Record year for Craft Beer Co

Six-strong bar group the Craft Beer Co has reported a record year, with turnover up 16.8%.

The group, which currently has sides in Brixton, Clapham, Covent Garden, Clerkenwell, Islington and Brighton, recently announced it would be part of Boxpark Croydon, the second site for pop-up food, drink and leisure development Boxpark.

Boxpark says it “will be home only for carefully chosen, fiercely independent, fresh-thinking businesses with a strict no high-street fascia rule.”

Founder and managing director Martin Hayes said: “As a business we’re pretty impatient, so we’ll be looking to raise the bar again in 2016/17. We’ll be concentrating on adding more sites in London, but I don’t rule out expanding outside of town. That said, being privately owned, we’ll only add sites which we think represent value to our business and serve our customers well, we’re not under pressure from shareholders or investors to add sites on to show progress or sign silly agreements.”

He added: “It’s been an amazing year for the team. We opened a new venue in the City of London in the shadow of The Gherkin in November, held the UK’s biggest ever Pub Beer Festival at our Clapham site and have created a healthy pipeline of new and potential sites, including one in the Croydon Boxpark development”.