EP 01 // Simon Webster // Thornbridge Brewery

It's one thing to start a movement.
It’s another thing to still be as relevant 20 years later.

Widely considered the pioneers of IPA within the UK, Thornbridge played a major role in creating what became known as Craft Beer.

However, while many breweries took their turn in the spotlight, only to fade to the back, Thornbridge is still here…and stronger than ever. 

How have they done it?

In the first Episode of the PATH Markers podcast, I am joined by Simon Webster, the CEO and Co-Founder of the iconic Thornbridge Brewery.

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You can get in touch with Luca Lorenzoni at yourpath.luca@gmail.com

Follow Luca and PATH on instagram - https://www.instagram.com/choose_your__path/

A special thanks to the team at Sellar for making PATH Makers come to life.

Transcript

0:16

I'd like to thank everyone for, for tuning into episode one of the Path Makers Podcast. first thing we need to do is welcome our guest today, Mr. Simon Webster, co-founder of Thornbridge Brewery. Thanks so much for being here today. Yeah, pleasure. And, because it's episode one, I'm gonna start off with a bit of an intro into, into Path Makers because it's not really a typical Podcast. the idea with this is, is, is really, it's broken down in a couple things. For one, it's more of like a mini series. There's gonna be six episodes, this is episode one. Once those six episodes are done, the theme is kind of tackled. We go back to what we do for work. Yeah. the, the second thing is that theme. So what the theme is for, for these six episodes is, is speaking to the path makers, the folks that have had a, significant role in shaping modern beer in the UK today. and then the last thing's around format, most Podcasts, will generally go through the journey of the guests and talk through the story. Yeah. I know you're familiar, you've done a few yourself. that's not what we're gonna do here today, for one, because the six guests are folks that are very well known, not just within beer space, but within, you know, challenger drinks brands. So a lot of people that are listening or viewing the Podcast will already know your story to a degree. Yeah. so what we're really interested in is not so much what you did. But the why and how of, of, of it, of why you did it, and how you did it. Why is that important? So let's go back to the mid, late nineties. you know, beer was not the most interesting place in the world, right? It doesn't mean there wasn't good beer. No, absolutely. But there wasn't much, diversity. within beer styles, number of breweries, that kind of thing, as well as the fact that the volumes were going down. It was, you know, not the most attractive industry. And what happened was there was a spark and there was people that came in and started creating, new paths, new paths for the product, but also new paths for consumers to come in and experience that and have fun with the category. And that led to this unprecedented boom of the last 15 to 20 years, which, If you think of how old of a category beer is, it probably has never experienced something as, as, fast moving in terms of growth, in terms of, you know, differentiation as the last 15 to 20 years. and that was because of, of that path making. So as we sit here today, and obviously all the headlines will obviously lead you to, to believe that's all doom and gloom. Yeah. we'll get to that later, but, You know, one of the things that we need to keep in mind is, you know, we, we, we own our own destiny and we're just one spark, we're one path away from, from, from changing the narrative around beer. And what better way to do that than to sit down with the folks that did it over the last 20 years. So speaking of 20 years, that's like, that's Thornbridge, isn't it? Right? Yeah. Flown by, hasn't it? Yeah. Who knew so much would happen. Yeah. No kidding. so before we, last thing before we get into it is because we're not gonna focus on your story. There might be some people who are listening or, or watching that don't know the story, as well as they would like to. So what I did is obviously in preparing for this, I went through a lot of Podcasts, articles, what you will. I came up with a few suggestions. If you have any to add to this, go nuts. There's a craft beer channel, YouTube, the origins of Thornbridge and Jaipur. I know there's a more recent one on the, on the Burton Union, but but there's that one which is about a 15 minute episode. There's the Hop Forward Podcast, which is a much more in-depth, longer episode. And then there's a, a great article, 15 years of Endless Summer, how Thornbridge Jaipur Changed British Beer. And that's by Johnny Garrett. That was on... A good piece. Yeah. Good beer hunting, right? Yeah. Is there anything else? No, I think that's pretty good. If, if you read up whole listen up on that, you have a pretty good idea of the story. Yeah. Cool. So you go check those out. They are great. But, but yeah, with that in mind, let's, let's kick off today. Great. And of course we're gonna start with, with one that, is often talked about, which is, it was just Jaipur, right? Yeah. But before we actually talk about Jaipur itself, what I'd like to do is, is ask if you could take us back to like, That moment in time, like scene setting. Right. So take us back to 2005. Don't worry about Jaipur yet, but like what is going on at Thornbridge 2005? What does it look like? Yeah, I mean, back 2005 we were working at the old brewery just, within, within, the hall grounds. And at that stage, Jim and I, at the start of the year, we just employed two, two young growers, neither of whom had commercially brewed beer before. one guy, Stephano Cossi was, based in Italy and flew over for the interview. He was a, a real, nerd for yeast and, and generally sort of beer, but had only brewed at university. and the other was a graduate from Heriot- Watt Martin Dickey. these two guys came together in January, February of that sort of year, and we were at that stage fooling around a little bit, but also because Dave Wickett had been one of the, guys to set the brewery up with us. He was at Kelham Island, Kelham Island Brewery at that stage, and we were doing some of the other beers for him sort of thing. So they were brewing lots of Pale Rider and Easy Rider, and we'd do some of the seasonals and effectively we were grazing our knees on somebody else's beer. and, and, and getting a feel for, for what worked, what didn't work, and, and playing around with the hops. and, and that was really, that was sort of a pivotal time then where Within the industry at that stage, you know, most brewers were using three or four varieties of hops. Martin and Stefano were young, ambitious, probably chef like, and there were a lot more ingredients in the cupboard than three or four hops. And, and we went for it and, and, and we tried different things. They were influenced massive by the American scene, obviously. Okay. Who wouldn't be? so, you know, the pivotal moment of brewing a, an IPA was, was very American inspired rather than UK inspired. And how much, what was your brew length at the time? we'd be doing 30 to 40 casks of beer. That was it. On each brew? Yeah. On each brew, yeah. And so they're going about, obviously they're brewing some of the beer from Kelham Island. Yep. Right. and then in the meantime, you're brewing your own beers. Yeah. Starting first one was Lord Marples, wasn't it? First one was Lord Marples. Yeah. and so was there like a direction to them? Was there like. This is Thornbridge, this is what we want to be. Or, you know, what, what, what guidance was given to them at that time? You know, we, I, I, I speak to Martin, still, you know, we, we often say we almost had this sort of, we pinched it from Nike, but it was a bit of just do it. Let's, let's just do it. Let's just try it. You know, we, we had, we had brews go down the drain. Yeah. And not everything worked, but, but we were pretty, the guys were pretty good at, at what they did and they were inspired, as I said, by other sort of styles out there. And by the time early summer had come round, the thirst was for a, for a big IPA and you know, 5.9% beers did not exist in the uk especially on Cask. Yeah. so, you know, I often say going back now, if it was 20 years ago now, that'd be a keg beer. Yeah. You know, we wouldn't have even touched as a cask beer because there were too many sort of, barriers to that style of beer in cask, but somehow we did, and somehow it succeeded beyond anything any of us had ever hope for. And so I guess the, you know, have, as you say, go, just do it. Yeah. That beer needed to sell. Yep. Yeah. So is it just like, go for it. We just gotta sell. But you're not, you're not talking about loads of cask here. So part of it was having control on the size. Yeah. I mean, he felt a lot of cask to us. Sure. and you know, again, we're in such a different market 20 years on that, you know, we were able to probably sell to rural pubs. Okay. You know, it seems odd, but nobody really bought an ABV back then. They bought beer. Okay?'cause most beer was 3.8 to 4.2. So, you know, we, it wasn't particularly a conversation, it was more, I got this, IPA modern, IPA sort of thing. People took it, the balance was there in that beer. that meant that you didn't necessarily think you were drinking a boozy drink. and it caught a lot of people out. I'll be honest, you know, there were tales of people being Jaipour'd or being Jaipourly, because they'd had four pints of, of beer, but four pints of Jaipur are very different, very different. The ability to kind of play with things and just do it. Like, was that made possible because you had the other part of the business, which was, uh. Brew the beer for Kelham Island and make revenue off that, or would you've done anyway, to be honest, we got a, I mean, we were relatively, it, it was a low cost business in some ways in that we were in the grounds of Jim's house. Yeah. you know, we were benefiting from, the duty system back then, which had, which had not long been in. and we were still able to sell everything we brewed. We just didn't brew that much. So we were, we were nursing the business undoubtedly. And, and you, and you're right. You know, having something else to do as well helped pay the bills. Sure. Uh. Got it. And, and when you first brewed that, that, 'cause that was Brew three, was it, or third Beer? That was the third beer, yeah. Yeah. Okay. When you brewed that, was it like, yeah, we got it. Like, we know it was interesting'cause it really, it was, it was a bit of a moment actually because, Dave Wickett, Dave was a real pioneer of, of using American hops and beer and things like that. And when he first tasted the beer, we sat down on Jim's lawn with Martin and Steph, and he was like. That's it. You, that's, that's, it was just the aha moment there. Yeah. He was, you know, a man from Del Monte moment, you know, he said yes. You know, he really, he really was. He stood out. and, you know, 20 years on, I still think it stands out as a, as a, an incredible cask bear. And I often say, even though to start with. People followed us into that space, but I'm not sure there are many blonde, nearly 6% Cask beer styles out there now. Yeah. they, they've certainly, plenty of keg beers, but Jaipur still stands there, 20 years in thinking, you know as, as sort of king of that space. And so. What we, I've heard a few times about, okay, the third beer, all this stuff. One question I haven't heard, what was the fourth beer you made? Do you remember? Well, the fourth beer, was it Jaipur again or did, was it something else? Oh, yeah, yeah, it was, yeah. So, so again, you know, we were brewing, little marples and a, and a pale ale called Black Thorn and, and Jaipur. So there were the three. It was an interesting, thing then because it very quickly got picked up. It started, it won awards immediately okay. You know, it was, it was a real, a real eye opener for people. And, and again, Pete Brown often says, you know, he was drinking in black and white, and then Jaipur just dialled him into a, he was seeing colour all of a sudden. And then there was a real, interesting in how the beer was like that. And, but, but people were saying it's too strong. So then, you know, after we, after they, they'd realise how strong, it's too strong, it's too strong. you need to do one, about 4%. And I think later that year we actually sort of kicked against that a little bit and we did a beer called Halcyon, which was 7.7% on cask. Again, making life very, very difficult for us. Yeah. so, so lots of beers came. And they were all utilising, some of the American hops that we were sort of using for the first time, some of the New Zealand hops. and then certainly by the end of that year we were also brew a beer called St. Petersburg, which is 7.7% Imperial Stout. And at that stage we were being written about extreme beers. This is where the country, 20 years ago, we were really challenging, with the strength of beers at 7.7, 5.9, or the seven sevens. There was no Brewdog. Yeah. There was nothing. You know, we were, we were the, the standouts in this sea of 4% cask beer. Right. Some, some good beers, you know, and, and we weren't the first people to use American hops. Of course not. But we were using 'em in a way that a lot of the, a lot of the UK brewers were restrained almost in some of the styles they could do. They were weighed down by their heritage, and we just didn't have any heritage. So we, we were very, you know, we were. We were doing what the Americans had done 10, 15 years before. 20 years before. Yeah. You know, and, but in a format that was very traditional with cask beer. What's interesting now is like, I was thinking about that, and I think if you look at breweries that start off now, one of the differences, there's obviously plenty of differences, but one of the differences is like, there is this thing called craft beer now. Does there's, you know, before there was, there was, there was other things that existed. Don't get me wrong. But there, there's, there's, and it's almost like. When you start off this idea of just do it, just go for it. Like there's a risk to that because if you do something that doesn't fit the mould of craft beer within that, you know, hardcore. Yep. Very much initial stage audience within beer. If you do something that sits outside that you're kind of out of, you're, you're out of that already. and then there's this question of who you for? Who are you for? Yeah. Right. Which, which I guess hurts the ability to be diverse and just, just do it. And so you have a lot of people that come out and go, I'm gonna be a hazy brewery. And, you know, they, they experiment with hazy beers, for instance, but, but they, they stay within that. Right. And yeah. And, and just, I was having to think about that as like. If we're trying to do different things, like how does that, you, you experienced that firsthand. You saw what it was like Yeah. When you didn't have that mould or you broke that mould. So for people that are in that mould today, what, what would you say to them? What do you think about that concept? I mean, yeah, it's an interesting one because there is, it is a little bit like that now, but, but again and again, if you think back to us. We, we've always, we, we were straddling something there that we didn't know existed because we're brewing a, a bitter at 4% load marples and a 5.9% IPA. Yeah. Arguably, arguably now two different audiences. But back then it was the same. We were trying to sell it to the same people. Yeah. and, you know, there wasn't, traditional and modern, there was just beer drinkers. So, so what we were tending to do is, we, we were, we were trying to excite. a beer drinker by saying, you need to see these stories. We know about beer. They're all these different style available that you're not seeing, and we're we're creating them or recreating them from, from, from other styles of beer. So I think we were really driving the appetite of the drinker there. We, we, we were, we were leading, they were following, you know, whereas I think a lot of it now, I, I think. 20 years in, I think the drinkers become so well educated, you know, with the plethora of beers around the world, reading about and drinking them. That actually the brewers are probably reacting to the consumer now as opposed to the consumer reacting to the brewers, which was happening 20 years ago. Yeah. so again, we, we do straddle this thing. You know, we, it's difficult to pigeonhole us, you know, we, because we do make lots and lots of cask beer, you know, but we do do big strong barrel aged stouts. Yeah. You know, we do, we do. We tend to do the full range of beers. We sell a lot of lager. You know, we do, we do tend to do and we pride ourselves on it. That is, one of the things we say, you know, when somebody's, you know, if you don't like Thornbridge beers, you probably 'cause you've not found the right one yet. You know, because we do, it's, we do a lot of different beer. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. so circling back a little bit to Jaipur here for a second. The, the, the success of Jaipur. Jaipur is about what, 40% of your volume? Yeah. Rising. Rising, okay. So the success of Jaipur, can you put that down more to the Creation, or how you raised it? I put it down to serendipity. Okay. and, and I think we helped that along the way, but it certainly came at a time and, you know, I've been quote before, I have no idea if we started the craft wave or just caught it. I don't, I dunno. Well, nobody can ever tell. Yeah. But, but certainly Jaipur came around at a time. And seemed really to be in the right place at the right time, and we were able to push it. And one of the reasons we were able to push it was we told stories and telling stories, I think sells, sells beer. Because again, you know even the, even though we were talking about an American iteration with classic American. Sorry, a classic English beer style we were able to tell the story of of of of the IPA and also at that same sort of time, you'd also got the real storytellers, whether be Pete Brown or Adrian Tierney-Jones, also getting articles into things so. It really was a movement. It was a new wave of beers. Yeah. And we had people writing about it. So it felt very, it felt very current. It felt very modern. It felt very much of a movement. and, you know, we were. It felt a little bit rock and roll, if I'm honest. You know, we, we were having the guy who take, who was shooting the Arctic monkeys the day before, and then she'd take pictures of the brewers and the next day So, the brewers became rock Stars. Sure. Because people didn't know brewers. They were, they're just people who worked in the background and generally we tended to push them sort of to the front and, and, and they were young and it sort of worked. Interesting. The beer was good as well. Yeah. So it, it goes back to what you were saying before, though, like the, this idea that nowadays you have a very educated consumer. Back then, I guess that was the platform you were able to educate consumers. Yeah. So, I don't know, I guess, you know, I don't know if anyone has the answer to this right now. That's the whole point. But like now we have a lot of educated consumers. What's, what's, what do they need? What's the next thing that consumers need? I think that'll be the hard part because again, you know, we saw it in Scandinavia when we sell our beerp into, into Scandinavia, you, you get the early adopters, but then we'll quickly move what's next? What's next, what's next? And beer can't continue to do that. I think the interesting part now is probably. Consistency. That sounds really boring, but consistency and quality should be the real drivers of this sector now. Okay. Because I think over the 20 years, some people have done it fantastically well, some people have fell by, by the wayside. I think to have a scene as vibrant now, but also with the, quality and consistency that I do see, or I did see back in America in the days, you know, there were still, there were real challenging beer stock, but they were, but technically very good beers as well. And I don't think we quite had that to start with, but I think hopefully that will be something that we see more and more.'cause we we're drinking the best beer ever, you know, in this country consumers have never had a choice and The quality of, of beer, in, the existence of beer. I definitely agree. Making me thirsty. Yeah. cool. And then Jaipur obviously then, you know, became a force within, within the brewery. Yeah. And so one thing that is very interesting is, you know, I think everyone, not everyone, obviously every breweries, sets out to do different things, but I think any there's a lot of breweries, especially ones that want to either, You know, nowadays efficiency does matter, Costs are higher, but also scale, like having one brand that, that is your kind of hero beer. Yeah. Is, is, is critical but also very difficult to do. Like what along the journey, what are some of the things that you did with Jaipur? Whether that's protecting it or whether it's promoting it, but like. That allowed it to not just be this thing that was a moment in time, but something that today is iconic. Yeah. Like how, how did that happen? I think that's 'cause we stuck to our word in it. and we've never compromised on it. It's still 5.9%, still the same amount of hops that we put in back in the day. There are other beers that came around afterwards. Very similar, but generally have been what I call dumbed down. Okay. And are falling away now. and I think what we did with Jaipur was we, we stayed true to our word. We, we didn't get some people taking it 'cause they said it was too strong. and we'd always have another beer for those sort of people to today. But, you know, generally we wanted that beer to be a 5.9 IPA still brewed in the same style that we did it 20 years ago. One of the things that often doesn't get talked about very much, but, in order to do that, I mean, I think it's an amazing point because, it's something that when you say it just seems so bloody obvious. Yeah. But at the same time, in, in reality it's very hard to do because there's always those pulls. Sometimes it's internal, like the sales team is like, yeah, absolutely. Hey, if we did this, we can. Yeah. Yeah. But one of the things is that you've had control over the business. Yes. Right? Yeah. And so your your your point about, you know, not making sacrifices, ultimately that decision, you're accountable to that you, Jim and whoever Yeah. You know, are accountable to that decision. Not everyone with growth has kept themselves in that position, and that's Absolutely, yeah. Those are the factors that are pulling, so, isn't they? Yeah, but one of them will always be, it's a little bit, Of a how quickly you want to get there, isn't it? And taking 20 years to get where we are was would've been much too slow for, for some people. Sure. You know, and that's, again, that goes back to what we're talking about today. That's the path, isn't it? Yeah. You know, and that's, our path's taken us 20 years to get to where we are, where where we sit very comfortably with a great stable of, of beers, some fantastic people working in the business and enjoying coming to work every day. Could we have done that in 10 years? Probably. Would it have been enjoyable? Probably not. Would we still be here now? Possibly not. Yeah. Yeah. so I think it's just, it suited Jim and I Okay. I think it suited us in that respect. we didn't have external investors who were, who were pushing us. We need, we need growth, we need go growth. We've always had growth, and, and generally double digit growth, but it's not been triple digit growth or it's not been, you know. A forced growth. I think we've been quite a organic business. and you know, generally the sales have gone like that over, over the years, and that's been driven by us and, and, and the capacity we've got. so, and so to kind of wrap this, this up, it's super interesting. Thank you. the, the, the what you, just, what you mentioned there, so Thornbridge, 20 years ago, maybe, let's say 15 years ago. Yeah. What you envisaged then, is it more or less where you're at now? I think so, yeah. Yeah. But again, if you say where are we gonna be in 10 years time? I dunno actually. Sure. And, and again, you know, in 2010, I. Would we, would we have seen the, the scene that exists now, which is, which since COVID has had a bit of a slapping from the big boys who have, who have reasserted themselves mm-hmm. In them, and certainly in grocery, but it's certainly, and, and, and in bars have shown what money, money buys, listings, and, you know, it's, so what will happen the next five or 10 years? I'm not too sure, as I alluded to. We are, we're pretty happy where we are. So, yeah. In, you know, 10, 15 years ago, if, if it'd have said, we're here. Yeah. We've be pretty happy. Yeah, I think that's good. I mean, like, one of the things that, with what I do now, advisory stuff, the things that, one of the things that I always start with is, is like the destination. Because people are like, oh, you know, we wanna do this. Like, we, what do you think about this? It's like, what do you wanna achieve? Like success doesn't, there's no, there's no definition to success. Success is what you define it, right? Yeah. And so, so it doesn't mean you have to know where you want to be in 20 years. No. But at the same time, you gotta know where you're gonna point the boat. Yes, absolutely. I completely agree on that. When people talk about what's your exit, I don't, I, I often think we don't have to have an exit. Yeah. You know, and you know, we've, we've, we've had conversations over the years with the number of people about, about things. But, you know, it's almost, if you haven't got an exit, it's like, well, well what are you doing? And we're building a business. Yeah. And we're only 20 years into it. And there's a lot of brewers, a lot older than us. so I think it's, it's an interesting, we're building a culture. We're building a business, and we're just on the journey. Awesome. Love it. I can't wait to drink Thornbridge beers 20 years from now. you mentioned grocery there. I wanted to, I wanted to touch on that because I think, grocery something that I think is very misunderstood within, within beer. but you guys have obviously had a very interesting journey in grocery as well. So maybe let's start there. Can you kind of give the, the, the, the summary, like what is, what has been your grocery journey from start to to, yeah. Our grocery journey started with Waitrose, when we bought a a bottling line, back in, 2010. and we, and we brewed, and we bottled Jaipur, Kipling, a couple of others, St. Petersburg, and we sold 'em to Waitrose. And generally we tell, said to every other grocer, oh, we've got an exclusive agreement with Waitrose. Even though we didn't have an exclusive agreement with Waitrose, it just meant that actually that was our line. That's all we can produce down there. So, so we had a great partnership with Waitrose for, for maybe three or four years. and then in 2015, we bought a bigger bottling line. And that bottling line was very expensive, which meant we need to sell a lot more bottled beer. So we, we opened that conversation up. Then, with, with everyone else, we effectively got listings with all of the, grocers, and carried on that. And in 2020 we put a, canning line in of the same spec. and then when COVID hit. We were Yeah, going incredibly busy. I know, I know how that felt. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, you know, in that respect, grocery saved us. Leading into COVID We were a 50 / 50 split, on and off. and we were 25% keg, 25% cask, 25% bottle, 25% can. What a nice place to be. Yeah. No, no, no customer over 9% of, of sales during, during COVID, that changed, changed for everyone. And we had, we had growth bizarrely twice. We expanded it, did little expansions, and and at one stage we had a customer who were about 35% of our a total, which was slightly uneasy for us. Yeah. and then generally as, as, as, as the bars opened up and pubs opened up, we have always seen ourselves as a, as a, as, as a, as a pub drink, you know, the, the grocers helped along with that, we then had to drop out some of the grocery to get beer available, 'cause we're at full capacity to get beer available for, for the on trade again. So that, that was a couple of years of teaming and labelling, which we didn't always get right. and where we sit now, we're probably. 75, 25 on to off. Okay. Which feels about right. for us. We're sort of listed with, all the grocers, bar one, and you know, we've got, we have some good volumes in there. We have some good relationships in there, and that feels about right. do we want any more growth? Probably not. We have a, like anybody in, in grocery, you have a churn of products. So some come for 12 months replaced by another one You know, and that sort of thing, which is, which is quite interesting for the consumer. Yeah. I think one of the things that I find super interesting is, is I might, I might not get the wording on this completely right, but, but you did have a bit of a pullback from grocery. Yeah. as, or as you say, kind of let's say migrate into, into where, where you really wanted that volume for the strategy of the business. Yeah. obviously COVID played a role in that. but it's a big thing because, you know, I, I. I can't think of many examples of breweries that have pulled volume out of grocery and back into other channels. I don't know. I don't know if you No, probably not. No. And, and I think, you know, grocery too. Are we on the right path again? Who knows? Well, no, but, but, but I, I, I admire it quite frankly, because I think, you know, grocery's a bit of a spiral, right? Mm-hmm. And I think what you said is, is really interesting because you're talking about channels and products like, strategically, like we want to be this, we want like you're talking about what you want to be and you're, and you're Yeah. Controlling how the volume then represents that. Yeah. The thing with grocery is, there's a couple things that happen. One is often times people have like a gap, like, oh, we need to fill 5,000 hectares in the brew, Let's just go get some grocery volume. Sure. But then once you get into grocery, it's a cycle, right? Yeah, absolutely. Then you buy new tanks. and then I remember, Without naming names, but I remember at one point, we had bought some new tanks and we had a grocery buyer be like, got you guys. Like, basically like, well, how are you gonna pay for those tanks? You know? And they, you know, they pushed us hard on price. Yeah. So there is this spiral that, that comes with it, because if you get too big in grocery, grocers know that you can't pull away from it. No, absolutely. Because you can't sustain the size of your brewery and the investment you've made. But you've done that in, in a, in a, in a controlled way where you said, this is, you know, we manage our growth, this is what we wanna be. And, and as as that volume becomes available in the places that you, you, you prefer the balance of the business to be, you start migrating that volume, right? Yeah. So again, it's control, I dunno It is, I've kind of spoken there, but does that represent, I think you're right. I think that represents exactly the path, but, and also I think it's difficult to get it right and I wouldn't say we got it right because you, it's not like for, like you, you lose that listing in there, you don't replace it with a, a pub group there. It's, it's not like that. So, so for 18 months, we sort of, we probably struggled a little bit to sort of fill up where we were dropping out. And, but, you know, one of, one of the things with grocery is it's, it's, it's, it's glossy, flashy, it's great to see your cans, or bottles on the shelf, isn't it? When we, when we go shopping sort of thing. Da. There we are. It's fantastic. Very, very visible. You know, when that lorry comes and takes away 15 pallets of Jaipur cans, it's like, wow, that looks really good. Doesn't this sort of thing, you know, when they line up. So there is a, there is a it draw, it draws you in grocery, it really draws you in. but ultimately I think the idea, I think it tends to be lower margin. I think people accept that. It's, it's, it's, it's more simple sort of stuff, but fundamentally, We had to get to a situation where we had too much in grocery, so we had to stop playing certain games with, with grocers who, who you are, right, Once you're on the hook. Yeah. You know, it's tough. It's tough. It's tough because you know, they're delivering big numbers for you, but actually you're almost thinking, I don't wanna play that game anymore. Yeah. And when you start saying no to things, it tends to start dropping out. You know, we're still approached by grocers now saying, if you just reduce your prices a bit more, we know we can push this even further. And we're like, we don't really wanna push any further. What a position to be in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. No, we we're fortunate there and, you know, but, and, but others will take that space. Yeah. These, as you say, there's, there's a clamour. Yeah. To, to, and, and those shelves, those, those facings have come really down as well, haven't they? You know, going back to, you know, maybe seven or eight years ago when, when, when Tesco discovered craft beer Yeah. And, and gave big aisles to it and took out the slabs, that shrunk. That's undoubtedly shrunk. The slabs are back. Yeah. And I think, I think, the thing, you know, that you see with grocery too, is, is that, you talked about margin, like, on single cans, margin it's not that bad. No, it depends. But like once you get into four packs, yeah. I mean, there's no craft brewery that do well on margin In four packs, right? No. And that's one thing that I don't think a lot of people in the, the industry, so, okay, you get this grocery volume, you're doing well on single cans. What's the reward? The reward is to go into four pack. That's the reward, right? Yeah, exactly. But okay, we can do this in four pack. It's like, but what, what are you really gonna make on that right? Yeah. Yeah. So what, why are you doing it? Like, it's not, I, I'm not anti it. I think it's, it's, it's about having the strategy for it as opposed to using that. Yeah. As, as you say, it's like, it can be very, overwhelming. Yeah. Because you see, you're like, all this volume, we could get all this revenue, we could fill the brewery, we could do all this stuff. Yeah. But, but, but, but, right. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And then it grows so big that to stop it, like, Ooh. Yeah. And then you're on the rollercoaster. Yeah. But we, we had, we had products four packs in grocers where. When a certain deal was triggered, we were like, they're making no money on this. Yeah. Yeah, that's a loss leader. You know, and then all of a sudden you are in the crossfire, you are a commodity at that stage. Yeah. You know, so, you know, your four packs that price, but if you buy two, four packs, it's only that. And they're like, and we're not funding that. Yeah. So, I don't know. It's, it's an interesting one. So far, so good with us. We're really happy with the grocers we've got now. We have a great relationship with them. they're really receptive to, to new stuff and asking us about stuff, and we're, we're gonna roll an interesting concept out with, with, with Morrisons later this year. Nice. so yeah, so we, we still enjoy that fun, but, you know, we've only got so much beer for it. Sure. That's, that's the thing. And then. I wanted to talk about the rebrand. I'm, I'm a, I love the, it's still one of my favourite rebrands ever in the history of craft beer. because this was 2018. Yeah, 2018 With thirst, was it Thirst? Thirst Craft. Thirst, yeah. They were great guys. Yeah. Yeah. who, who I, I I also rate highly, they, I mean, I, I'll just start bluntly like, what was the brief. It was always a difficult one because we'd, we'd, we'd been very, so when we changed it originally we had the hall on, on, on, on pub clips & on on bottles. When we moved away from the hall 2010, I decided to take something from the hall and that was the statue flora. So Flora had, had, had, had done the sort of thing all the way through, and then when it came to the, to, to the rebrand, it was like how now? Because it was part when, when the, when, you know, we, we going into can as well. How now do we bring in a new brand, but stand out and going round grocers and, and everywhere we were looking at shelves and there was so much noise. So much noise, some beautiful cans, but how did you stand out on that? And we actually took the inspiration, from not particularly our contemporaries, but more from say, Estrella or Pilsner Urquell. And we were blocking colors and we were trying to own colors sort of stuff along the way, sort of thing. So a simplicity to it. And then the guys from Tirst. Had a, we had quite a few goes at this, as you can well imagine. It wasn't first hit when wasn't a no. we were, and, and, and the day they came up with the hand drawn, brocade, which came from the fireplace in Jim's house, it just went bang. That's it. And then it was a case of choosing the colourways and almost coming out with, What we wanted to be, modern classics that actually, you know, Jaipur always, Jaipur was always around orange and pink until that time. And then we always spoke about it as orange and pink. Jaipur is a pink city. That was the reason behind it sort of thing. And pink's really fallen away with Jaipur. And we were looking and we said, it's actually orange. Everything, all our POS everything else is, is orange, so really we just wanted to own that orange then. And hopefully we've, we've sort of done that with them sort of thing lately. Yeah. Yeah. I think the ability to, I mean, you just said the, the modern classic, which is, which is a really great, summary of, of what's in my head. but you know, I think one of the things is that, you know, often times when breweries rebrand, you, lose a little bit of the meaningfulness, the, the tradition of it. Yeah. And I think it was such a great example of Wow, it stands out. Yeah. Like the Jaipur can stands out. but at the same time it still felt very Thornbridge, right? Yeah. It was it, and, and, And I have to say, like, you know, you, you, Thornbridge has an incredible ability to manage this concept of modern classic, right? So the, the, the can is one thing, but like, you know, I was, I lived up near Leeds for Yep. the better part of three, four years and, you know, walk into like the Banker's Cat. It's like, it's old school, but it's not. Right. No, absolutely. Yeah. And then, you know, what is, I had some other examples here, but, you've got this, this balance, like you, you know, the, the bars, the collaborations as well. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So you, you do collaborations obviously with, with a lot of, uh, very modern breweries. But then you've done Timothy Taylor's, their first collaboration was with them, with Budvar. Right? You did that one. Was that Czech Mates? Is that was that one? Yeah. She's still going now. Yeah. And then, and then the other thing is, is this idea that, okay, like you were the first brewery to use Nelson Sauvin hops, right? But you're also the first and now only brewery in the world that has a Burton Union system. Right? Like there's such a contrast between tradition and modern or classic and modern. Yeah. How do you get that to work so well? I don't, well, I mean, our first sort of tagline 20 years ago was a contemporary take on traditional thinking, and I think we've probably had that at the back 'cause we didn't invent beer, Brewdog did, obviously! but we, we, we came around with modern beer and we wanted to try and put our little layer on it then, and, and bring some modernity to what we'd seen from elsewhere. So I think we've always had that at the forefront of what we do. And you are right. You know, a lot of the interesting stuff that we do is actually bringing back traditional things, some old beer styles, which are fantastic. You know, the one we did with, with at The Kernel sort of stuff, we just fantastic on the union system sort of thing. You know, doing an old Burton Ale and some of these are great beers and we're probably, making them better than they were back in the day. The use of technology we've got and that sort of thing, and, you know. Some of the, some of the beer style have been fantastic. And, you know, we're just up for an award for best, best new beer style of the year, with the Brewers Journal guys. And that's a strong dark Mild. Okay. You know, there's no, there's no sort of hop knocking around there sort of thing, you know, so, so I think the consumer now is on this journey. You know, they're, they're shaping it. We, we, we, and we're sort of just nodding back, everything was thrown away to start, it was all new, new, new, new, new. And, and generally a lot of stuff gets bypassed. So we, we, we are re re-looking at old styles of beer and that sort of thing. And, and with the union now we're able to, to put 'em on that system and, and make beer like would've probably made a hundred years ago. Yeah. Just the ability to kind of read the room, if you will, where it's like, you know, innovate, but then it's like, especially with this Burton Union thing, it's like, it's like just when you know and everyone's almost to a degree, there's like innovation everywhere. It's just like you just went the exact opposite and it's just interesting, it's innovation by by, by going backwards. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's like this ability to do that, that just always kind of keeps you relevant. Which is Which I find. Yeah. I think that's what won the SIBA Award on innovation. It was a union system. Okay. Funny though. Yeah. Fantastic. But again, I go back to it, Cask as well as example. Yeah. And we're telling stories though, and and telling stories, It helps sell beer because there's, so the stories around beer are fantastic. How the evolve of a style came about or the, the way they sort of brewed something in a different way. They're all really interesting stories. So if you can tell those stories along the way, you can actually premiumise it as well. Yeah. So you look at something like the union, you know, we see that as our, as our premium offer. Sure. And you know, this is, this is a, a system that was thrown away. by Carlsberg, you know, I wish we had more time for you to tell me the entire story of it. Absolutely. Like, one, one day or maybe after this we can, you can tell me the, because I was, I was thinking like, how did that, like how do you even Yeah. How do you even like find, like how do you find that that was an opportunity? Well, it was through Garrett Oliver. Yeah. A friendship. And, yeah, he was, he was told they were being made silent. Crazy. Excuse me. Right, right. People right place Right time. Absolutely. So serendipity. You know, we, we, we still don't have a beer named it, but we should. You've been talking a lot. I'm gonna do a bit of a pause in the action here, and do one thing. So have you, do you know about Sellar? Do you know Sellar? Yeah, we use Sellar. Okay. So, I, I, I particularly don't, get into the use of Sellar. Sure. But all our guys do. Okay. it's been a great platform for us. Cool. So Sellar are the, the supporters of, of, of the Podcast. They are the ones that have, really, you know, helped make this happen. Yeah. now I actually did, I worked with them as part of my business last year. Yeah. So I got to know them really well. the founders and, and the team. Rate them, rate them a lot. and, and one of the things is, it's funny 'cause when When I started this idea of path makers, and by all means, yeah, now's the time to drink some water. When I started, I was like. What, I, you know, the concept of sponsorship to me, I'm not someone who likes to like, I want the content to be fluid, right? Sure. And, and so I, I didn't like put out a, a, an ask to a bunch of businesses here. I literally, I went up to Julian, one of the founders at London Craft Beer, and I was like, I want you guys to, to sponsor this because, it's a great fit. You guys are, you guys are path makers to me. There's a lot of success still to prove for Sellar. But, I just love their way of thinking. they, They look and, you know, they're not from the beer industry, not the founders, some of the team is, and they look at systems and they try and, you know, figure out what's broken and try and fix it. I guess two a degree similar to, to, yeah. And, and so, so that's like the journey that, that they've been on. And, and one of the things that, that we're gonna do, which I really like, is instead of doing like promotional, like this is Sellar, you should know about them. what we're gonna do is actually just do a bonus episode with them. So I think that's, that's gonna come at some point I'll, I'll, I'll obviously, let the, the viewers, and listeners know when that's gonna come, but I highly suggest you tune in because it's kind of like raw and cut. Yeah. There's gonna be nothing scripted like this. Anyway, tune into that, and a big thanks to, to Sellar for helping make that happen. Now that you've had a little H2O ready to go, shift gears a little bit. I wanna ask some opinions from you. So, one question. This is, this has bothered me for some time. now of course, as you everyone can obviously tell, I'm not from the UK. I'm born and raised in Canada. I moved to the UK in 2016 and so I don't have a lot of the, the history, the growing up, especially around cask. So if you have a beer and, I'm talking not about reality, I'm talking about your opinion. If you have a beer that is put into keg and cask and someone is buying those things, in your opinion, should those be the same price, should one be more expensive than the other? Which, why, what, what's your thoughts? I mean, this is a, an an age old one and you know, we've, we've, this is come up in conversation with those can management many times over the years. So, so generally whenever we brought over some of our, customers from overseas. They'll generally go into, one of our pubs and see cask there, and then notice that some macro lager is, you know, a pound a pint more. And it's like, but this is, this is the, the beer of the UK. You know, this is artisanal. Craft beer. I'm like, yeah, know it's, yeah. But unfortunately it didn't start like that. So again, you know, you go back 20 years ago, you know, all, all the young kids talking about, you know, the, the natural wines and da da and then all the super premium stuff and, poor old cask beer which is a live product which is made with yeast, which only has a very short shelf life and it has to be handled really well. It's like, well, that, it's cheaper end. Yeah. And it's, hit's odd. it'll never change. Now you don't think it will? No. I I think it's, I think that gap's too big. Okay. And, and part of me, and I've said this before, part of me hopes it doesn't, because what I, what I would like to see is, is, affordability on the bar. And I think cask can offer that at times. I think it can be a, you know, we, we've seen in the last four or five years, bar prices, just rocket and especially on, on, on macro lagers where you know, you're paying£6.50 for a Yeah. Pint of badly brewed, terrible mock continental. Nothing point in that, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, so I think cask beer, you know, my son, his friends are now sort drinking age and they're, they're looking at cask beers 'cause it,'cause remember there's modernity to cask now, so it's not like 20 years ago. So you can be drinking good, fruity, pale ales, hop forward sort of beers, hazy beers sort of stuff as well. So, but there is an affordability on cask more than, than keg. And I quite like that. Okay. Because I think it allows. Beer. Beer is an every man product. It has to be, there has to be affordability to to, to beer. And I think, I think cask will always have that price differential. A differential I previously had a high opinion that it should be more, and now I'm coming round to the thinking that actually, I think, I think what Cask beer does it brings, it brings affordability to it, you know, a 3.5%. cask beer will be at a good price. You know, we're gonna a bar in, in, in London, in a couple of months, and we will have a sub £5 pint. You know, and we'll be opposite a, a particular bar where their cheapest beer is £6.99, and that's where an AF version crazy. because, you know, I just think well kept cask beer is a fantastic thing, but they it's a week beer. It it, it's born and raised in a week and it can be out fresh on the bar. Yeah. And there's a certain, newness and, affordability to that, that doesn't need to be super premium. Obviously Jaipur's gonna be that most expensive beer in our bar, and that's, but that's down to the, the amount of hops that are in there and, and the duty rates of course. It's just interesting 'cause when you go back to talking about, you know, the education of the consumer and craft and how that plays such a big role, like, again, I don't have. I'm, I'm, I'm naive. Yeah. But at the same time, sometimes being naive gives you Yeah, yeah. No, well, well, again, the thing with, with, with, with, with the premiumisation, premiumisation of craft beer obviously came from the states. Yeah, yeah. Cask beer doesn't exist. Yeah. Yeah. So it was always gonna be the, the big hot beat there's a mental construct here, isn't there? Yeah. What, what, what prompted the question is back in my, in my past, one of the bars that, that we had, I walked in one day and the same beer was on cask and on Keg and, it was cheaper on cask. And I was like, and I was, I was like, yeah, what is, why would we be doing that? Oh, because what you said. And I was just like, I just couldn't wrap my head around it. No. I'm like, you, you know, like. And to the point about storytelling and stuff, it's like, you know, of course there is this construct that you have to break that I don't have, but, but I get, but but there is an incredible amount of storytelling there. There is, like you just said it in a sentence about live product. It's in a week. It's like all this stuff. Yeah. And I think what we've tried to do in the tap room, is we have Green Mountain on Cask and on keg, and we've equalised the prices on that. Okay. with, with a, with the notion that actually if you want, a very hoppy New England style, IPA on cask, it's gonna cost you Yeah. The same as that sort of thing, but that's, it's an, a availability to a, to a malty, to a Lord Marples, which, you know, is, it comes in, far less. And then when you look at the duty implications to something like a, a wild swan at 3.4%, it can't be affordable. Yeah, so we, for so long and in so many places, it happens that you go into a bar and all the cask beer is virtually the same price, regardless of, of, of, of the ingredients in it. So I think an educational piece around beer again, and the storytelling, that one's that much because it uses that sort of thing. That and, and, and a ladder almost on the bar to build to journey there. Yeah, I think so. So 20 years, you've seen a lot. You've seen a lot in this industry. What, in your opinion, how is the industry really doing?'cause obviously we hear a lot of stuff. Yeah. But you're in it, right? What, how's it doing? I mean. First and foremost, you see yourself and, and you know, we're, at the moment we're sort of, it's a real battle to get to our happy place. You know, we are, you know, there's not, you're working twice as hard. It really is hard work, I think. And, you know, we're, we're fortunate to have some, some really good people, and we, and we have a brand that people, seemingly want. and it's, it's tough. It's really tough out there. And, you know, I know. I don't think anybody's having it easy out there. whether it be cask or Keg, whatever can or bottle, whatever. It's hard work. You know, as I say, since, since the war, in Ukraine, I think we've just seen prices spiral that we've never saw, and I think we've lost a few people along the way with that as well. You know, some brewers have gone, which is a real shame. and, but I, I still believe. There's a thirst for better beer and you're only gonna get better beer from, from us guys. Mm-hmm. You know, the big boys aren't doing better beer. They might have shinier labels and they might have lovely glassware. They'll tell you it's better not Yeah, exactly. Tell you, but it's not better. Yeah. And I think that's something that we have as an industry, that we will make beer better. and I think that that goes back to my boringness of saying consistency and quality.'cause if you can keep, keep to that line that actually that will premiumise eventually and, and does at times. You know, you see it in London, you know, they always talk about the £10 Pint and that sort of thing. But you know, I think the premiumisation of, Of, of better beer has to, has to be, yeah. I guess the big guys, they at the end of the day have a lot of money. If you're trying to say the same things as them, it's, you're never gonna stand out because, 'cause they're gonna, but, but the one thing that, that can't, can't talk is the quality of the product. Right. Like you, if you try something, you like it or you don't, right? Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So last question before we move on to the last part. So I wanna talk about segmentation. Before I get into the question. I might just explain very briefly what segmentation is for, for, any viewers or listeners that, don't know. So there's a lot of bars in the uk. Ultimately, every brewery makes a decision of who they want to sell to. Those, they'll create segments to do that. So I want to sell to only these ones, independent ones, or take the, the, the big, big breweries. For instance, they over analyse segmentation like crazy. It's like 10 tiers most premium that kind of thing. the reason I ask you the question is because I think Thornbridge, is, has got a super interesting, at least, result with this, I don't know the approach, but like, because, ultimately it's an incredibly well-loved brewery, Iconic brewery and premium brewery, but you also make yourself accessible to segments like grocery and, you're in waitrose, excuse me, Weatherspoons as well. Yeah. so I just wanted to ask like, what is. This segmentation approach, or do you not think of it that way? How does it, how does it work for you guys? Yeah, I mean, we, we do think of it in, in, in that way, but on a, on a broader sort of level in that, you know, as a, as a board, we sat down 10 years ago and said, we ought to get Jaipur to be available to anybody who wants to try it. I think Grocer, Grocery gave us that, you know, we were able, as I say, we were in, you know, a couple of thousand Tesco stores across, across Britain, and people, if they wanted to try Jaipur they could and they did, you know, and loved it. And what that did is it then, cascaded down and other grocers took it and dah, dah, dah. So he got, he got Jaipur out in, in groceries, a national product, which is still out there now I think with, with cask beer, we've worked with, uh, pub groups, all, all the way through, whether it be weatherspoon, M&B, whoever. And I think when we did the, the thing with Weatherspoon, they, they, they launched this, thing called a class act where they'd have Grey Goose vodka, Jack Daniels, Jaipur was the premium cask beer. So we were quite privileged to have that sort of thing. So even, even in the weatherspoons, we'll take 'em now where probably the most expensive beer on the bar. Cask beer on the bar. and it's been incredible, the thirst, of the drinker to actually, go, to Wetherspoons to drink Jaipur. Because as much as we think Jaipur is always available, on cask it's not. So it's across the country sort of thing. And we've had, we've had people walking out of, of Weatherspoon because they couldn't get a pint of Jaipur. But in the same respect, what that's done is that's given us a real, what I call national branding opportunity. That has now meant that with that, we've actually got a new listing in Fuller's pubs for Jaipur. and other, other pub groups now saying, oh yeah, we, we'd like, all of a sudden we've sort of stepped up to be a national treasure and we're sort of, we're seeing complimentary sales alongside that as we did in grocery when we did it back then. It's interesting'cause it sounds like, Well, from that board decision to, to say, you know, I guess to be a, to be a, a household name, you have to be available to households, don't you? Yeah. but, but I think, you know, to, it sounds like the approach is, instead of saying, We want to be premium by only selling to premium places, what you're saying is we want to be accessible to all, all, but we want to be the most premium option to those people. So someone who goes into Weatherspoons and maybe they're not going into, buy their beer in, Raynville bottle shop, that kind of thing, they're gonna see Jaipur as that's the premium that's the top end, right? Absolutely. It's part of the Class Act. Right. Okay. And I think also what you've got in there is the reason, the way around we've, we've gone it. The same as in groceries. We haven't diluted the product. It's not now a 5% cask beer on the bar or a 5.4% cask beer on the bar. It's still 5.9%. Yeah, it's still the same beer, you know, and it's, you know, there are, we have many drinkers of Jaipur. They don't fit one category. You make it available to people, but you make it what it is and see if they want it. I think it's what it is and what it costs. I pay you money, you take your choice. Yeah. And I think that's, there's a lot of that. Cool. Last, the last one is, a little bit of fun here. I'm gonna do a bit of a rapid fire around. Okay. So for these questions, it's gonna be about five, maybe six questions, for these questions, if you could respond with one word or one sentence, right, at most, right? So just go with, with, what, comes first. name a brewery that excites you today, that's not called Thornbridge. That's a difficult one because I, I, I alluded to excitement going out of the industry, but I, what would excite me now is, is reading an old school list of American brewers and seeing, Sierra Nevada pale ale being on a bar. Okay. Fresh. Your go-to Thornbridge beer, it has to be Jaipur. Yeah. one brand outside of beer that has inspired you. I've always said I could, align ourselves with something like Barbour, independently owned. Is that the jacket? The jacket we started off as a protection jacket, whether it be oil skin through to motorbikes, through to fashion, but having family run, integrity within there and, but still, but modernised along the way. Cool. Last beer you drank? it was actually a bottle of Jaipur. So we didn't, we didn't prepare this time. No. one beer industry prediction that you think will happen within 10 years. Craft will rise again. Nice. I like it. last one, one sentence you'd say to inspire others to blaze their own path. I said it before, just do it. Okay. Awesome. That's great. Thank you so much. Cool. It's been a pleasure. It's been, it's been so good to to, to chat. Yeah. And obviously, for you to take the time and, and do this. I know you got lots going on. I think you're going over to the Wild Swan after the this? Yeah. So we're gonna have a look over that. When is it open? We're hoping starting November. Awesome. Yeah, I will be there. Good stuff. And, and thanks everyone for, for tuning in, listening or, or, or, or, or watching this. we, obviously we'll have episode two coming out next, episode two is with Jasper Cuppaidge. The founder, of Camden Town Brewery, obviously very, different businesses, but started not at not too dissimilar of time, a few years after you. so thanks everyone and we'll catch you next time.