Bridge the divide

Crisps are a natural accompaniment to a good cask ale. The finely balanced flavours of wafer-thin slices of potato dance about the palate before being washed down with a fine brew of hops, malt and fine English spring water. OK, I'm neither this magazine's Pub Food editor nor its drinks guru - as the above 'prose' graphically illustrates - but describing precisely what it is that people enjoy about the delights of cheese & onion or salt & vinegar combinations when eaten with a pint is a pithy subject.

The crossover from the fast-paced corporate world to a family-run regional brewer oozing with tradition is even more challenging, as Graeme Craig, former sales director at Walker's Crisps and Shepherd Neame's recently appointed sales and marketing director, can attest.

Having spent more than a decade helping Walker's to become the number one crisp brand in the UK - he was latterly convenience director responsible for Walkers products in the 16,000 convenience stores in the UK - Graeme has now turned his attention to another bar favourite, beer, and more precisely, that brewed and sold by the country's oldest brewer, Shepherd Neame, based in the Kent market town of Faversham. "I'd spent 12 years with one fast moving consumer goods entity," says the Glasgow-born executive. "You get to a point where you want a change and a challenge and I was looking for a different marketplace."

A seismic shift

Moving from such a highly corporate organisation as PepsiCo, which owns Walkers, to a traditional family-run brewer such as Shepherd Neame certainly presents its own unique set of challenges.

Graeme acknowledges the shift bordered on the seismic, but says the move came at the right time. "Such a radical change - an international corporation to a family-owned business - was very attractive. The values, principles and long-term approach to the marketplace it offered were ideal."

The limitations of corporate life - for which one might read 'being able to make a difference' - also played their part in Graeme's decision to move.

"As markets consolidate in any industry, the decision-making process alters," he says. Restricted in what he could achieve at PepsiCo would be too strong a description, he suggests, "but the impact you can have changes.

"This role affords me a great opportunity to have a clear direction [reporting into Shepherd Neame chief executive Jonathan Neame] with quite a lot of autonomy to build plans, deliver the thinking and build that business entity around it."

Shepherd Neame ticked a lot of those boxes, he notes. "It's a very strong regional player in what I believe is a very opportunistic position, with many strengths," says Graeme.

In turn, chief executive Jonathan Neame says Graeme is set to bring a freshness and a passion to the company. "He also has a very interesting perspective on the beer industry and some excellent sales and marketing skills that have helped Walker's crisps perform so well," he comments.

Blending tradition with corporate values

Meanwhile is tradition - something Shepherd Neame sets considerable store by - able to stand up to the demands of running a business in today's hectic market? "It allows you to do something and think about things in an alternative way. I spent 14 years in the Naval Reserve, at the same time as I was in PepsiCo.

"On one hand I was dealing with the culture and tradition, discipline, while on the other there was something with a very flat structure, empowering, corporate," Graeme explains. "I've always tried to blend aspects of each, and that's hopefully what I would like to bring here. I've got experience that's quite different from other people here. A corporate culture is good, but at the same time a lot of the traditional side is immensely valuable."

The group has to be conscious of the fact that it knows its business, he says. "We've capable people here who all want to add value, and we have products that allow us to do that. Tradition affects the outlook."

So how will his corporate background affect his work with Sheps? "I'm sure that on the odd occasion I scare people here with the outlook that I have, and in turn they'll educate me in certain aspects of the business," he says.

"There are many successful companies with great products who are at the same time corporate, socially aware, want to be responsible and a part of the community and want to meaningfully give something back.

"We want to be successful but it's nice to be able to join it all up in a meaningful way. That's the blend of attributes we have here."

Graeme says that Shepherd Neame's family connection with the business leans it towards having a long-term business plan. Added to which there is a very strong connection with the local community and on-trade, which helps the brands, he notes.

Loyalty to the local market aside, Graeme is also keen to look beyond the confines of the south east of England as a potential market for the brewer's products. He firmly believes exports can play an important role.

"They represent a significant opportunity for us, while there are opportunities for us in a whole host of UK markets where we are absent at the moment", such as exploiting the group's beers more aggressively through the hotel and restaurant channels, while servicing the group's freetrade customer base can be improved, according to Graeme.

"We make decisions where we want our brands distributed and we'll decide whether our investment can sustain that," he says. "Sometimes the answer will be yes, at others it'll be no. We've had 30 years of consistent profit growth. Some corporations would give their right arm for 30 quarters of profit growth."

Future of the regionals

Meanwhile, at a time when larger groups are picking off regional brewers, the future of the model is open to debate. Graeme understandably suggests there is plenty of life in the old dog.

"The regionals are currently in a great position. They stand for something. There's enough heritage and capital and scale to the business to allow new products and ideas to be developed and brought to the marketplace," he says.

"The top end of the market is becoming further consolidated and growing, the bottom end is continuing to develop and trying to thrive, but there's always going to be a middle way. With consolidation, the top end pulls up the middle and that creates opportunity for good regional operators."

So does Graeme see room for improvement, and if so, where? He struggles to think of a specific area that could do with shaping up, but says he won't be afraid to point things out.

"Coming to this job from outside the industry means I've no preconceptions," he explains. "But just because something has been done the same way for a long time doesn't mean it can't be altered if that makes things work better. I'm able to question the ways things are done, partly out of naïveté, yes, but also from a 'challenge' perspective."

He suggests he has been fortunate to join the company at a time when sector developments are confronting the way the company thinks generally. "People are keen to ask questions about how we develop this business and envisage how things will work in the next 25, 30 years."

Part of this process will be empowered by a "sizeable" investment plan of between £2m and £3m in the company's systems, particularly in the brewery. Sharing information between the on-trade and off-trade areas - the latter being familiar to Graeme - is another area where experiences can be pooled.

But at the end of the day, the corporate side of Graeme shines through. "Being Britain's oldest brewer doesn't give you a right to survive; it only gives you that heritage that you can build from," he concludes. Interesting times doubtless await.