you know that pull from the consumer and and that kind of thing um you know i think a few breweries have done that and had you know flown too close to the sun and you know not been able to fill the extra production that they what brands so there was one called hop stuff for example hop stuff yeah and they they built a big brewery in um depthford and um you know i think they felt like they were kind of following the brew dog model so So crowdfunding and, you know, sort of craft beer for the masses.

1:21:38And they grew too fast. And there wasn't that demand in the market. The brand wasn't strong enough and went into administration. The crowdfund investors all lost their money. The business was bought, or the brand and the business was basically bought as an asset sale by, I think Molson Coors for not a lot um you know the founder um left the business so that's you know one example there are others um so it's not you know a given you know and that's why I say you're vulnerable when you expand because you know there's a few others like Wild Beer Co it happened to Brew by Numbers it happened to um and that kind of thing so so i you know i think you know my that's also why it was quite an easy decision to partner with heineken five years ago because i knew that it would ease some of those pressures on me personally i interviewed rob uh wallace from moth you know the can cocktails yep and he said something that's really stuck with me which is that like growth won't sorry setbacks and failure won't really that's when you don't need to worry like that's ultimately just getting back on your feet again and going again what when you're most vulnerable which is what you you've echoed their jazz is is when you're about to grow growth is what can kill you is when you're not prepared to grow yeah or you've overfore forecasted growth look at these vegan meat brands i mean that is just i interviewed giles brooks it's an absolute car crash of a category that's like you know there's almost like the dot com boom for brands.

1:23:21And actually going back to the story, that's where, you know, a brand is essentially a fiction where people have almost believed it too much, had this sort of Santa Claus thinking in the category, and actually you boil it down and the ingredient deck looks like a Stretton drug deal, do you mind me, to put it like that? An analogy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's fascinating. And in terms of... So one thing I obsess with is how you keep the magic as you scale.

1:24:01and in your specific circumstance how you keep the magic when heineken own the business yep good question so you keep the magic i think by staying true to your values and as long as your culture is strong and you know it needs your culture needs to start from day one in my opinion you can't like apply a fix to culture at some point down the track like i think it needs to start from the right place um and just you know be strengthened and reinforced and built over you know a period of time so that you're seen as being consistent internally and also externally um people know you and trust you can see that you're like the real deal kind of thing because i think people will see through it otherwise um communicate it so things like you know writing it down what are your values think really hard about that you know because you have it in your head but you need to articulate it um and you know that that i think is is important um and then you can kind of share it really easily you know it's like you know how books kind of uh you know were a disruptive technology because there was an oral tradition and then everything got written down and then you know ideas spread and and that kind of thing and you know i think well you're basically writing your story yeah is what you're doing yeah and then that makes that story spreads and then the culture builds exactly and you know we um we have a a really cool story here at bricks and reary i think um which is well just you know the founding story i think is is important that's basically how it starts so you know you mentioned man of life stew's got this great founding story about how he met these peanut farmers in in argentina you know it could be anything like that you know which people can link back to and relate to and um buy into and and all that kind of thing what was because i've read the story was two couples both had kids moved to brixton yeah bonded over beer talk to me about the genesis of that um so that is the story and it's all 100 true none of it is made up because i've because i've been on a few brewery tours and i've heard the founding story i'm like that's not actually quite how i remember it because you know obviously I follow the industry and that kind of but anyway so yeah so so my wife and I um I bought a flat in Brixton in 2006 and my consortial bought a flat at exactly the same time across the road in 2006 but we didn't meet until 2010 when we both had our first kids so there's like a month age difference between my son Joseph and their daughter Saskia and we were in a bar in Brixton called Hive Bar it's on the corner of Beehive Place and back then in Brixton it was pretty much the only place you could get a gourmet hamburger now you can't move for gourmet hamburgers we were in there on a Sunday with our baby Joseph in a pram and Mike and Sochal were in there at the same time with saskia in a pram and social mike's wife came over and sort of looked into our pram and we started talking and we were pretty much the only people in the um in the bar at the time and mike and social are canadian my wife's british but grew up in canada um so we had that connection and we were like hey you know where do you live and they're like yeah we're on saltine road and we were like hang on a minute we're on saltine road as well and you know then you sort of start talking like what number are you at and they were basically diagonally opposite to each other and so we'd been living basically really close to each other without our paths ever crossing until that Sunday lunch for five years and then when I found out where they lived I'm like Mike I've been in your bedroom because I'd viewed the same flat when I was buying the flat I bought I'd viewed the one that he bought um so that freaked him out a little bit um we started hanging out um then I was having a beer with mike and i sort of just made a flippant remark i'm like you know we should open a brewery in brixon you know i could see what was happening in bermondsey hackney places like that and he was like well you know what i actually wanted to open a brew pub back in canada my dad would never let me so we kind of joked about it um but that was kind of like a bit of a light bulb moment he sent me an email i think on the monday and said if we're going to open a brewery we better learn how to make beer and he bought this beer kit on amazon and mr beer kit um i didn't want to be outdone so i'm like okay i better do something so i registered brixton brewery.com and that was kind of the first step that was like the stake in the ground we had none of the skills none of the experience none of the knowledge we needed to open a brewery but from that point we just sort of started method acting and taking baby steps um so we made the mr beer kit we kind of boiled it up on his um hob in his flat fermented it in his airing cupboard and i remember liby and social had t-shirts made for us like fictional t-shirts and they said brixton brewers quality beers at the end of the victoria line i still actually have the t-shirt i tried to wear it for our 10th birthday party but it doesn't fit quite as well as it did um then so i didn't wear it but um we were like maybe we're the people that could do this in brixton um but what really motivated us and drove us was i didn't want to be the person that had the idea and talked about it and didn't do anything about it um i wanted it to be us i didn't want it to be anyone else and i was actually really amazed that brixton didn't yet have a commercial brewery because there were breweries in all other parts of london um but i guess it was you know brixton was not as gentrified or whatever reason it was held back for what for some reason so we made it our mission to to be the people that um that opened the brewery and we've had quite a few people over the years who've come to us and said yeah I thought about doing that I'm like but you didn't um we were the people that did it and you know that really drove me forward is you know if you see an opportunity and it's all about timing embrace it so it was like that in 2013 when we opened the brewery it was like that again when heineken came and we did the deal with them in 2017 you know i feel like there's windows of opportunity to do these things and we've been fortunate to have had two basically one starting the brewery and then the other was when big brewers were looking to partner and acquire craft brands we were both in the right place at the right time for both of those opportunities and you know I feel like maybe the time has passed for both of those things now what I love there are two things you said is we were method acting and we were and I think you said your wife but made those t-shirts which said yeah Libby and social both had them printed yeah Prince of Say Brixton Brewery uh just down yeah quality beers down the Victoria that is writing the story you know how we said a business is a fiction yeah that is as much as it is you writing down the story for and the values and doing the boring but important stuff to get the team galvanized you have actually believed the story yourself by putting a t-shirt on method acting yeah and I think there's a lot in that for people listening to this isn't if you can get granular and glacial clarity on your story even if you have to fake it i mean kind of with this podcast i had no like an idea what i was doing i just said right i can somehow i'll be okay at podcasting yeah and it seems to be working out on but that first two three first 20 were awful the one before charlie b i did charlie bigham and it was i was pacing up and down my flat thinking this is hideously scary i've got no idea i'm so out of my depth but i believe the story and i I think there's something real value in that.

1:32:21And then you can manifest it, basically. Yeah, but you've got to believe the story. And I think in terms of, like, how... Because I think one of the common themes is it seems too good to be true, right? And you said there's these two opportunities that have come around. There's opportunities for a lot of other breweries at the... Brew... Breweys, sorry, at the time. You seem to have a superpower to spot the opportunity or lean into the opportunity. Could you speak to that? How do you do that? I think it's leaning into it. I mean, you have got to spot it, but other people spotted it way before we did, but in other areas, basically.

1:33:09What do you mean by that? You know, like the Colonel's spotted it a lot before we did Brew Dogs. Colonel? I've never even heard of them. Yeah, they're one of the pioneers of London brewing. yeah and you know a lot of London brewers will you know say that that's what inspired them to to get going I think Ian from Brick Brewery in Peckham basically was inspired by them but you know not swear Brew by Numbers who I mentioned earlier yeah I like a version of the Colonel Red Church who were one of the early London brewers were basically an imitation of the colonel and and that kind of thing um so um yeah i think spotting the opportunity um i think we were also inspired by a success story from across the pond so brooklyn brewery which started in the 80s um but their story was that when sorry to interrupt i'm just my curiosity is bubbling right now but so when did craft beer start in the u.s um i mean officially yeah i mean i would say yeah the 80s i would say you know um most of the current big breweries in in the u.s like the the more established ones yeah around around that time um you know you can trace it back to anchor steam brewing which i think was much much older they've actually just been closed by um is it Sapporo uh their owners they're like a really old historical brewery and some people trace um trace it back to them but yeah around the 80s and um the story of Brooklyn Brewery is one that is very very similar to us they were two neighbors started home brewing wanted to open a brewery to kind of bring brewing back to a local area that you know it had died out there was actually a brixton brewery there was a brew pub just up the road here which we didn't actually know until after we had started the brewery and someone told us about it there was a brewery in um stockwell called uh hamerton um and actually one of the descendants of the hammertons has started a brewery under the same name but they're actually in islington now they're famous for an oyster stout he still brews an oyster stout and that kind of thing so you know we basically looked at the Brooklyn story we thought you know Brixton Brooklyn they are some similarities um and that kind of thing so the two founders of Brooklyn Brewery went about setting up the brewery in quite a similar way to us they actually wrote a book about it called Beer School that I read and I'm like well I'm basically just gonna follow this blueprint it I love this you know I think it's great you know you basically started a brewery to serve the local community and that's how Brixton Brewery started you know we started small we started humble our original business plan was just to supply beer to bars restaurants and pubs in Brixton we didn't have a delivery van we didn't even have a trolley I would borrow the trolley from the neighboring arch and I would wheel the beer down this road into Brixton Market and you know for I think maybe the first year of the business that's how we made every delivery where we'd actually met as founders hive bar then became the craft beer code which is where we launched the brewery um 10 years ago and i would wheel casks down from the arch to the craft beer code you know that that's how we basically started was on a very very local very humble basis like our first business plan basically looked at all the bars and restaurants in brixton and we guessed how many cases of beer they would order a week and you know we made a list and we're like okay well they'll they'll take four they'll take one they'll take three and we totted it up and we kind of worked the business plan back from that and it's actually been the most accurate business plan we've ever written it was really spot on

1:37:15and people got behind us the local community got what we were trying to do which was super super and ice but we had a strong conviction that that would be the case because basically brixton just embraces stuff like this and i remember saying to mike i think we're gonna have to try really hard screw this up um so we didn't have the knowledge we didn't have the experience but we had this just such strong belief um that drove us forward and you know made us want to make the most of that opportunity basically as as i said i think brixton and camden and notting hill are probably the three strongest other than soho like as a more like a borough as they say in new york the barrows yeah but the i think they're they're super strong brands and and yeah we were talking about the amount of food businesses that started here was it franko manco honest cricket um yeah now there've been some some really yeah really amazing success stories that started right here in Brixton yeah and I think there will continue to be yeah it's like the winds the winds kind of here what's so do you speak much to Jasper at Camden is there no I never really got to know Jasper personally I were you know we obviously would attend beer festivals where he would be at and London Brewers Alliance which is kind of the the organization that all breweries in London join and I remember him you know being in meetings and that kind of thing but the breweries or the brewery founders that I know best are the South London breweries just because we tended to know each other more because you know we basically would borrow stuff from each other or still do is there like a is there like a sort of a bit of like I keep thinking of Ali G or it's like the South London is the best West London is the best there there is I would say yeah i would say you know you've got you know the sort of the bermondsey guys the hackney guys obviously jasper was in camden there's not that much going on in west london i would say um uh and then yeah south south london i suppose is you know the the kind of the the crew that we uh that we're with but um is there actual like um because that's why again we talked about it earlier about why i love challenger brands so much is the tribalism yeah it's like you go to and that you are kind of all on retail specifically you are fighting for finite shelf space yeah but i do like that tribalism and that like i'm part of this thing and i'm gonna grow this thing is there like beef at these shows not like actual um beef but no i mean we joke about it i suppose and like you're on our patch or our turf and that kind of thing um but i i actually do think that craft beer started as quite a local movement yeah you know so pubs bars restaurants and they still do to a greater or less support their local brewery and that's kind of why we started out you know is so that we could be that local option for those businesses but then certain brands have obviously grown out of their locality and you have to if you want to grow right you can't just stay local the opportunity is limited locally um so you know i think you know one thing i really love is being on the bar in camden and you know we enjoy a really good strong rate of sale in camden which you know you don't know if that's going to be the case if you're taking the name of a local area and you're going like north the river like you you don't know if that's gonna gonna work but luckily it did you know that's what i was gonna say because like not to be disparaging but if you were to launch a Canary Wharf beer it ain't gonna fly probably not or if you never know I mean if it's a Canary it might or like if you were to launch yeah like a Canary Wharf or like a Romford beer it's not gonna fly as much so how did you drive the rate of sale like say in bars up north did bricks and have such a pole um it's taken a time and it takes work and you've got to raise awareness and you know you've got to drive trial you've got to get people to try the product um before they'll basically buy it um i mean i personally i think a pint is the perfect trial size for a product but um so what are you doing to drive that trial is it um you try and do activation so we actually have over the five years that we've been in partnership with heidekin and before that we were like most of the beer was sold you know within five miles of the brewery we've been growing in quite a strategic way with a focus on london and the southeast because that's what we know excuse me or where we know our awareness is the strongest but it does have a ripple effect um and you know brixton as a location is well known you know it's iconic so that's really fortunate for us you know so many people have passed through brixton you know been to a gig been clubbing and bowie yeah david bowie like you know there's there's so many interesting things about brixton um that people already know about like so brixton the place has awareness all over the country with brixton the brewery maybe not so much we've been really fortunate in that our original brand identity that we started with 13 years ago hasn't changed like we we nailed it basically you know we're really happy with how the brand looks obviously it's evolved and we've kind of tweaked it a bit but it's still recognizable you know and borrowing from Brooklyn who I said earlier who are really known for their their bee you know we have a bee that just kind of is a beacon and signals this is our brand this is Brixton kind of thing so So having that consistency, I think, is important in brand identity.

1:43:19You know, it helps, you know, people being able to recognize your product really quickly, easily. Like there's some breweries that seem to rebrand every two years, but we've never done that because we got it right from day one. But yeah, so when you go on the road and you go further and further afield outside your heartland, it's important to try and have flagship retailers, whether that's in the on-trade or the off-trade, who'll show your brand and you know they'll want to get behind you as well because you're like giving them something that they haven't had before as well you know they they'll be feeling oh well you know I'd like to you know try this new brewery that you know isn't like local but you know I've heard good things about them and you know I've heard their good their beer's good and the brand looks good on the bar or on the shelf and that kind of thing.

1:44:16So they'll want to get behind you. Obviously, you've got to back that up and make sure that you work with them to ensure that their customers connect with the brewery and the brand. POS is something that we've invested heavily in point of sale, whether it's glassware, bar runners, tap handles, keg lenses that give you that standout. So you can go from being quite small and in like a craft beer bar where you know you've kind of got the cognoscenti or the craft aficionados who recognize your brand but as you grow and you're kind of breaking out of that bubble i talked about you got to make sure you've got all the tools to support that growth so you've got to have that strong brand identity you've got to have the pos but also you you know go go into pubs and activate you know spin a wheel give out prizes give out merch um you know give out 53 three pints and that kind of thing like that grassroots stuff is is really important so you know we have a team of brewery ambassadors that do that on our behalf basically and you know they can they can really move the needle on your rate of sale in a venue by doing those kind of things um and it and it creates like a virtuous circle you know but you go into like specific towns and just do that first because i think the one of the mistakes i've made in the past is you try and just you try and boil the boil the ocean and actually you need to create these seth goes in the marketer that you've heard of him he says if you were to drop a tie a thing of dye i say purple dye yeah in an ocean you would it wouldn't go anywhere but if you were to drop it in a swimming pool that whole swimming pool go purple and i think of that a lot with activation it's like don't go for the whole of manchester go for south manchester yeah don't go and pick a few key uh flagship venues to activate in and then get those working well make sure that you learn like okay you talk and you communicate and you know you talk to the operator like how's it going you know it's going all right is there anything we could do to make it go better that kind of like really, really prove and refine and hone your strategy because, you know, what works, you know, in South London or the Southeast, you know, may not work up there.

1:46:35You know, maybe, you know, we've got five core beers in our portfolio. You've got to pick the right product as well, you know, to be on the bar. You know, some products will work better than others. And that's been a learning for us. Like we are pretty good at looking across a bar, looking at what the offering is and saying what we think you should have from our core range for example to complement what you've already got and that you know you've got to do that on a bar by bar basis really it seems back to this tribalism it seems quite scrappy in that regard because uh i think camden had the they had the kind of the the red yeah hell's lager and and but the taps yeah yeah the primary colors yeah the primary colors is really good the uh

1:47:30beaver town have got the the weird anarchistic kind of yeah skulls and stuff yeah spaceman spaceman yeah which is yeah really like really good brand so how do you make it different and make it feel brixton on the pos bike i i go to some bars i'm like you know i've got i've got a lot of mates um one do you know aaron duff actually no i don't think so he used to work with kira heineken okay now he's the head of uh on trade lucky saint oh nice he's a good mate of mine cool um but but i'm just like i go into a booze i'm like aaron's had his troops here do you know i mean they'd be kicking about execution is so important you know you've really got to make it stick once you're on the bar is kind of the easy part making it stick making sure you have that you know consistent rate of sale otherwise you're just going to come off the bar to be honest with you but how do you make it stick like so is that like building getting your kind of the people who are on the ground build a relationship but what are you doing yeah yeah relationship is important um but also just execution make sure that they've got glassware they've got bar runners they've got a tap handle they've got a lens um what are runners and lens um so the lens is the round um kind of badge that you get uh we've got some up up there on on the wall yeah so that you know and they can be backlit which makes them stand out because you know apparently the average drinker as they approach the bar is going to make a decision on what they're going to order and they're only going to give like three seconds or something like that and then they'll make the decision so you've got to influence that buying decision in a very small window so you know you want to have and the bar runner is these sort of rubber uh mats that you know you put the glasses um down on and that kind of thing so um yeah you've you've got to try and be at that kind of the cold face and um or work with the the pub you know to make sure that they're kind of getting behind you so you know through the relationship staff training um and then hopefully they'll recommend your beer over someone else's and that will you know all these little things brick up into um driving sales i don't know i was listening to a podcast on the way up here actually about the i don't know if you like rugby but the the how we won the world cup in 2003 yeah and the clive woodwood came in he said it's i don't know the exact homology is but it's a thousand little things done well yeah and he basically said uh we we won we brought a winger in called jason robinson who was super rapid yeah from rugby league from rugby league but back in the day the england the rugby jersey was super baggy and he said he said to nike he goes i want you to make me a shirt that will win us the world cup and he goes they go what's the issue because we've got the fastest winger in the world yeah but people are grabbing him and he can't score bloody tries yeah so that was a one zero percent edge Nike make that skin tight uh shirt and it wins them wins them the world cup yeah it's these little things no I totally agree and I think British cycling had a similar philosophy with David Brailsford and he called it the accumulation of marginal gains and if you can find a little tiny little advantage or edge in a lot of different areas once you add them all together it actually you know translates and I that resonated with me um I didn't get it for rugby I got it from cycling but it's the same concept right um and you know I that's basically why you know I still want to be in the brewery every day because I want to be looking for those um and working with the teams to to deliver them because then you know you just feel like you're just going to keep pushing forward and you know don't ever become complacent basically i i you know i i don't think that's going to happen to me um how do you ensure that because once heineken on board is how do you ensure that like you're still acting as if you're strapping because because i want to ensure my legacy and i want to make sure that brixton brewery reaches its full potential because i think it can just continue growing and growing and growing i mean it'll reach a ceiling at some point i don't know what that is but i feel like it's where do you want it to be do you want it to be what's like if i say if say we record this in 10 years time what does what does i mean you know talking about brooklyn brewery if we can be as iconic as them um i'll be very very happy yeah final question mate i'm absolutely thoroughly love this and super grateful for you for having me here so i was doing a bit of research on the founding of of brixton not brixton brewery of brixton and it said in 10 whether this is bullshit or not place it's good for the podcast but it said in 10 10 67 a man called brishy stain yes founded a you may have heard this called uh he basically put up some pole erected a stone and people gathered around it and this is yeah yonks ago he was a saxon overlord or something saxon overlord yeah it's actually a really good youtube uh youtube uh channel which goes into all these towns sick i'll send it to you it's very interesting but anyway so what the final question is is say you were to erect like a totemic pole and you can have one sentence of wisdom for our listeners to see as they are kind of going on their journey and they go drive past every day or they see on their run what would it be and why i think it's about the beer and when we talk about our beers we say we're always seeking balance but i think it's not just about the beer but the beer is kind of a um an analogy or an embodiment and what i want people to glean from that from the beer is like the first sip needs to be as good as the last sip like the first sip needs to be an enjoyable experience and the last does and you know don't make it too intense too strong too overpowering but i think that's also kind of a bit of a mantra or philosophy for how we run the business as well like is keep everything in balance you know like don't go too fast you'll burn your staff out don't um you know be too um big-headed or like flamboyant or um over the top you know because don't get cocky things could get rocky kind of thing but also don't be complacent you know just keep things in check keep things in balance so i see it when we talk about the beer but actually i think it's more universal than that and i think it's just i mean i think you know there's a few like sort of you know like meditation or you know maybe it's a buddhist tradition and that kind of thing and you know they're talking about balance and you know you know you've got opposing forces all the time going on just try and keep everything in balance we do it with the beer we try and do it with the business and the company culture and um yeah just keep things in check uh keep you know humble keep real stick to your values you know make sure that everyone knows what they are um so that they can do that as well um and you know we you know we have another saying in the brewery you know where we say you know get a taste of brixton and you know that's also got a double meaning you know we's We want you to get a taste of Brixton, the product, but we want you to get a taste of Brixton, the area.

1:55:24And the values that Brixton, the area have, community, diversity, openness, we have in the business as well. But they're also universal values. And that's why I think people connect with our brand anywhere and everywhere in the country because there's communities everywhere. Pubs are communities. And we just want to share that. but I think it's it's a good way to live your life as well you know just try and extol those values you know we do that in everything that we do and I think that's going to stand us in good stead hopefully mate been an absolute pleasure cheers thank you so much Jess thank you thank you so so much for listening to the podcast I really really do appreciate it if you liked that episode only if you liked it please do give it five stars subscribe tell all your friends families foes next door but one cat dog whatever please tell everyone about this podcast it means the world to me and i really want to understand what your pain points are as the new wave of challenger food and drink brands please do hit me up on linkedin search dan pope and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands thank you so much For more information, Penn fantastic.