Joseph Holt is thriving through the community spirit it creates
To mark 175 years of existence – an anniversary Joseph Holt has been celebrating full-on in 2024 – it’s no surprise a charity has been chosen as the recipient of its generous fundraising campaign.
The target of £500,000 for cancer hospital The Christie is already being closed in on and monies raised have come from a huge array of events.
Andrew Kershaw, who oversees elements of the group’s pub estate, audits, IT and its developments, described one event as a “Charlie & the Chocolate Factory” moment when the brewery was opened for its first beer festival.
He recalls: “We also had a fantastic weekend at our first ever beer festival at the brewery, which was a Charlie & the Chocolate Factory moment because we’re not commercially open for tours.
“We’ve been here since 1860 and are amazingly central – the city is swallowing us up – and it was remarkable to see the looks on people’s faces as they got out of their taxis in front of the brewery gates.
“Just to come through those gates and see the yard and see the beautiful Victorian grandeur. Obviously, we dressed it up but it was quite something and everything was looking shiny.
“We painted stuff that hadn’t been painted for 30 years and, we put stuff in the bin that we should have put in the bin 10 years ago. It was an amazing event and we had about 2,000 people across the weekend come into the brewery.”
The event saw lots of parts of the brewery used that may not have been considered previously and raised about £15,000.
Andrew jokes: “It was great but we might not do it for another 25 years.”
His father Richard, who has been CEO of Joseph Holt since 2000, adds: “We sold our beer at £1.75 a pint in selected pubs over the course of our birthday so that was quite a fun thing to do. It’s not dropping the price very much for us compared to the south-east.”
127 pubs in estate
Richard describes the history of Joseph Holt: “We took the business private in 2000, which is probably the best thing I’ve ever done. We were a PLC for 49 years up until then.”
Richard jokes: “Everything was hunky dory until I got joined by two of the next generation, about five or six years ago, when my daughter Jane – who’s a master brewer and is currently off on maternity – joined us.
“She’d worked for a number of years brewing Carling and then brewing Stella. I think there’s only about three female master brewers in the country.” She also oversees the brewing, transport, food and HR departments.
“Andrew joined a couple of years later so for the first generation in our history, we’re going to have two members in the sixth generation.
“I’m the fifth generation of the business, which was started by great great grandfather Joseph Holt.”
There are 127 pubs in the estate with 120 of those being managed. And Richard adds about 90 of those are run on a franchise basis with self-employed licensees.
In a similar vein to a number of pubcos, Joseph Holt has that franchise retail partner model, which is based on a percentage of take, and compares its model as similar to Heineken’s [Star Pubs] Just Add Talent model and Greene King’s Hive Pubs – with Joseph Holt’s model launching about 10 years ago.
Andrew adds: “We’ve seen it is a really great model for us and it works for everyone involved.”
- To read about how pubs are seen as the “final bastion” by Joseph Holt click here.
Of course, beer is one of the business’s key income streams, Richard says: “Over the years, we’ve really concentrated on the quality of our beers. In the past half dozen or so years, we’ve won seven International Beer awards. We’ve won more awards than any other English Brewer, two for our premium Diamond Lager and one for our Crystal Lager, and we’ve just won one for our Spin Doctor Indie Lager and these are top gold medals so we’ve got some real acclaim on the beers we produce.
“We put a lot of money into lager over the years and we’re very proud of the fact we mature for 21 days, but we’re proud of all our beers. We’ve just done a big promotion and push on our Joseph Holt Bitter, which is extremely popular and that takes pride of place.
“In a market that’s moving increasingly towards the major players that leaves you as a smaller regional in a much better position so we very much enjoyed substantial growth on free trade over the past few years.”
Trailblazer taking off
Core beers for Joseph Holt include its Holt’s Bitter at 4% ABV, Two Hoots Golden Ale 4.2% ABV and its range of lagers.
Andrew explains: “Some 20 years ago, [my father] had the foresight to really invest in lager, in conicals and a kegging line, and we now have a suite of four lagers – three of which have won gold medals at the International Brewing Awards. And so we’ve got 3.8% ABV Crystal Lager, 4.5% ABV Crystal Gold, Diamond Lager at 5% ABV and Spin Doctor 4.8% ABV.
“We launched a really popular stout about three years ago called Trailblazer, coming out Covid, which we sell in about 130 pubs and replaced Guinness in those sites.”
Richard adds: “It was a big move but Trailblazer sales last year were up by double digits and it’s the same this year so it’s phenomenal growth.
“We’ve got over 100 free-trade stockists who have booted out Guinness and put Trailblazer in so it’s been a really popular stout.
“One of the things we did in 2000 was put in a microbrewery so we could brew lots of different flavours including a range of seasonal beers – Chorlton Pale Ale (4.0% ABV) is one of the more famous ones. It gives us a nice range.”
Andrew says: “As regional brewers, you want to fill the portfolio with every single beer style that you know is going to be a hitter, particularly as free trade is such a big part of our business so we also make American IPA (4.5% ABV).”
Joseph Holt pubs do not sell anyone else’s products apart from a couple, Andrew explains: “You wouldn’t get Heineken on the bar and on draught, you wouldn’t get Birra Moretti, you wouldn’t get Cruzcampo, we sell Strongbow and Inch’s in a few of our pubs, but that’s it.
“Everything else is ours so we want to make sure we’ve got the portfolio to back that up. So alongside American IPA, which is fantastic, we’ve also got more traditional citrus pale ale on keg called Northern Hop (4.2% ABV). We’ve got two hugely popular IPAs that we do in bottle as well as in cask.”
Richard adds: “We might have 15 to 20 different beers on the bar. It’s a huge selection.”
Fantastic support
Back to the 175th anniversary celebrations, which it somewhat strangely shares with Hook Norton of Oxford and Everards of Leicester, and its fundraising, Richard reveals: “The real focus of our 175th anniversary has been to give back to the community. We’re very much community-operated in terms of all our pubs.
“The Christie was originally part-funded by my great grandfather [Edward Holt] in 1914 and they raised £20,000, which was a huge amount of money at that time.
“So we’ve challenged all our licensees to help us raise so money for The Christie, which is building a whole new scanning department – that will be the first of its kind in the country.”
Andrew adds: “We’ve had fantastic support from our licensees. Our pubs in parts of the north-west where we run a lot of fantastic pubs are hardly wealthy areas and some of these pubs can raise £15,000 over the course of a year just through charity events.
“It shows all the different and amazing things they do, which demonstrates pubs are such a force for good, as we all know.
“It’s remarkable. We run pubs in parts of Salford, which are pretty challenging areas with social deprivation problems, and some of these pubs can raise thousands of pounds. It just goes to show what amazing assets our community pubs are.”
Funds have reached about £470,000 and there are still three months to go in the appeal.
And with a recent ‘auction of promises’ that brought in about £150,000 that involved about 500 people from the industry and a celebration when all Joseph Holt employees descended on Haydock Racecourse, there’s clearly lots of goodwill coming from the north-west.
- To read an article about how the rumoured smoking ban would affect Joseph Holt, click here.
