Hucknall's Lincoln Green brewery is a town success story

Mansfield Chad

As it opens its eighth pub, Lincoln Green brewery founder Anthony Hughes reflects on the company's success

Transcript

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.

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