EP 02 // Jasper Cuppaidge // Camden Town Brewery

From the basement of The Horseshoe to one of the UK’s biggest beer brands. 

Many know of it, but very few understand how it really happened.

It’s no coincidence Camden Town Brewery had the success it had. It is a story of an obsession to make beer better and an unwillingness to accept the status quo. 

How so?

In this episode I’m joined by Jasper Cuppaidge, the Founder of Camden Town Brewery, who in his first ever podcast brings his typical honesty, clarity, and passion about how it was all achieved and the state of beer today.

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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

Welcome everyone to episode two of the Path Makers podcast. I'm very grateful to have with us today Jasper Cuppaidge, who is the founder of Camden Town Brewery. Thank you so much for coming. Luca pleasure. It's nice to be, uh, commu, nice to be talking again. Yeah. It's been some time. So for people that don't know, I had the, the pleasure of working with Jasper for just about two years. Yeah. So I, I was the MD of Camden in the, what, 2017 2018 timeline. and so we've got to know each other well and obviously stayed in touch over the last, what, seven years since then. Indeed. and so there's a bit of a special tinge to this one because I don't think I've told you this, but when I was thinking about doing this podcast, I was like. Well, you know me well enough, you know, me hosting a podcast isn't like a natural thing for me. Before I left Northern Monk, I don't think anyone actually knew who I was and I was pretty happy with that. Um, and I was thinking about doing this, and I was like, you know what? This will be the decider. I'll send Jasper a message to see if he'll do the podcast. If he says, yes, I'll do it. If he says, no, I'm not gonna do the podcast. The reason I did that, you would think, oh, you know, Jasper, he'd do it. But I know you, you like, you hate public speaking. Of course, of course. And I think I answered pretty quickly, right? But I definitely Not only did you say yes, you were like, but yeah, a 100%, let's do it. Yeah. Because, yeah, listen, I think, I mean, it'd be wrong to say it would be. We had a great, I think we had a really good working relationship. I love those times of you and I together. It was a pretty intense period, right? Yeah. We were launching a big brewery in the southeast and uh, yeah, but I still enjoyed it. Right. Coming into work to you. Yeah. Every day was fun. I worked for you, man. Yeah, well, you know, we worked together. I, I would have hoped. But the other, you know, like I do remember. it was pretty, not that long after I started, like six months, but it was like, they, AB had invited us to go speak at their wholesaler conference or something like that, and you were like, "ah, Luca, I hate these things." Like, I don't not wanna speak at, I mean, you are a good speaker, but you, you just, you're telling me and I'm like, ah, it's okay Jasper. Like, you know, Well, I'll help you out. We'll, you know, we'll figure it out. And it's, I'm like, where, where is it? Where is the talk? Wembley Stadium. I remember that well. I think Alan Shearer was on before me. No, it was Del Piero. Del Piero. Yeah. You at all? I don't forget that. Yeah, I got a picture with Del Piero that day. That's right. It was amazing. but yeah, no, so, and then we went up and I think did the presentation together in the end. But yeah, so, so it meant a lot to me that you said Yes, and quite frankly, it was the impetus to go ahead and, and, and do this, so. Oh. So thanks. Well, hopefully I can, hopefully I won't let you down today, but Yeah, no, like public speaking isn't a favorite, but I, I mean, I guess it's because it's kind of those things outta your control, right? I think it's, you know, I like to not control 'em, but to be able to work hard enough to know that I'm confident in doing it. And if you don't public speak all the time. It's definitely didn't come easy to me, but unless it was in front of the team right, they became easier and easier. Those, you know, those, you know, company presentations that apart from, but yeah, from when you do speak, everyone kind of tunes in. So, and probably the case here as well. Hopefully. So, um, before we get into it, one of the things that, about the podcast is that it is a bit of a, a, a different style. We don't really go through the journey, your journey, your story. so in lieu of that, what I always try and start with is for those of people that don't know the story as well, to try and give some resources they could go to because, you know, they might listen to this and actually wanna know more about, about Jasper, about Camden Town. So I wrote a few things down here. If you have any to add, by all means. There's an article in The Times from February of 2019, called Founder of Camden Town Brewery is not about to exit after selling up AB InBev. and to be honest, I mean, obviously I have so much context to, to you and the, and the story, and I thought that piece was actually quite a good one to bring out who you really are, um, without any kind of typical journalism gloss to it all. and the story. And then there was another, interview that you did with Matt Curtis. Yeah, that was good. Good beer hunting, which was a good, a good chat through some of the, the points of the, of the Camden Town journey. There was also, I did a lot of research. There's also a lot of articles on Marmite beer, and yeah, that was popular. Anything I missed? Anything you would add? No, no. I mean, there's plenty of, there's plenty of copy out there, right? There was good and bad, but all of it, all of it, obviously the same narrative that we were, you know, what we were trying to do was just to improve things in the beer, you know, in the beer world through the lenses of Camden. So, yeah, no, I was, I was never upset by anything that was written. Cool. Well, hopefully this, this joins that list. Yeah. what we're gonna start off with is trying to dig into like some of the decisions. So not so much the journey, but some of the decisions that actually shaped that journey, right? Mm-hmm. So the first one is one that is, I guess rather obvious, but if you know, a good place to start is, is the idea of lager. Now, this was 2008 ish, right? Mm-hmm. I think where you were starting to, to make beer in the basement of the horseshoe. You got it right. no, you, you weren't making, was it lager at that time? No, it wasn't, right. No, no, no. So we were, I mean, I can, we were making Yeah, go for it. Yeah. I was making ales in the basement,'cause it was, you know, the, obviously you needed m much, I guess a slightly more complex brewing system to be able to brew beers under, you know, once they're starting to carbonate, to hold onto that pressure. So I was building, making open fermented beer, you know, ale styles in the basement, which I loved. Right? Yeah. But ultimately what I was wanting to make was something that would sell a lot. You know, looking at the, what was going on upstairs. And no matter how much I toiled downstairs from three in the morning till, You know, 10 o'clock before I'd get on the floor and make, you know, got those beers got very popular and I'd be brewing them probably three or four times a week. It was still being outstripped by, you know, Mr. And Mrs. Heineken and Mr. And Mrs. Stella Artois. And not because I was commercial, but I also love lager. Yeah, yeah. And so I was like, well, I'd really like to make lager and I couldn't understand why no one else was making it. You know, you could make ale everywhere in the uk, but no one was really thinking about it was made by all the, the big bad conglomerate beers, but no one was looking at it. I was like, well that's interesting, right?'cause like. At that time, a lot of people, like, I think the, the standard story is person went to the US, had these hoppy beers, was like, oh shit, this is amazing. We don't have this back home. Or like, but that's not you. Like you, you, you were like, I'm gonna make lager. Why? Why is your story different? Why did that happen? Because I think we actually did have those beers here. You know, if you drink say Adnams broadside, you know, or Fullers London Pride, all that, you know, I'm just saying.'cause they were readily available. They were beautiful and rich and hoppy and delicious. Right. But when it came to lager, I didn't think we had anything that, when I went to say Europe mainland, also mainly Germany drinking beers from, you know, from, Tegernseer as an example, as a local brewer, you know, the beers were just beautiful, delicious, delicate light and you know, and refreshing and you know, and I enjoyed drinking them. And there was no one you could only buy, like I said, you could buy, Big beers. Not to say they were bad, but they were big beers and recently boring. Right? And so that was, you know, I guess, and then looked at that as an opportunity. Were thinking, well, why don't we do that? And everyone was, there was a big barrier to market, you know, oh, you can't do that. You can't make lager. You need this incredible, crazy, really expensive equipment to do that. And I was like, well, that was like a red rag to bull. Yeah. So it was, there was an element of that's what you wanted to drink, that's what you wanted to make. And there was an element that you said of like, you just saw at the, the Horseshoe that that's what people were drinking, right? Yeah. And I think that's, and that's what, what, what everyone was talking about at that point, you know, no one was really talking about hops and no one was really talking about cask or, you know, there was real ale obviously as a movement, but it was, you know, like that, that collection of people who were really engaged with beer in a wonderful way. But then, you know, everyone drank lager and they'd talk about, and it wasn't very inspiring. They talk about, A pint of Stella Artois or a pint of Peroni, I think was the beer of the moment. Right. Yeah. And I just thought that there's, you know, when, say we've used this before, right when Tyrells were making salt and vinegar crisps because Walker's biggest crisps was salt and vinegar and they came out and made it, you know, I guess more distinct but still salt and vinegar crisps and it just sort of made real sense, you know, to go and do something that everyone wanted to do. Or what everyone wanted to enjoy. Why can't I make that for them? It's interesting 'cause the start of like a lot of the craft beer story is, is around personal discovery, people being like, again, like, I tried this and it was like, I wanna make this, I wanna make this hoppy beer. And I know of course you had that with lager, but what you hear in your story is this idea of like, looking at what the consumers were doing. Mm-hmm. So there was of course, the elements of what you wanted, but you were already very much in tune with what is the, what is going on upstairs, what are people talking about? It's about the consumer. It's about creating something for them. And I think that permeates through a lot of the Camden story, right? Like, you, so, so is it fair to say like you are someone, I don't even know if you would go about describing it this way, but I know you well enough to know, like you are incredibly, in tune with the consumer and thinking about what the consumer wants and thinking about how to deliver that. Is that fair? Yeah, absolutely. I think we created a beer company that was built on a service standard model. Right. It was like a restaurant, you know, and not like, what does everyone want? So we'll give it to them. You know, we were disciplined, you know, I think more disciplined than most breweries because we were really singular and we only made Lager. Right. And we made, you know, a few other beers, but the real focus was Hells. Yeah. Um, so it was a bit like, you know, if you go to a, you know, say Flat Iron. They only make a steak and they make it really well. They don't only make a steak, they make a very good steak and they make it, you know, and that's what they focus on. I think that's what we were, you know, exactly the same model for us. We're gonna make Lager, we're gonna make it the best in the world, and we're gonna focus on every single element of how that touches be, that glassware delivery, invoicing, quality, everything about it around it was important.'cause we wanted every consumer.'cause if we were going to, you know, get the lips away from another big brand, we had to be better than them at every single, I think, at every single element of it. And that's where we went after it. And your background was hospitality at the time. Yeah. Which I stumbled upon, right? Yeah. I didn't do so well at school. That's the kind of the story, right? Not so well at school fell into an industry that I, you know, didn't feel I started a job in the industry, kind of tried and tested bar jobs, waitering loved it, opened a restaurant or a pub. Loved that. And I guess it was just, it was a bit like specializing, right? So I went from like trying into hospitality, into restaurants, into pub. Into brewing, making beer, opening a brewery. So I guess it was like specializing in an industry that I really, really loved. And I guess that's where I ended up was a specialist in one element of the hospitality industry, which was a beer company. Do you see, I mean you kind of did say this already, but like, do you see Camden as a hospitality company then? I think the atmosphere in it was, yeah, I think everyone from Brewer to forklift driver had an element of service, you know, from keeping the mews, you know, a sense of keeping the mews clean or, I, I, did write that down because I was obviously thinking about a lot of like, stories and like, it was great. I mean, for me it was, it was amazing because like, I obviously came from big beer at that time. This was my first job, and I mean, I know at the time was still had just been purchased by, by, InBev, but like, at that time, operationally, we were very autonomous, right? Yeah. It was very, and I remember like, you know, my, it was such an indoctrination to me because it was like, Coming from, from these big companies where obviously it's, it's a lot about the company and very little about the product and definitely very little about hospitality. And you come in, it's like negotiating budgets with InBev, like million dollar budgets and you're like, Luca, the muews is like fucking dirty. There's a can right there. And I'm just like, but I think I learn that from everywhere I went to be it brewery throughout Europe or you know, or even with like say with uh, you know. Say even like Sierra Nevada, you'd go there and it just would be immaculate from office to front door or from office to, you know, to, to warehouse was always, and I think if you're gonna make something so beautiful, everything around it had to be correct. Right? Because if, if everything wasn't together, then things would start to slip. And I think that was one of the sort of attitudes I was really, and even we took that to, to, you know, to uh, to Enfield, you know, making sure that, you know, from brewery floor to warehousing to the car park, everything was always kept in order because I think if no one's holding up. The business, then everything's got, everyone's got a right to let it slip. And if you're making something that's so important, a beer's important. Yeah. You know, it's expensive. It's the end of a working day. So for me it was that experience was really important. And if no one was on that journey with me about how important it was, be that in within the roles of their job, then I felt that it could slip at at the worst possible moment, which would be consumer drinking a beer that wasn't up to standard. It's interesting'cause I don't think. No matter how much you wanna look and read into to Camden, I don't think anyone tells that story. Mm-hmm. Like, I think the only people that, that know that are the people that were close to it or, you know, obviously the, the customers that, that we're close to it, and it, it speaks volumes that a lot of your earliest customers are, you know, still friends and you know, Yeah, yeah. Like, but there is an incredible story of quality, and customer service. Mm-hmm. It all comes back, like, I was thinking about this obviously and how to kind of frame up some questions here. And it's like Camden is like, was all about customer service, beer quality, beer quality was incredibly important. You showed up, I mean, even years after selling the business, you would show up to, well, everything really, but you show up to the tastings. Yeah. Uh, you know, mark, we got Mark Dredge involved at those, at those times as well. Like beer quality was paramount. You came over to CBC when we, um, won a few awards back in Nashville. Mm-hmm. but then, you know, like I remember going into the business and one, and seeing someone sent me the, I think Zoe sent me the, trade tools booklet. Booklet is probably the right word. It's like, it was like 50 different things in there, right? Yeah. Like, it was like, it was, it, it was exactly what you said, like you were acting like a big brewery, but you were doing things with care and with quality and making them better. And the tools were super, they elevated the experience of beer. They weren't just because someone was asking for something, right? Yeah. Everything was incredibly quality driven and I don't think, I don't think most people's perception of Camden, unless they were really close to it is that, and I think that's a shame because it was. That's exactly what it was. Well, I think actually it's quite good'cause I think it was a real, for outside, everyone thought it was really simple and basic what we were doing, you know? And I think, and that's why it worked so well.'cause it, you know, and that's why it didn't, it wasn't polarizing or take your head off or doing this or too attitudinal. It was just like, we're gonna turn up and we're gonna be really good. Right. And I think, and everyone was, it was like a nice blessing. I think we were always like the, it's a bit like, you know, music that you're not meant to like, you know, a bit like say, you know, and Coldplay or Mumford and Sons, you know, those guilty pleasures, you know? Oh yeah. I don't really wanna like it, but actually it really does a great job. Yeah. You know, it works and it tastes great and it operates in the, the realm it should do. I can have all my fun over here, but this thing is really functionally operational and successful. And I guess that's what it was. And that, and those elements were, you know, it's a bit like everyone holding their hands to make it all go together. And it did. It was hard work, right? Yeah, it took, it was definitely taxing on me as much as it was, and a lot of people, but, But it was worth it. Yeah.'cause you know, like you said, you know, we won lots of awards, we won, you know, great awards for lager. We won a great, you know, and we, I think if you ask people who are within the industry who knew about us or knew about beer and knew about what we did, I think you, they would be right. And they'd, they had a lot of respect for us because of what we did. Nice. Yeah. I do remember winning gold for Gentleman's Wit and beating Hoegaarden in a category that they, I do remember that they basically created. Um, it's a good segue 'cause one of the things I did, wanna touch on is, distribution. because it follows very much on the heels of that. Like you, you know, most breweries in London, London has the advantage of obviously, well disadvantages in some cases, but the advantage of having a lot nearby. So, you know, direct distribution is something that everyone starts out with, obviously. In more, uh, further field cities in the uk that's difficult because you're more spread out. Right? And then generally, you know, as you grow, you get into wholesale and stuff, but like. You just didn't really get away from direct distribution. You were like direct distribution's gonna be our, our, our way forward. When I joined the business, I think we were about 65,000 hecs at the time, I wanna say 35 to 40,000 was direct distribution. Now, of course it was through a, a third party logistics provider, but there was like an incredible logistics engine to Camden. why did you do that? When I first started working in the Westbourne in West London, I had a really good relationship with Dray drivers, you know, who'd come. And they were used to deliver beer for all the brands. So as in not, they delivered their own brands, not like hundreds of brands. And I used to always have a conversation, get them a coffee or an orange juice, and I really enjoyed that conversational part with them, they'd come, oh yeah. And they'd have a leather apron on and they'd put the beer away and talk about what was happening at the brewery or you know, this beer's coming on special and they were really, they were part of the working week. I enjoyed that kind of interaction with them, and I just couldn't understand why, a bit like your corner store you'd have a relationship with that person, it's a face to what's going on within the brand, and if that's healthy and it's good, you know that well, it's probably honest and it works. And so I thought that was an element of, you know, we'd make great beer, but we also just didn't want to put it on pallets and stick it high in people's warehouses that weren't, you know, who didn't care for it. Because, I've seen, in the West End when you'd have people like drop beer on people's corners four or five blocks away, and then you'd have this poor bartender who'd have to go and, you know, try and roll it down Brewer Street to try and get into their, on a Friday afternoon. I just like, that's, that's just not service and it's not the service we're gonna offer, and we'll, that'll, if it limits us in the beginning until we can get it right, we will grow at that. You know, if that's a speed in, if that's part of the speed that we grow at, well that'll have to be, and we'll just make delivery better until we can get bigger and bigger and bigger.'cause I believed, and it worked right, the direct distribution was a big key for our business.'cause it was, I, we'd see people's beers who weren't on tap, salesperson would get called by the truck driver, They'd be in there the next day getting new accounts. You know, so there was a lot. It worked. We made it work even though it was hard. And then I guess, because obviously there is a, a cost and a complexity to, to doing that. But I guess. Going back to the quality thing, and I mean, ultimately if you're trying to make the whole thing quality, there's a price to quality. There's a premiumness to it. So you just kind of, you made sure you did things the way that you felt was right. Mm-hmm. And then the business model had to work that way. Exactly. The model. But the model did work. I mean, you know how, you know it was expensive, but then also we. You know, the price for our beer was coming to us and not going to a wholesale. There was still costs in storing and moving and shipping and their margin and, and then also just, it just meant you could move fast as well. You know, if you were working with someone and you needed to do something great, you know, like on a Friday night, this place needs 20 kegs. Well, you know what? It happened. Yeah. It wasn't like, well, well it's gotta go through, through the 3PL and the business says no, and they'll get it next Friday. Well, hold on a minute. There's a whole, there's a theme happening here about customer service and hospitality. Hundred percent. Cool, then the other thing, one other thing is, is this idea of scale. And again, you said it at very close to the beginning about, when you talked about lager and, and wanting to do something, that was, you know, had this ability to scale. But I think, a lot of times when people think about craft breweries, and when people start craft breweries, I don't think scale is necessarily part of their thinking. Mm-hmm. I think, you know, that's, it's maybe a product thing. it's trying to figure out, you know, again, maybe there's a style or, or something they were inspired by and they build it and then it kind of, almost snowballs from there, this becomes this and then this becomes this. But that wasn't the case for you, like it was pretty determined early on, scale was gonna be a big part of this. Your ambition was to be big. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, definitely big. I'm not sure how big, but definitely bigger than, definitely not small. Yeah, you know, I definitely, it was, probably, 'cause it was probably un reasonably unsophisticated back then. It was probably a monetary term rather than a, rather than a size of barrels or how many employees or awareness through a, you know, through a survey. But, but yeah, we always, being big was, within what we are thinking about then being that size, well we, we surpassed that size very quickly. But being big was definitely, a household brand for London I think is what we were, you know, ultimately that's what I was setting out to be because I didn't, see any reason why we couldn't be, you know, London was a wonderful market. The UK was a wonderful market and I'd seen wonderful brands happen like that in the UK and I didn't see any reason for us not to be, as long as we stuck to our, you know, what we set out to do, you know, to make it better and, you know, and focus on keeping things simple and be bold and don't take ourselves too seriously. I think as long as we stayed true to those, I hadn't, that was kind of the level of where we could get to and it and it, and it did. Yeah. And ultimately, if you start with the ambition of that Horseshoe conversation from the beginning. People are ordering this, you are delivering that ultimately meant scale, right? Because lager was big, right? Yeah. So if you're gonna get people to stop drinking as much Peroni or Heineken, yeah. You're not gonna do that by being 5,000 He's. Yeah. I don't remember the numbers back then, but you know, maybe it was like 80% of the world drank lager. You know, and probably 70% of that's not really, that wasn't, probably doesn't come from fantastic places. Right. 79.99 Yeah. Um, so I thought it was a, even at the time I didn't realize how much of an open door it was to do something really well, but then there were so many brands, you know, Innocent or like I said before, Tyrells who were doing this, that making something really good, making better orange juice, you know, and talking about it in a way that was resonating with people who were interesting. And same with crisps and I just, and lager, I couldn't believe it was kind of a sleeping giant. And I know. we set out to make lager, but it really became our North star. like it was like, right, we're gonna make beer, lagers gonna be, the one that we really enjoy and drink a lot of, but we're gonna have a pale ale and we're gonna have a stout and we're gonna have a wheat beer. But then very quickly it was like, we're gonna have a north, the North Star of Camden is gonna be Hells, yeah. It's all gonna be about Hells and that's Hells is gonna fun. Hells is gonna be whatever it takes to make Hells a household quality driven brand that's exciting and fun and bold, then that's what it's all gonna be about. Yeah. so with that all said, was Camden a craft brewery? You know, I think from a, from an outsider looking in, of course it was, you know, I think as in, if you look from a commercial and from, it was very good way to resonate with some of the commercial deals we were doing with, big distribution partners. Be that Youngs or, you know, I can't remember the or, or Fullers pub groups, things like that. That was, it was great for them to associate with us because they needed a craft offering. Inside the four walls of Camden, like, no, no. We didn't ever consider ourselves a craft, craft, brewery. Craft for me, as I've, I think I've stood up and said this many times, it's a great word, and it worked, but it didn't really encapsulate what we were about craft, for me, encapsulated small and it's a great idea and, and there was elements of it that we were detailed and you'd care about end to end, be that how it's made, how it's presented, how it's taken to market, but it also had a connotation of not being very big, and I didn't really sit comfortably with that. So I think there was lots of things that we liked about it, but we'd never, I'd never think we sat inside Camden and had pitched ourselves four walls that we were a craft brewery. Now we were just a great brewery and trying to, you know, and trying to maintain, get, still stay great and get big at the same time. There was, I wasn't around for this, so, uh, you're gonna have to probably help me with this, but there was, uh, an idea of pulling together some brewers to create some kind of Brewers Alliance or Brewers That's right. The Craft Brewers Alliance. Is that what it was? It was, which was like the BA of the UK kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was like, it was, it was, I think it was Logan and Beavertown and maybe James and Brewdog and ourselves, and then a couple of other London breweries. But I think we were kind of the size, we had a bit of scale by that stage and so we were lot leaned on to kind of lead it. Or be part of the conversations anyway. And what, like going back to this definition of craft and stuff like that, like I think one of the things was, again, it was very hard to land on what a definition should be. Mm-hmm. In your opinion, like what is the definition that should have existed for that kind of association? I think independence became a really strong word within beer. You know, I think that because that, even though again, it, it struggles with other things 'cause independence doesn't mean you're good, but it just means there's a different way of thinking that you're not going through some sort of corporate structure. Yeah. I think that's what they've landed on now. There's independent brewery, indie breweries rather than craft breweries. And I think, 'cause you can say, well I am or I'm not. Yeah. Well can, you can't though really like. Yeah. Well, you can't, yeah, depending on how you qualify Independent. Exactly. Well, because I mean, here's the thing, right? Like, you know, you're not on the stock market. Is that an, is that an independence? But that then what if a PE owns 50% of you? Are you independent? No. Well, exactly. No, I don't. And I think that's why we didn't. Adventure down the roll of trying to get it.'cause I didn't really, at the end of the day, I wanted to have friendships within the beer world. Yeah. You know, I did. And we had close ties. We collaborated with people, but ultimately I didn't really care. You know, I wanted to just get on with making Camden the best possible brewery could be, and did it. If someone wanted to call me a craft brewery, well I'll be a craft brewery. If someone wanted to call me a lager brewery, I'll be the lager brewery. But all I want to do is, all I really wanted was to go, well, they make really good beer and they're really good people to deal with. And that's more important than any sort of tagline, you know? And. So if, if there had been a definition. Would that have helped? Or is this kind of a semantics? No, I didn't. I mean, I don't think it helped 'cause that's why no one's landed on it, you know? Okay. And that's probably the quagmire that's sort of struggling with small breweries and big breweries now of like, where do they sit?'cause they all kind of leaned into trying to be, you know, I don't see, I don't see any other industries trying to do it. You know, I don't see music industries trying to be craft music. I don't see, you know, then I don't, I don't see the necessity for it. It's just gotta be good, big, small, owned by PE. Listed on the stock market, whatever it is, you should just be the best at it. And that's, or the best you can be at it. And continually focus on being yourself and being good at that and being, you know, being bold and just. Yeah. Focusing on what your business is about. Yeah. Not being focused on being a craft brewer, because the structural financial structure of a business can be fantastic or can be terrible. It doesn't make you a good brewery or not a good brewery. Yeah. Yeah. It's a really good way of looking at it where, you know, a lot of this definition stuff ultimately is a very internal discussion. Mm-hmm. Whereas like what you're saying is like, why don't we just focus on the consumer and get that right and. Yeah. However, 'cause I don't think, uh, consumers, other than, you know, if you go to a Tesco's and it says craft shelf, you know? Yeah. Like, I don't think people really know or care much about those. No. But it's a good way for them to box everything together. And I get that. And that's why I said big at the beginning. It worked well for our, you know, for our commercial partners, for us to be that craft offering.'cause it, they needed to, tick a box of what was available and if we were in that box then fantastic. If that's what you want us to be, then that's what we'll be as long as we, yeah. We are operating in it and doing what, We're not limited by it. If it didn't see, if it came said, well, you've gotta be crafted. You have to do this, this, and this. I mean, well, I wouldn't be that. Yeah. You know, we're gonna be Camden, but if you want to call us that then, then we're, we're good with that. That's cool. Let's take a, a little bit of a break. Uh, and, what I, what I want to do is, this is episode two. In the first episode, I realised that I didn't, well on purpose because there was other things to tackle. I didn't actually introduce myself, so I might take a minute and try and do this super, super quickly. and you know me pretty well, so you can, you can ask any questions if you think I've missed any, if I've missed a gap there. I know I've one already. I'm making myself sound too bad or good. So, I am, I started at InBev. I worked there for, for 10 years. Started in Canada, moved on to, to the global office in New York where I worked mostly on, on projects around, around the world. and then landed myself, in, in Europe, working in Leuven in Belgium, worked on all kinds of stuff from, from the starting in the brewery to sales, to sales operations, to uh, trade marketing, things like that. And then, I woke up one day and I didn't wanna go into work anymore. It was really actually what happened. I had a bit of like a, I just couldn't sleep that night. I walked in, I was like, something's wrong, I don't, I don't really, and I, I just went in and I, I decided to leave. So I, handed my resignation and I went traveling. And then like two months into traveling, I got a, I can't remember if it was a phone call or an email from, it was probably from Stuart, I think. Was it Stuart McFarland? Or us? I can't remember the actual, but I, some somehow it was like, oh, Jasper wants to, talk to you. and I guess Stuart. So Stuart McFarland was the head of Europe of, wonderful man. Yeah. Great guy. And he,I guess you were looking at it for an MD and he was like, oh, you should talk to this guy, He just left. I was actually in Australia at the time. I remember. And, anyway, we got to talking and, yeah, so I, remember going to do my interview with you. I interviewed with several people, including your father-in-law. Oh, yes, you did. And we sat down at Camden's Daughter and you told me your vision, which I loved, uh, loved your energy and stuff, but loved the, the vision. I remember, I do remember you distinctly saying to me, I want to be the Budweiser of, uh, of, of beer. I mean, obviously that was a little bit later in the, in the journey, but, um, I just like that you had a vision and you were very, as you are doing right now, you're so clear about what you want to achieve, and for me as the, like, the, the right hand person, if you will, that makes my job a lot easier. Because then my job is how do I make that happen? Not trying to sort out the deck of cards as, as to, you know, facilitating that direction right? Mm-hmm. So I did that, uh, left after a few years. I ended up after a few, small things, at Northern Monk where I spent just over four years. And then, about two years ago, I started my own business called PATH. So right now I advise breweries, and non breweries. I work with, Chris, Laura and Miles at Caravan as well. and advisory stuff is kind of across the board. One of the things with advisory that I believe is like you, you have to absolutely tailor these things to the people and the, and the situations people are in. Advice isn't like a, you can't just like. It's not a a blanket thing for every single person. You have to fit around a business to understand where you're gonna push and pull, because there's already a lot of cooks in that kitchen. My, my view at things, what I always kind of guarantee people is look like, uh, you know, a couple of months with me and my, you'll already start seeing it, but my guarantee to you is like. You've got a vision of where you want to be, I'll help, you know, form that if you need it. But, but I'm gonna help you get there. Having me will make, will make you better getting there. It's good. I, I work with Caravan. I work with Two Flints, I work with Garage in Barcelona, Vault City up in Scotland, and, a few other ones. so it's, it's been great and yeah, enjoying it, I think, And I think one thing that resonated with me when you came to us and it be because there's actually other people. Not dissimilar, but, 'cause I really enjoyed, I didn't get the pleasure of working with other people from AB, but I think the one thing that you haven't really like leaned on is that you're A GMT, right? Yeah. And GMT within ABI is these kind of you know, without, without having to dive deep, It's like a Jedi Knight of kind of what they, they do these to become a GMT or to even be taken into the program is a very difficult situation. You know, you interviewed, narrowed down from thousands, you know, I dunno exact numbers. And then they have this group of, you know, candidates every year who are,literally put in the hot house around the world. Thrown into market, thrown into breweries, thrown into the deep end and sink or swim. But you know, they're basically, the expectation is this is the new group of people who are gonna come through. So there's a, you know, as in you are gonna come through and lead the business ultimately in the long, in the, in the long run. I'm paraphrasing quite a lot. Yeah, of course. And I think, you know, that's why, you were very good, and that's, they'd found a very good person, but your fit for you wasn't right for them. But the fit for us was perfect. Right. It really, really worked because you had those broad skills of you as a person, but also you'd been into their business and learned a lot of, you know, in a lot, a lot of different areas from marketing, sales, operations, logistics. So you are multifaceted, but with one of the biggest and best brewing companies in the world. Appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but we aren't here to talk about me, but I, I did feel like I had to give a bit of context so it's easy. I will move on. So the, the next thing in that, I guess in terms of decisions, uh, to, to dig into and, analyse a little bit further, like is one that obviously is, is something that everyone knows. I think the first three was stuff that was, was, was more, not so much the narrative, not talked about as much, but this one is, is is obviously well known, which is the acquisition itself. Right. So. 2015. I think it closed at the beginning of Jan 2016, but it was, you know, 2015 was, was happening. And so as much as you can, I mean, I'm gonna start pretty broadly here. Like as much as you can, can you kind of walk through, like from, we're Camden doing our thing to all of a sudden there's this talk of an acquisition to it happening. Like, what, what happened? Like what, what did that look like? What was that story? Oh, I mean, it's a, I, it's such a, it's, I mean, it feels like it was just yesterday, but it's a long, long time ago. Right. It's like it's nearly 10 years. Yeah and you know fortunately we weren't for sale, you know, so I guess that's the, yeah, so that we weren't focusing on anything like that. We were just focusing on being good and being bigger, you know? Yeah. And cont and we were working we were growing at high double digits, if not triple digits, year on year. Right? So we were breaking into the a hundred thousand hectolitre mark, which was just outrageous. You know, when we started, you know, I remember setting up Camden like, well, if we can have a hundred accounts and they do three kegs a week, well we'll break even.'cause remember, the reason we'd done this in the first place is we were when I, we built this brewery and everyone was spending£50,000 on a, you know, an open fermented brewery, and we went out and spent, I did about 2 million pounds on a brewery that was focused on making lager, you know, to make sure that we could make it just as good as anyone else and better so that if we went to a bar and they said, well, you can't do that. We go, well, yeah, this is that we can, and I think so I guess going back to, I was going sort of backwards to go forwards, but yeah, we said we were doing our thing. And it was a, it was a shock, but it felt right. It, it was like, well, we won't, and then we, you know, we, but it was very soon that we, I knew, I knew in my mind, if I looked at other brands that I really liked Ultimately their way of future sustainability was going under the umbrella of a'cause you know, through that era, like the, you know, the 2015's from 2010 to 2020, the acquisitions of in consumer was, that's where you went. Yeah. That's where you ended up, you ended inside a house of another load of brands. And I looked at it, I was like, I never went and asked these people if they liked it, if was, but I'd seen, you know, again, Tyrrells had happened. Innocent had happened to name two. Right. But there was lots of acquisitions. And I said, well, That's just the journey. You make it, you make it to a size, they really enjoy what you're doing. You come together and you work with, you work together, and that's where you are. And that's what we did. You know, we joined them and yeah, it was great. And I'm, you know, and. And I, enjoyed it. There was never, there was obviously times like any business that weren't fabulous, but there were so many times, which were just incredible, you know? Yeah. Sponsored Arsenal football, which would never have probably happened, probably may have happened by now 'cause the size and scale we were at, but, those things got so a lot of things that I kind of dreamt of got fast track quite quickly, you know? Yeah. And we're done really, really well. Yeah. I wanna dig in that just a little bit. So, you mentioned there that, you know, this, this, there's brands that went through this and you never asked them, um, about, Whether they liked it or not. Um, and then obviously in that, in that process, you obviously, you have a vision going into that as to, you know, what this will bring, what this, what you want this to bring. but then at the same time, when you're talking to an InBev or whoever else at the time, they'll obviously tell you, this is what we'd like to do. And there's a, there's a bit of an expectation of this is what the future will look like. In the end. Did it meet, What you thought it would? I think if I look at from the outside, did it, is the brand? Is the brand, does the brand exist? Yes. Is it in good, is it in good health? Pretty much. You know, it's a bit different to when, when I left it, but it's still in, they haven't made a, you know, a mess of it. I think they've done a nice, nice job of it. I couldn't be cr, I couldn't be critical of it.'cause I think I liked, I really enjoyed working with people from AB, you know, I had a, you know, and I think a lot of the people who were in the business at the time really enjoyed working with, with people from AB, it was difficult and diff and different because, you know, slowly as we came together, we got more and more. As we got bigger, we became more of a, more of an influence on their P&L, so they had to take more and more control, and the more and more control they took, which was right for them, was wasn't so great for us. Yeah. But that's ultimately what, you know, what's I, I didn't see that in the crystal ball. And now with hindsight, I probably should have known that was what, you know, ultimately would've happened. Um, is there a perfect world? No. But is there a better world? Probably. Is it bad? I don't believe so. So, you know, would I, my son said to me the other day, would, you would. Would you do it? I was like, yeah, I'd do it. I'd do it again. Of course I would. Yeah. You know, because it was really good. We got to fast track some things that would've, you know, we got to survive. We got to fast track, we got to do some exciting things. We got to employ some incredible people. I got to work on some fantastic projects. I got to do a bit of public speaking, but, um, but yeah, I mean, could you, could you fix the problems that were created? No.'cause I think that's business. like, you know, in, you know, the, I guess the biggest problem that I didn't see was the, was, you know, if you're good at AB and there's lots of good people you move. And so you build these incredible working relationships with these exciting people, and if they're good. They go, they're gone in six months. Not, and not gone down the road, like go to South America, never see them again. Go and work in New York. And so there's a, there's a friendship element of that, but there's also a commercial element of that. So you build a business plan, you build a 3YP or you build the next year strategy and you've done it, you've got it signed off, and then you get a new sheriff in town and you've got sell the story again. So you spend a lot of time kind of pitching and working and making things, and it wasn't bad, but I just had to get used to it. Yeah. Yeah. It's a very, uh, yeah. Good, good description of it. I guess the question that your, uh, your son asked you, I had taken on a different, a little bit of a different lens. So like, my question would be, what would have the alternative looked like? Gosh, without, yeah. I mean, COVID, I mean, we were, we, we, we were going after it, so I'd hate to think, you know. No, and I think. We might not be as big, but I think, you know when, when we really, I mean, I guess we were probably, I don't know when. You know, 150 to 200,000 hecto liters when we sort of really started to really start to engine and, you know, yeah. So we probably, I mean, we, we might have come out of COVID a little bit scarred, but if COVID had, if there was no COVID and there was, you know,'cause if you're gonna wind back clock, so then we can get rid of all the problems. Yeah. If there was no COVID and there was no AB then, I'd like to think that we would, you know, that we'd be stealing, that the business would've been growing at a steady pace we would've got, because I think we really want to get to somewhere and then really start to level it out and then grow at a, you know, a comfortable pace you're on year rather than that accelerated growth plan Yeah. That we were going through at the beginning.'cause yeah, we couldn't keep it up. It was like having a final every day of the year. Right. No, I think one of the things that, that, uh, again, uh, from an internal perspective that, that, you know, and I, I felt is, is that you go back to that, that interview I did with you at, at Camden's Daughter, um. And this idea of, you know, we want to be the Budweiser, we want to be, you know, we want to take on Perone and stuff like that. And I think one of the things is a lot of times people think of, um, the acquisition as the end game. Mm. And it's like, I know not, and I feel, I know because I was, I was with you every day. It's like that was not the end game for you whatsoever. That was the means to actually achieve what you thought the business should do. Yeah. And that was the best way to do it. And I think that's why when you look back. On saying, uh, saying those things about, you know, the relationship and how it went afterwards, why you have such a pragmatic approach to it. Because Yeah, of course there's, there's frustrations. There's, I mean, we, there was times where there was battles about stuff. Absolutely. Mm-hmm. Tough days. But you, you know. Did they help you deliver that vision? Together did you get, you know, were you able to do that? I think that's probably where, where, where you have that level of comfort mm-hmm. That, that was able to be the case. Personally. I think, I mean, and I don't wanna be dis, I'm not trying to be disrespectful, but, you know, AB ultimately was like having a bank. It was like having a bank with us. Yeah. You know, like there was a lot more than, there was a lot more to them than that, you know? Incredible. You know, incredible, you know. There's technical support, loads of things, but just, but the big thing that we really needed at that moment was to grow and to grow we needed money. And I think that was if we could continue building one year plans and three year plans that they were bought in on, which they were because of, you know, the, the depth we went into on, you know, be that sales depth or marketing depth, or people hiring, you know, the strategies were strong. They, and, and they delivered, you know, we hit budgets and I think, so it was a, you know, the relationship was, you know, I guess, through those finite years. I guess those, those first 2, 3, 4 years was that, you know, it was about funding, the funding what we believed In. And then when we got to a level or a state, you know, a size that really could function within them, then it ultimately made a lot of sense for them, you know, to not, it was not hard like that, but then for them to bring us in. Right. And that's what they did. Yeah. Um, is there a beautiful world that I think it could be slightly better? Yes, I do. Of course I do.'cause I'm the founder and I can see different things. But it's hard 'cause it's a big organization and that's how their built. So you can't begrudge them for that. That's what it did. Right. Yeah. And yeah, and I, like I said, I built some incredible, I built, we built an incredible brand with them. Absolutely. Um, under their guidance and under their watch and under their support. and built great friendships, you know, and it's, and it's still there today. You know, lots of brands have disappeared. You know, working, going into, you know, into big houses. But we managed to, and it's still growing. So that's, it's a testament to, it's what we set up with them and on our own. And it's testament to Camden today. Is there an opportunity for hells to be bigger? I still think so. Yeah. You ready? You ready? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I do, I think there's nothing in the marketplace that satisfies the need of a local made lager. Yeah. Yeah. I still think that it's ours to, there's lots, I still think that there's a position there to be had. I have no doubt you could do it too. I just don't know if you wanted, I couldn't even get, I couldn't even get here on time, so I'm not gonna start. Yeah. Jasper went to the wrong studio and had to hop on a lime bike to, to get here, but, uh, but improvised, we improvised Well, I think. Yeah. You always deliver. Yeah. Yeah. Um, one of the things that I wanted to do a little bit different, is play a bit of a game or scenario piece here with you. Right. because I think, you know, one of the things that, uh, working with you that I realised is your, your ability to have vision on things that, maybe, have high potential before consumers know that they have high potential. Right. A lot of people can react to consumers, but understanding what consumers want before, before they know they want it, is something that, you definitely have in spades. So, you took lager at a time when, you know, at the end of the day it was not a very loved product. Very, very drank product. Mm-hmm. I wouldn't call it a very loved product. Yeah. Um, and there's another beer style that I think has some similarities, which is cask beer. Oh yes. It's gone through some ups and some downs. Mm-hmm. Some loves and some not loves, I think. Overall over the last little while has been mostly un-loved. It's getting a bit of a renaissance now, but like I wanted to see what would Jasper do about cask beer? So I'm just gonna throw it out broadly like that to start off, which is like, how would you go about making cask beer loved again? I'd deliver it direct. No, I would. I really would. You know, I think it's all in the dray in Cask because it's a beautiful beer. Like it's, you know, on a cask beer in good condition, in a great pub is one of my favorite experiences. And that can be in England, can be in America. I mean, look, cask in Sierra Nevada's brew pub is amazing, right? So I think, but it comes down to deliverance. You know, if you can, if it's not looked after, and I'm not saying it has to be put in some refrigerated container all the way to the door and manhandled, but it has to be managed and I think, it's a bit like fresh milk. You know, I look at Cask like I have fresh milk delivered to my, you know, to my place. You know, I have milk delivered three times a week because there's a milk run and it's great. It's really good, you know, and, and I think that's where cask for me, it's like, how do you, one, it needs energy. You know? I think it needs, there's a whole branding thing that needs to be done to it, where it's tried to reincarnate itself by being fun and engaging, but, it's just, it's a tradition, so you need to lean into its traditional elements of it. How can you make that for, for a modern world? I mean, look at Guinness. Guinness is flying at the moment because of, you know, the guys at Devonshire and what have they did? They've, they've changed the badges. They've talked about how they serve it. They've talked about how they cellar it. They're refrigerating it better, and they're serving it and they're focused on the, the experience. Now that's, I believe, all that cask needs, you know, across the country. So how do you roll that out? I think it starts small across however many sites it is and you get that inertia and you get that buy-in and, but I do believe, I don't know how big it is, but there's definitely room for, I think for a fantastic cask brand or a fantastic cask brewery or a brewery with one product within that, that really, does end to end from brewery first, obviously. Yeah. And great, great beer to how it's, how it's sold, how it's still, how it's presented, how it pours in the glass.'cause how many times do you go to a bar that gives you cask and they serve it completely different to the person down the road? You know, different shaped dimple glasses, some with a sparkler, some without a sparkler, some flat, some not. So there's a whole element of managing that experience, and I think it can only grow. It grows. And that can be very big, but I think it has to be, you have to understand it. How can we make that over 20 sites? How can you do that over 50 sites? How can you do over 5,000 sites? Because people like good beer and it's a great beer. And going back to that branding elements of, you know, modernizing it or however you, however you said it there, like what? What are some thoughts that come to your mind immediately? I know you know, you're way a good brand around a good brand, so. Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, I think there's Five Point do a really lovely job of it. You know, their Best Bitter, looks great. I think there's. There's along those sorts of lines clear, like Guinness do a fantastic job of branding Guinness, you know, just real, with strength and power. No, you know, a bit like us kept it simple, bold, simple. Seriously, not serious. You know, like, and I think there's a, an element of that, of just like really refining it, you know, so that it's 'cause it's everyone's thought, oh, I've got the badge, they just start sticking things on it. You know, it used to be really simple, the badge for a cask beer. Now there's like, you know, more stuff and more stuff and more stuff and it's like just, and there's an element of how do you pair it back and it'd still be good 'cause I think you can go too far. Right. And I don't think, you know, so there's definitely, um, listen, not if I could do it, I'd be doing it Now, to be fair, you have called me once or twice and like Luca Cask?. Yeah. Um, but hence why I brought it.'cause I know it's something that you're passionate about. I'm passionate about. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. on the sparkler? are you a sparkler or non sparkler? Oh, I'm a sparkler. You are? Okay. Dunno how, how, I mean, you've obviously been in the UK for a long time, but Australians think about sparkler. There's this divide between the north. I only got really to know cask when I lived up north. Yeah, good cask. And it was sparkler, right? Yeah. It's a funny, like the people in the north don't even realize that we don't have sparklers in the south, you know, and I was, 'cause I was talking to some, I've got, you know, some friends of mine up there as well and I was talking to'em about it on Tuesday and yeah, like here you ask for a sparkler in the south and like. What's a sparkler? Yeah. You know, and then you, you know, like, I really want a beer that looks presents perfect, you know, with an element of foam on top of it so that you can smell it and it holds the carbonation in. And you get a beer here that's in good health, but then it's sold, poured to you totally flat, you know? And it's like, that's not. Yeah. If you look at Guinness, they wrote commercials on how, how beer should be poured, right? Yeah. I think that's, as, that's as deep as cask has to go, it has to go all the way back to that route of like, temperaturem presentation, you know, all those things, and really, it's interesting, put it back in the mind of how it's done correctly. I, I can't, you know, I, I always say like, I'm quite naive 'cause I came into the UK in 2016 when I came over to Camden. So, you know, like, I don't have the, the background on cask, um, or hospitality that you do. I don't understand why anyone would not use a sparkler. I don't know if there's a, you know, a specific, uh, quality element. Some people like it this way. The beers are designed in a certain way, but like, I just don't get it. Like, you've got so much more visual storytelling happening, quality, storytelling, all these things that you're talking about. Like, I don't get it. But why you wouldn't have a sparkler or, yeah. Yeah. I don't get it. Don't either.'cause I think people lose them. I think that is literally, it's it.'cause we had, I mean at the Horseshoe always had, and at Daughter always had sparkles on everything because it does, it presents the beer Perfectly. It opens it up, oxygenation, you know, just like at the point of consumption. It makes it look presentable. Delicious. Yeah. I mean, and if they haven't got it, they've gotta really like slam it into the glass to get that kind of action into it, which is, you know, I guess purists wouldn't like, but you know, beer presentation is really important. Super important. Right? You wouldn't expect it. Yeah. You wouldn't accept a Guinness that was poured to the top without a head, would you? You know, it's the only beer in the UK that's meant to be served with it. It's almost like a seal of quality at that point, right? Yeah. But then everywhere else, oh my god, my beer's not full. Yeah. Oh gosh. Interesting. Um, knowing what we know now, what should, uh, we in craft beer, have done differently or forget craft beer, modern beer. you know, what did we miss? What did we get wrong? I think growth, if I reflect on my time, is probably the thing I got wrong. You know, it was, it was a product of, you know, it was like a product of a P&L. It was like, okay, if we do that and do that and do that, then this is where we're at the end of the year. I think it was never, like, I never understood, I mean, until I've moved away from it, how growth really, really, really unique and it's hard and difficult. And you know, we, I didn't, I probably thought it was, oh, we're just growing, we're always gonna grow. How big are we gonna grow next year? You know? And then, and I think it was, even though, you know, we had 3PL's and 5YP's and one year plans and all those things. So we already kinda had a strategy of where we're gonna go to. I don't think I respected growth as much as I should because it's bloody hard. Right. And I think it's, we were lucky. We lived in an era where we had opportunities because we did really good things, to grow. And so I guess if I wound by the clock, I would've probably under probably appreciated. Growth a bit better. A bit more. Last thing, rapid fire round you ready for this? Oh, hello. I dunno if I got yet. Go for it. So the only rule at play here, very loose rule, there's not many rules in this podcast. I don't like rules is, uh, is that, uh, if you can answer with either one word or one sentence. so try, first thing that comes to mind. Okay. first one, name a brewery that excites you today? Sierra Nevada. Okay. that's a good one. Mm-hmm. You were there when we went to the Asheville, the one near Asheville. Were you? No, no. I, I missed my flights. Ah, yeah. That's story of life bit of a theme here. When we were over for CBC, that time you went and won the award. I remember calling you all. Um, best decision you ever made at Camden? Oh God. Calling it Hells. Good one I like it. Yeah. Uh, last beer you drank. Oh, you're not gonna believe this Tegernsee. Oh, nice. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tegensee Helles from inspiration to recency. Tegensee Helles, Yeah. Yeah. One beer industry prediction that you think will happen within the next 10 years? Cask will win. Uh, last one, one sentence you'd say to inspire others looking to blaze their own path. Do it if you only wanna make it better. Yeah, it's my mantra, so make it better. Yeah, exactly. There's no point turning up if you're just gonna turn up, if you're gonna do something. That's a few more words, but my mantra would be do it if you could, if you're gonna make it better. Amazing. Yeah. Thank you so much for doing this. Pleasure, appreciate it. Sorry I was a little bit late. No worries, no worries. We got it done. Um. Big thanks to, to Jasper. Uh, you know, I, I know you've never done a podcast before. I don't think you have. No, no, no. Okay. and I know you don't like public speaking, so I do appreciate that a lot. I hope everyone's found it, uh, super interesting, insightful, valuable. last thing, special thanks to Sellar, who are sponsors the podcast. I've spoken to you them about, about them before. And, uh, that we're gonna, I'm actually gonna be doing a bonus episode with them at some point in the season, which will be cool. Great. So you can learn a lot. I like the red as well, by the way. Thank you. Yes. And we put the red on for you. And other than that, we'll, we'll leave it there. Thanks everyone for tuning in. and the next episode will be with Evin from The Kernel. Wonderful beers, wonderful person as well. That'll be exciting. So yeah, so get that one, uh, in a few weeks time. Thanks everyone. Cheers. Thank you.