The Big Interview: Stephen Gould, Everards Brewery

Anyone who thinks that cask ale is in decline and the future lies with such vague concepts as “craft beer” and “craft keg” should spend a few frenetic hours in the company of Stephen Gould.

The managing director of Everards Brewery in Leicester has driven one of the most innovative concepts in pub retailing for decades and seen sales of real ale boom as a result.

And now he is masterminding a move to a new site for the brewery that will be the focal point of an “artisan” concept of beer-making and retailing — and once again cask beer will be at the heart of the project.

Partnership​

The pub retailing initiative is best described as a “pub partnership” scheme. It’s called Project William in honour of William Everard who founded the company in 1849. Under the scheme, Everards will buy a run-down or closed pub, refurbish it, then rent it to a smaller brewery.

The terms of the deal mean that the tenant/brewer can sell their own and guest beers, but must serve at least one of Everards’ cask ales, usually its flagship brand Tiger. Everards will also supply cider and lager.

Buoyed by the success of the scheme — there are now 29 Project William pubs with more in the pipeline — Gould, aged 46, is now turning his attention to a move to a new brewing site. It will be based at Fosse Park in the Blaby district of Leicester and will enable the family-owned company to develop a new “artisan” concept of brewing and retailing.

Fosse Park is one of the country’s biggest out-of-town shopping and leisure complexes and Gould’s vision is to develop a “food and drink cluster” that will include a brewery, a pub, visitor centre, restaurants and a group of production units.

Artisan​

The units will have sales counters and will, he hopes, attract artisan bakers, butchers and other food producers to make and sell their wares. It’s called Project Artisan and if it comes to fruition the complex will be known as the Everards Experience.

At the moment the project is in the planning stage and will need to get the go-ahead from Blaby District Council later this year. Gould is confident the council will give it the green light — “conditional consent” has already been given — and expects that it will then take three years to build the Everards Experience.

He can’t talk about costs at this stage but says the closure and sale of the existing brewery site at Castle Acres will fund the new project.

If you look for Fosse Park on Google Maps you will notice that Everards’ current brewery is next door. So why the move? The answer is that some years ago the Everard family bought land in the area and owns several acres on what is now Fosse Park.

With the backing of chairman Richard Everard, the move to the new site will enable Gould to build on the success of Project William and his firm commitment to working in partnership with kindred spirits.

Neglected​

He was born in the brewing capital of Burton-on-Trent and worked for both Bass and Punch Taverns before joining Everards. As a result, he is steeped in both brewing and pub retailing.

The Project William scheme was an idea born out of a discussion in 2007 with Keith Bott, founder of Titanic Brewery in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, and one of the key players in SIBA, the Society of Independent Brewers. A year later the first Project William pub opened in nearby Newcastle-under-Lyne, with Titanic as the tenant.

“It’s the Greyhound, a former Admiral pub,” Gould recalls. “It was an old roadside pub and like a lot of pubs in the Stoke area it had been neglected, wet-led, with no food. We spent more on the refurb — £150,000 — than the £145,000 the pub cost.

“On the day the Greyhound re-opened, trade was busy. I asked a local what he thought and he said ‘I’ve got my pub back’.”

Gould said the seeds of the scheme came from two strands. “There’s been the emergence of new small breweries with people who want to run their own businesses at the same time as there are many pubs with great potential if they can be saved from closure. Project William puts the two parts together.”

The aim of the scheme is simple, he says: to drive people back into pubs. “We’ve turned pubs around,” he says. “Several of the Titanic pubs we run with the company as Project William outlets are close to Wetherspoon’s pubs. They all thrive — the two types of pub are complementary. As Project William pubs get stronger, so do other Everards’ pubs.”

Investment​

Everards now has 10 brewery partners and the field is spreading beyond the Midlands. The partners include Ashover, B&T, Brampton, Brown Ales, Derby Brewing, Raw Brewing, Slaughterhouse, Titanic, White Horse and Wrekin. Gould says of the 29 pubs involved in the scheme, 14 were closed and 13 were trading so poorly they were unsustainable.

The 30th pub in the scheme will open with Lincoln Green Brewery next year. There are a further 10 Project William pubs run directly by Everards without a brewing partner: these are known as Cask Ale Champion pubs.

To date, Everards has invested £11.5m in the Project William scheme. “We’ve done this during a recession,” Gould points out. “It’s the biggest investment in pubs made in the brewing industry and several other breweries and pubcos have followed our model.

“We don’t deal with new-build pubs, only with existing properties. We want to attract people to run the pubs who have a passion for beer.”

Quality​

In 2002 Everards decided to run only tenanted pubs and move out of managed houses. It concentrated on its core business by selling its free-trade accounts in 2006 to Waverley.

“We’re about quality beer in quality pubs,” Gould stresses. “Our tenancy agreements are clear and transparent on both wet and dry rents. Some of the pubs have seen trade increase from £3,500 a week to £14,000.”

Project William is a business, not a charity. Everards receives rent and income from beer sales as a return on its investment and the company is not losing out. Sales of Tiger do well: it’s the second or third biggest-selling beer in the pubs it runs with Titanic, for example.

The most remarkable fact of all is that cask beer accounts on average for 65% of beer sales in Project William pubs. Not surprisingly, the scheme has won plaudits from the Campaign for Real Ale, and several of the pubs have been given awards, including Pub of the Year trophies.

In late April, chairman Richard Everard and Stephen Gould were given the prestigious Bill Squires Award from the East Midlands region of the campaign for Project William’s contribution to real ale.

And now on to Fosse Park. It will, Gould says, be a smaller brewery than the existing plant at Castle Acres, not because of any lack of demand for Everards’ own beers — on the contrary — but because the company will stop contract-brewing, which is not particularly profitable.

“Fosse Park will be a craft brewery,” he adds with a wry smile.

Key dates​

1968​
Stephen Gould is born in Burton-on-Trent

1986-89​
North Staffordshire Polytechnic, BA First Class in Sociology

1989-98​
Joined Bass as graduate trainee, then took human resources role in leisure and pubs division. Operations director and member of Bass lease team prior to sale to Punch Taverns.

1998-2003​
Punch Taverns operations director and recruitment and training director.

2003​
Joined Everards as trade director; managing director from 2005.