As it opens its eighth pub, Lincoln Green brewery founder Anthony Hughes reflects on the company's success
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 - Finally, we're talking about here at Lincoln Green,
00:02 you're expanding to more pubs, more business,
00:04 really it's a real success story, isn't it?
00:07 - It certainly has.
00:08 We started back in 2012 just as a brewery,
00:13 and then in 2014 we opened our first pub,
00:16 the Robin Hood and Little John in Arnold,
00:18 in conjunction with Everard's Brewery of Leicester.
00:20 That was such a success, and we enjoyed running it so much
00:25 that we thought that it was a much easier
00:28 kind of route to market for our beer
00:30 if we actually had more of our own pubs.
00:33 So since then, we've now grown to what is a total
00:36 of eight pub sites across Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.
00:40 - And you've added to that recently, haven't you?
00:41 - Yeah, so the most recent is actually two pubs in one,
00:45 which is over in Beeston, so we've got the White Lion,
00:48 which concentrates on Cascades,
00:51 and then the Blackshell Bar and Kitchen,
00:54 which is essentially a food pub,
00:57 but that food pub is focused very much
01:00 on matching beer with food,
01:02 because we believe that beer is a better match with food
01:05 than wine is, for example.
01:07 - And the pubs you have here in Hucknall,
01:09 I know the station is one, what are the others?
01:11 - So dotted around, we've got the Robin Hood
01:14 and Little John in Arnold, we've then got
01:16 the Sir John Borlase Warren at Canning Circus
01:18 in the centre of Nottingham, then the station at Hucknall,
01:21 then the Brickyard in Carlton, the Railway at Belper,
01:25 the Mill and Brook in Long Eaton,
01:26 and then the White Lion and Blackshell Bar and Kitchen
01:29 in Beeston.
01:30 - And what is it that people like about Lincoln Green's beer,
01:33 Lincoln Green's products?
01:35 - I think it's something that they can trust,
01:38 so I think that when people see Lincoln Green
01:42 either on a pump clip or above a pub itself,
01:44 they know that there's gonna be something
01:46 of good quality about it.
01:49 We've discovered the level of customer trust
01:53 when we took on the Mill and Brook at Long Eaton
01:57 in January this year, and what we found was
02:00 a huge number of customers suddenly started to visit
02:04 the pub because we'd taken it over.
02:06 So we know from previous figures that the pub
02:10 was previously taken that we're now 46% ahead of it,
02:14 and a lot of it's down to the care and attention
02:17 that we put into events, marketing the pub,
02:20 the service that we deliver, the quality of the beers.
02:23 - Definitely, and you say you've returned your pubs
02:25 this year, so the plan is to continue adding more pubs
02:27 to Lincoln Green's roster in time?
02:29 - Absolutely, yeah, we think we probably will be
02:33 around 20 pubs by about 2030,
02:36 so somewhere in that kind of area,
02:39 provided that we can find the right locations
02:41 and the right sites in the right locations.
02:43 - And what's new for you in terms of beers
02:45 being created and brewed?
02:47 - That changes every single month.
02:48 So we always have a core range of four beers,
02:52 which are Hood, Marion, Archer, and Tuck,
02:55 all taking their names from the legend of Robin Hood.
02:57 But then under the Black Shale project,
03:01 we also have unusual beer styles.
03:05 So Black Shale takes its name from the coal steam
03:09 that runs underneath the brewery,
03:11 so that's where that name comes from.
03:13 And the idea is that it tends to be
03:14 the more unusual styles of craft beers,
03:17 so either highly hopped or using unusual
03:20 sort of yeast strains, for example.
03:23 And as a result of that, we've always got lots of newness
03:27 that comes through each month.
03:28 - Pivot to a place where times of business and struggle
03:31 disappears again from strength to strength.
03:33 How proud are you about the success
03:34 that Lincoln Brewery's become?
03:36 - Hugely proud, yeah.
03:37 I mean, it's fantastic to say that we started in 2012
03:42 employing just two people,
03:44 and as of right now, we've got 90 people
03:46 that work within the brewery and across the public estates.
03:51 If we continue our growth plans,
03:53 that just means that we're creating
03:55 more and more employment opportunities,
03:56 and I'm passionate about trying to get people
03:59 to see hospitality as a really serious career path.
04:03 So one of the things that we offer all of our employees
04:06 is the opportunity to take up
04:08 apprenticeship training opportunities as well.
04:10 We want people to grow with us
04:13 and end up pursuing hospitality as a serious career choice.