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Welcome to OxTalks, powered by OxLEP. OxTalks is your partner in tackling business challenges and achieving your goals, giving an insight into the great work that OxLEP does to support local organisations and communities. OxTalks host Howard Bentham talks to successful leaders from Oxfordshire and beyond to hear their advice to help your business flourish.
Howard Bentham: Hello there and good to be with you once again. I'm Howard Bentham and this is OxTalks, the podcast powered by OxLEP, the local enterprise partnership for Oxfordshire. OxTalks sets out to discuss current issues in business and explore areas of interest in conversation with some of Oxfordshire's most remarkable leaders. Each and every one of my guests is keen to flag up the invaluable support that OxLEP offers and how it could be crucial in helping your company or organisation develop and thrive. Although we focus on Oxfordshire's businesses in these podcasts, we know many of you listen to us in various parts of the UK, and indeed different parts of the globe. Most of the issues we experience here, will be very similar to the ones that you're potentially facing where you are.
So please join in the conversation and share any thoughts and feedback. Our social media is the obvious way to get in touch. We are @OxfordshireLEP on X and Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership on LinkedIn. You can raise a question for future discussions or leave your thoughts on the topics of conversation. Please use the email address on the podcast description and we look forward to hearing from you. In this edition, we'll offer something of a guide to keeping up with changing times, particularly focusing on independent businesses. How can independent organisations and their employees adapt to the ever changing business landscape to compete with larger companies and achieve growth and success? We've spoken in previous OxTalks episodes about the importance of SMEs to the economy both nationally and locally. Put simply, they are the engine room of UK PLC. SMEs account for over 99 percent of the business population in the UK, with a similar percentage here in Oxfordshire as a whole. They employ 16. 7 million people nationally and in 2023 had a turnover of £2.4 trillion, which is just over half of the UK's total, according to government figures.
One of the interesting subplots, however, certainly with today's OxTalks guest, is how he balances age old tradition with driving a small to medium sized family business forward. The 175 year old Hook Norton Brewery in Oxfordshire, incredibly, is still powered by steam and uses drayhorses to make its deliveries. Yet it survives in the digital age with thriving online sales and a growing customer base. Let's find out how they achieve that balancing act. I'm delighted to welcome to OxTalks, the MD of Hook Norton Brewery, James Clarke.
James, welcome. It's a fascinating world that you inhabit, before we talk about steam engines, drey horses and beer, can we find out a little bit more about you and your background? You've been managing director of Hook Norton for two decades at the business, what, for 33 years now, you're the great grandson of the founder, was it always nailed on that you were going to be the boss of the brewery one day?
James Clarke: No, absolutely not and I think it's, well, it certainly wasn't nailed on from a family and immediate business point of view. I think probably sometimes people slightly removed just make the assumption that you're going to take over. But I think there's two strings to it really, one is obviously it's a fantastic opportunity and one that I'm extremely lucky to have been offered and have taken up. But the other one is, you know, if you don't feel it's for you, I think you've absolutely got to be open and say that because it's a lot of jobs that depend on that leadership that person is going to run the business. As you've mentioned, there's lots of history, so you have to sort of maintain that as well. So it was never pressure from family or from the immediate business. It was always that there is something here, but, I'm lucky enough and decided that I would take the opportunity I was presented with.
Howard Bentham: But you were a firefighter at one stage. Was this a firefighter before you worked at the brewery or during or what was..?
James Clarke: No, this was, alongside, I actually started full time at Hawke Norton on the 1st of April, 1991, and started as a, what was then a retained firefighter. I think it may have even been a retained fireman then, now obviously an on call firefighter. I joined up on the 1st of May, 1991.
Howard Bentham: Okay, so it was your thing, you just sort of ran on the side, if you like.
James Clarke: Very much and we had several retained firefighters from the brewery, including my father actually, and my grandfather had been before that.
Howard Bentham: Right, I was just wondering, looking at your background, whether it was the bit of rebellion to not follow the family line, but clearly not.
James Clarke: No, I think the two run very much in parallel and as people probably know, on call firefighters need to be drawn from their immediate community and it was something that we were able to support and did for a long time.
Howard Bentham: Now, as you say, you came to work at Hook Norton in 91, your father sadly died in 2004. I'd imagine that the onus was on you then to step into his role, aside from the personal sadness you were feeling about your father, was that a difficult decision to make?
James Clarke: When I started the business, I came through on the production side, so I established a laboratory, and I was very much on the brewing and the manufacturing side more so than the general business side to start with and then took over in charge of the brewing operations, I think, in the late 1990s and then father decided that, you know, he would slow down his commitment a bit and do more of the sort of PR type things as we, you know, kiss the babies, as we say and I would take on more sort of operational side of it. Sadly, we did the handover in January 2004, but then he passed away in September 2004, so we didn't really have the handover or transition that we were hoping to.
Howard Bentham: So not a difficult decision to make that leap then for you. It was by then, I guess it was, really becoming an obvious thing to do.
James Clarke: Yes, I think that the plan was already there, it's just it, sort of happened much sooner than we thought.
Howard Bentham: We've talked about leadership in previous editions of OxTalks. How have your previous career and life experiences shaped you as a person and made you into the kind of MD that you are today?
James Clarke: I think I'm very lucky to have been able to combine the work at the brewery and the work in the fire service because, you know, work at brewery, family business, long history and tradition that needs to be maintained as well as obviously keeping the business commercial and ultimately protecting jobs and certainly job protection was our key all through the COVID period. But then doing the firefighting on the side, you know, very different, you know, local authority based run by the county council, so very different, structure and I think that, and with an element of discipline as is sort of necessary in that role. So I was lucky I was able to merge the two together. I think I'm probably a bit too laid back and my leadership can be too collaborative sometimes, but certainly that I was lucky to have the two elements shaping that.
Howard Bentham: That is really fascinating to explore because something like firefighting is a real team effort, but it needs outstanding individuals. So that's something that I guess in business is something you would need to try and sort of focus on as well, I'd imagine.
James Clarke: Yeah, I think so, certainly from my experience in the fire services office, you know, short periods of fairly intense activity where you were very reliant on your team, you know, life and death sounds a bit dramatic, but sometimes you were committing yourself into hostile environments and you need to be absolutely sure, you know, training was, the old thing of, you know, train hard, fight easy, absolutely and obviously in a commercial business, you've generally got longer periods of time to plan what you want to do on a sort of short, mid, and longer term basis. So I think it's very similar planning needs to go in, you know, training and so on. But I certainly feel there was a huge benefit from having two quite different things that I was doing.
Howard Bentham: Let's talk about business growth and balancing that with maintaining traditional ways of doing things and there aren't many more traditional businesses than yours. It says 175 years old this year. What do you think have been the major changes during your time in the business and perhaps the changes that you're most proud of?
James Clarke: I think, the majority of the change we've seen has been driven by, you know, changing consumer patterns and, if I, I'll sort of put it very simply, I've been at the brewery just over 30 years. when I started I think we, we'd just got four channels on the television, just gone up from three to four. Obviously the mobile phone and internet were years away and the pub was very much a part of social fabric in all communities, you socialise there, you partied there, if you wanted a plumber and electrician, you found out where they drank on a Sunday and you went and saw them in the pub and told them you had a job for them. You know, that's all gone now and also consumption has changed, you know, back then we still had some sort of heavy industry. There's still quite a lot of beer sold in club environments as well as pubs, but it has hugely changed since then. I think attitudes to alcohol have changed too. There's a much stronger health law, something like twenty three percent of, I think, twenty to twenty five year olds do not drink alcohol. So a huge change is driven by changing consumer patterns really and we need to make sure that we can adapt to that, because we're very lucky with all the history. I've got records going back to the beginning. I can look back, we can recreate old beers. We have the horses, the steam engine, the lovely old building. But they still have to work in a modern world, and they still have to have appeal and you still need to make sure that you keep your relevance.
Howard Bentham: Give us a tangible example of that then, a decision that you've made that factors in all those changes over those 30 years, one that stands out for you perhaps.
James Clarke: I think the big thing is the, probably was the COVID period obviously, I think was the hardest challenge the company in 170 years it was then. Two world wars, pubs were never shut, pubs were kept open. So there was some respite for the people who were remaining at home. The beer consumption has gone down, as I said, due to these changing lifestyles, consumer patterns. So don't try and push water uphill, you know, focus on what you can do. So we've actually reduced the amount of beer that we make, but we've looked at exploring different markets, having shorter routes to market. So we like to sell beer directly to pubs who sell to customers, and we like to sell beer directly to customers. We don't sell much beer to wholesalers and that was one of the fundamental changes so we could reduce the volume, increase the profitability a bit, increase the margin and for an old building that takes quite a lot of maintenance, we can't produce high volumes, you know, cheaply if you like. So, that was a big thing and people understand what we did. It was quite hard articulating why have you reduced... we're probably brewing half the volume we were 30 years ago. But then beer consumption in the UK 30 years ago was about double what it currently is and of that figure, 90 percent was drunk in pubs, 10 percent drunk at home. Now slightly more beer is drunk at home than in pubs or clubs. From a total it's much lower. So in effect that drinking in pubs, clubs, in what we call the entree, has dropped significantly. But I think we sort of took the view, you know, acknowledge that you're not going to change these patterns and just try and deal with it.
Howard Bentham: The keeping up with evolving business landscape, you've clearly got your finger on the pulse, you know what's happening out there, to use a phrase, but how have you balanced the tradition with, for example, you've got great online sales. But you've got a steam powered factory, which I just think is just amazing and you have horses. Why not have vans? Why not have a modern...
James Clarke: We do have vans and electric motors and things as well. Yeah, it's not all steam and horses! Or it's all part of it. There's a well known beer writer who says you have to live with the past not in it and again that sounds quite simple really, but that's been one of the mantras that I've tried to work with. The best way to preserve a lot of the old machinery and fabric is to keep using it, rather than just museum it, but make changes where you need to make them, so the horses are unashamedly a part of our marketing, you know, they're a net cost of the business obviously. There's just over two full time employees and there's three horses and everything that goes with it, but there are less breeding shire horse mares than breeding pandas, so we're quite involved in the breed, not just shire horse at Hook Norton.
Howard Bentham: That's an amazing anecdote, incredible!
James Clarke: Yeah and I've been involved with the Shire Horse Society and we still are, and we want to support that and if you're going to support the breed, you have to keep using them. So again, you can't put the horse in the museum, you need to keep using these things.
Howard Bentham: So you make less beer now, tastes have changed as you've said. I mean, just looking at some stats I've got here, only 30 percent of 18 to 24 year olds drink beer. Low and no alcohol drinks very much in fashion and an older audience, I would surmise, would physically drink less and it's a bit more quality over quantity in some respects there. Have your products evolved with that changing taste?
James Clarke: Hugely, yeah so again, in my sort of three decades there, when I started, we brewed three beers. We brewed a mild a bitter, and Old Hooky and that was it. Now we brew over the course of a year, literally dozens, because we have a small sort of test plant that we use as well. But we've brought some old recipes out and we developed some new beers. So one of the more recent ones was a gluten free pale ale, because that's, if you have a member of your group that wants to seek out a gluten free beer, they'll be the decision maker. So they'll want to go to the place with a good gluten free offering. so we developed that, which I'm really pleased with. We're brewing lager now. So we never actually kegged our beers in the sixties and seventies when the keg beer, the beer in the barrel that was ready to drink rather than being a live beer came around. We do now, we have a lager, which is about 10 percent of our sales and people say, what would your father and grandfather think? Yeah, I think they'd be positive, they'd say, you know, lager? What are you doing brewing lager? But, there was a demand for it and it's a locally produced beer using our own well water and It's an opportunity to say it's growing.
Howard Bentham: And the no alcohol thing..?
James Clarke: We're looking at low and no. We've done some trials with some 2 percent beers. We are looking at doing a low, so below half a percent, but that's work in progress, which the team have been tasked with.
Howard Bentham: And what about competing with the larger online retailers? Because you are online now and obviously competition is very tough. Are things such as packaging and price difficult to get correct and then still keep what you're offering profitable for the business?
James Clarke: Online sales of beer are quite difficult, because beer generally is lower value. So if someone's buying a bottle of malt whiskey that's, you know, 40, 50, 60 pounds, and probably weighs a kilogram and can be packaged nicely, a case of beer, thirty pounds, let's say, and weighs ten kilograms. So you have a, the challenge there with that. But the, I mean, the beauty really of the internet and online is that it really leveled the playing field as does, you know, social media in terms of communications. Small companies can have a, big reach and quite a lot of noise from, you know, far lower cost than they would have been more traditionally.
Howard Bentham: And I guess there's also the fact that you are online, you're a local brand, a very strong local brand, obviously, but national too and international and that just raises that profile, I guess.
James Clarke: It does, yes, yeah and whilst, you know, some will say, well, don't you want people to drink beer in pubs? Yes, we do. But then there are people who drink beer at home for the stats I've mentioned, we need to make sure we can satisfy both and again, we had a fairly good online business pre COVID and then like so many, it went extremely busy over the COVID period, but it did test us and we broadened the product range then because I thought if people are drinking at home, I'd like to always have 12 different bottle beers. So there's some variety, some choice and that pushed us to develop a few new products and really develop the online platform.
Howard Bentham: I mean for me where I think you've been super savvy is the fact that it's not just beer, is it? There is an experience to this too. You have experienced tours, there's a hospitality offering, it's, you've really embraced diversification, that jumps off the page at me.
James Clarke: Yes and that's, we've been doing brewery tours for a long time and we've noticed over the years, certainly there's a lot more interest in provenance, you know, where your food and drink comes from food miles, you know, sustainability, carbon footprints, and so on. We're lucky with the old traditional buildings we've got, which we are still using, although we've modernised some of the work inside, but becoming more and more a tourist type destination and we have lots of buildings on site, which only really, that they're historically buildings where sacks of grain was stored. So they're quite low ceiling, then you're a bit limited what you can do with them apart from put people in them. So we've developed various different facilities at restaurant functionary and wedding venue and so on, because people like to come, whether it's just for a beer, whether it's for a tour, whether they want an event there and that's an area that we've really seen growing. I think we've been lucky in Oxfordshire, with things like, you know, Soho Farmhouse and Daylesford on the Fringe, which has probably moved the Cotswolds east towards London and we do obviously rely on a lot of tourists coming from the London area, with decent rail links now, it is an hour to Oxfordshire and there's a lot to offer and we're certainly seeing that side of the business grow, and there'll be investment focused on that part as well.
Howard Bentham: How many people have you got working for you?
James Clarke: I think there's about a hundred and twenty, of which probably two thirds are now in what I call a sort of retail type role. So in terms of manufacturing and distribution, that's the lower part.
Howard Bentham: And going back your 33 years, what would that compare to?
James Clarke: There would have been nobody in retail and probably 50 people in the brewery.
Howard Bentham: Incredible, isn't it? You've touched on the sort of geographical thing there. You are, with all respect to Hook Norton, pretty much in the middle of nowhere, it's a lovely spot. Is that a help or a hindrance being plonked in the middle of the countryside like that?
James Clarke: I think if you looked purely commercially, you'd probably say a challenge, but then I look and I think it's a fantastic opportunity and when I started, we were the small brewer in Oxfordshire, you had Brakspear down in Henley on Thames, you had Morlands in Abingdon and you had Morrell’s in Oxford, all in a quite high value town city centre sites and unfortunately, I think that was part of their challenge. But the site value we're in basically surrounded by fields in a rural environment and we're not squeezed by property prices and I think that's been a big saviour. So definitely it's a long term benefit.
Howard Bentham: And what are the real challenges then you face having a base sort of away from the centres of population? The horses can only go so far!
James Clarke: Also, I guess so far, yeah, yeah. But, you know, our distribution fleet has reduced the size. So we tend not to run big trucks anymore. We're generally running smaller vehicles and that's also a function of the fact that beer drinking in pubs has reduced. So if you're going to a pub and delivering, you know, 20 draft beer containers, it's fine, you go on a lorry, but more and more now you're delivering two or three and it's far more efficient to just use a van. Sort of darting around the countryside and then big trucks and that suits us with the area that we're in a narrow roads and so on. But yeah, I think our location absolutely is a positive.
Howard Bentham: Let's bring in OxLEP's communication manager Rob Panting into the conversation. Rob, talking about the rural location here, this must be an issue that OxLEP hears pretty often. There's an awful lot of green space in Oxfordshire, which isn't always conducive to efficiently running a business.
Rob Panting: Yes, we do hear that quite often, particularly from a small business perspective where, as has been touched on a little bit with James earlier on, I think often for businesses, the bottom line cost aspect is, you know, the main decision maker. So that comes into play a lot. I think more widely, particularly for small businesses, one of the big issues in a rural setting is the access to good quality broadband. We heard from James earlier on about online sales and actually how effective that is, particularly for some industries, it makes a huge difference. So having access to good quality, high speed broadband in a rural setting is something that probably has appeared more of an issue over recent years, whereas access to space perhaps has fallen down the priority list a little bit for small businesses. We've done quite a bit of work as a local enterprise partnership to try and secure funding to create better broadband connections within the county. So the rural gigabit voucher scheme that we've supported, that's brought in around about a million pounds into the county in recent years and that's helped to connect, or establish 400 new ultra fast broadband connections into the county. So those little bits I think really do help to ensure that the rural economy of Oxfordshire continues to be a good one. But certainly, you know, I think any rural business will find that there's always challenges. But hopefully those sort of new additions has really helped our rural business community.
Howard Bentham: Does Oxfordshire and indeed many other parts of the UK sometimes forget that rural business is absolutely fundamental to successful and vibrant local economies?
Rob Panting: Totally and I think organisations like ours, you know, we need to remember that it's very easy for us to talk about the science and innovation qualities in Oxfordshire and obviously they're a massive part of our economy, the research and development that happens in Oxfordshire and the brilliant business and science parks that we have here. But we mustn't forget that, this might be a slightly dated stat, but I think 80 percent of the county is in effect agricultural land or looked after by businesses with that focus. So we can't forget that and we need to support our rural community and rural businesses as best we can.
Howard Bentham: And I guess even just thinking about your firefighting side of things James, that local aspect is crucial to what you do.
James Clarke: Absolutely, yes, yeah, yeah and just on the sort of, access to internet and broadband and so on, it's transformed what we can do and lots of local businesses around us are in rural locations and one of them is an engineering business so you know, lots of stuff going up to the cloud, but these high speed connections are absolutely key and I liken it, people think I'm crazy, but I liken it to when the railway came in the 1880s. You know, when the railway came to Hook Norton, you could actually go somewhere and talk to somebody. Before that, you're on a horse and that's very much what the internet has brought and if you can get good strengths there, it will definitely drive these businesses in these nice rural locations.
Howard Bentham: Yeah and James is really keen to stress the positives of being in the sticks, Rob and it's, Internet is one thing, but communicate, the other side of it, the physical communication, the roads and the infrastructure is so crucial.
Rob Panting: Hugely important and actually the point you made James, about the visitor economy in Oxfordshire and how that, I like the description around how the Cotswolds has moved further east in recent years, I think that's a really good analogy to make and the importance for us as a county to invest in supporting our rural economy that might traditionally not have looked at the visitor economy as something they could tap into. I think the most recent figures that were released a couple of years ago that the visitor economy in Oxford was picked up again to be over two billion pounds per year, the value of it. So there's a significant opportunity for rural businesses to really tap into that and also, you know, you think about our market towns and how they can benefit from getting good footfall into those areas. The likes of Burford and Woodstock and these rural towns where, you know, they truly benefit from, you know, not just, you know, national footfall, but international footfall as well and you know, it's great to hear that Hook Norton Brewery has hugely benefited from that aspect too.
Howard Bentham: James and Rob, thank you both for the moment. We'll chat again shortly. You're listening to OxTalks, the podcast powered by the Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership please get in touch with the team at OxLEP to comment on what you've been hearing, find us on social media. We are on X @OxfordshireLEP, or via LinkedIn search for Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership. Perhaps you run a company or organisation that's looking for some specific help, or simply need a steer to the most appropriate business advice available. Why not try the OxLEP Business Support Tool?
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Let's chat more to James Clark, MD of Hook Norton Brewery. Before we delve into other areas, James, I've just got to ask you about the fire that you had at the brewery back in May this year. How are things now? And did you get to the bottom of what caused it? It was in the stable block, wasn't it?
James Clarke: It was, it appears it was in the roof of the stable block. So the ground floor is the stables and some storage and the first floor is some office space that we let out to another local business and two staff flats. It appears it started in the first floor, possibly in the roof. The investigations are ongoing, we've had quite detailed forensic investigations going on, but yeah, significant roof fire, local fire service on scene within seven minutes, it happened during the day, I think it was about 12. 30 in the day, they're on scene and then obviously lots more resources came in. Lot of damage, unfortunately the people that run the offices lost everything. But just going back, you know, we've talked about broadband and so on. On the Tuesday morning after the fire on the Monday, they were back up and running without any business interruption. So even the old days of your server where you did your backup at the end of the day, you would still lose a day's work. They didn't lose anything, and literally the delay was just getting hold of new hardware. So, you know, more laptops and things. I thought that was impressive and you know, nobody was hurt. Everybody, all the evacuation plans.
Howard Bentham: The horses were in the field, weren't they?
James Clarke: Horses are in the field anyway because it's a Monday, their day off.
Howard Bentham: That's their day off. The day off, Monday's their day off!
James Clarke: Yes, yeah. So there, everybody evacuated properly and you know, the team at the brewery did what they could. We got underground water sources we used for brewing. So it's a fairly high quality water used by the fire service to extinguish the fire and we had them from all over the county and the point for me is nobody was hurt. Evacuation plans work, so some of those things can seem a bit boring with a business, but they are essential and that they worked and we had 100 firefighters over a 24 hour period and we didn't have one accident book entry, which I thought was impressive too, because you would expect with a fire of that nature, with 10 fire engines at the height of the blaze, there might be something, but, no, it was all...
Howard Bentham: Are you sitting there with your little peak cap and a checklist as a former firefighter?
James Clarke: Well, I was in the, in their control unit with a set of prairie plans, sort of saying, this is the wall where I think we need to try and stop the fire, trying not to be an armchair firefighter and then we're Google earthing and showing where the water supplies are and then we made, going back to the rural location, Prairie Lane is quite narrow, so we established an alternative access across some farmer's fields and again, using Google Earth in their control unit, liaising with the police was, I noticed, I've been out on the fire service 20 years, but I noticed a huge improvement in the organisation, the general management of the incident. I think that the fact nobody was hurt probably sits in with that sort of culture that's there.
Howard Bentham: Brilliant and the horse is going to get a nice shiny new stable block?
James Clarke: Yes, we're on it now. So now the work starts to rebuild. So we'll hopefully get the building completely scaffolded, shrouded and then rebuild it. We'll have some temporary stables, I'd say, but again, the big thing is that nobody was hurt.
Howard Bentham: Let's look at sales, who's your main target audience? I'm intrigued.
James Clarke: Our main target audience is the person that goes to the pubs to drink beer. But we have to be very careful we don't get too focused or be too exclusive on that. That's ideally where we'd like to. We will indeed come to the brewery and have a glass of beer sat in one of the bars of the brewery, but you know, demographic, it's completely broad. We want to appeal to everybody, but the key focus is the pub, but then say there's lots of distance selling with the online business. There's the brewery shop where people come and buy face-to-face and then there's some growing export markets.
Howard Bentham: Right, so there's not a person you have in mind that drinks and buys your beer then? It's a broad church now?
James Clarke: It's a broad church. In terms of person, it's probably someone that has some interest in their provenance and their food and drink. it's probably somebody who likes other, you know, alcoholic drinks, not just beer. They have an interest in that because we like to think we're, you know, a bit artisan. We're not global brands that are just pushed from a marketing side. It's probably somebody that's quite aware of what they're eating and it's somebody that understands that, you know, moderate beer consumption can be part of a healthy diet.
Howard Bentham: How do you attract and retain new customers?
James Clarke: I think in terms of the person that goes in the pub, I say we are not selling beer, we are selling an experience and for me, when I go to the pub, the beer is a part of that experience. The other bits are who I'm with, because hopefully I've picked a nice company, the environment you're in, you know, whether it's sat by the log fire, in a beer garden, by a river, whatever it may be and the hospitality and the service, because you know that if you're buying a, you know, not just a beer, but an alcoholic drink or you know, any drink in the pub environment, you know, you will be paying a lot more than you would if you went to a supermarket or grocery chain, but a large element of that cost is for the service, the hospitality that you're enjoying. So for me, it's not just about and I think if it ever became just about the product, we're getting something wrong. We need to make sure we're selling an experience, we're selling fun.
Howard Bentham: Is size important? Do you think your unique position as a smaller, family owned brewery is attractive to customers? You talk about the provenance thing.
James Clarke: Yeah, I think it's attractive. You've got to make sure you're not perceived as, you know, stuffy or old fashioned. So you've got your drinkers who will drink one of your, you know, longer established brands and that's what they want to drink. They're not sort of promiscuous drinkers, they like that and so you've got to absolutely work on the quality of that and I'm always telling the brewing team, it's you know, it's our Best Bitter on our Old Hooky that pay the bills, you know, they're the two main beers, but let's have a play and develop and create some new recipes, which they have done. Let's look at what we want to do with that, let's push the boundaries a bit, but let's make sure, if you can get a three and a half percent bitter, cask condition, so really serve the customer in really good condition, then that arms you quite well to do lots of other things because the lower strength beers are arguably harder to brew because you've got less flavor there, less alcohol and alcohol is a major part of the flavor balance. So let's get the bread and butter right, let's get that right, make sure the quality is there. So the person that almost subliminally buys that beer, they go to a pub on a Friday to meet their mates, they go on a Thursday to play Aunt Sally and they're going to drink, I won't quantify but they're going to drink a few beers and they just want a nice drink that they can enjoy that's the right price and so on. So we've got to get that right for those people but then we've got to do a bit of work on new product development, you know, exploration, trying different things, which we have done. We have this small, say, pilot brewery that's ten percent of the size of our main brewery's smallest scale.
Howard Bentham: On site?
James Clarke: On site, yeah, yeah. So I've even brewed a couple of beers this year. All of the brewing team are quite young and quite sort of hoppy pale beer focused. So I just throw a ring and say, I want to brew a brown beer. So I brewed...
Howard Bentham: You're the official old duffer, are you?
James Clarke: I brewed a mild for my 33 years of the brewery just for the fun of it. But that enables us to do some, you know, NPD and a bit of fun and in fact we have people, we host weddings and some people that have a wedding there will come and brew their own beer for the wedding. So we've got some people in there today, I think. they will come up with, well I'd like a beer, you know, this sort of strength, this sort of colour, this sort of flavour and we'll look at the raw materials available, we'll taste some of our existing beers and say which characters from that beer would you like in your beer? And then they can have their beer at their wedding and it's a great way, it's very personal. we might hand bottle some of their own label on, so there's a nice wedding favor and it's really good when you've got a long wedding rather than maybe giving them expensive fizzy wine all afternoon and it has a fairly rapid physiological effect whereas a couple of pints of a mid strength beer everyone's going to enjoy the day a lot more.
Howard Bentham: That's a really good idea. I'm intrigued about your chain of pubs, because it's quite a number across quite an expanse of counties, isn't it really? And just sort of help us understand how they support the local economy.
James Clarke: So we have just over 30 pubs and they are spread around sort of North Oxfordshire and then into South North Ants, Warwickshire, Gloucestershire and I think into Worcestershire.
Howard Bentham: They're all owned, that's...
James Clarke: All the freehold properties owned by us. Some of the, a small number of those pubs are directly managed by us, so we employ the staff that work in them, but by far the majority are let out on a, enanted basis. So the people in there rent the property from us, they have a supply deal with us to buy their draft beer. But in terms of what they do for, you know, food and wine and how they run the business, that's entirely up to them. So it does create some difference and individuality which can work very well and we've got some pubs that I'm, you know, really pleased with how they're, going. It's tough, they've seen the rising costs as much as any business and you've seen, you know, not just input costs in terms of food and utilities, also staff costs. We, because hospitality was quite affected during COVID, a lot of certainly kitchen teams retrained. So there's a bit of a shortage and salaries and expert salary expectation, is significantly higher than it was four or five years ago.
Howard Bentham: And that's, as a business, difficult to tally. Sports clubs as well, because I know, Rob, your cricket club at Shipton, you know, you're a fully paid up member of the Hooky Customer Club, by the sounds of it.
Rob Panting: I've enjoyed the introduction of the Hooky Cider, which I know is I think created off-site. But equally I know I think we've been accustomed now for four or five years. We changed during COVID in fact, and yes a lot of the club members, the type of person I suppose you're describing in terms of the drinkers that we have, they enjoy the quality of the drink and I think actually that's probably been demonstrated in the money that's found its way into the club and obviously in terms of the brewery as well. So yeah, the cricket club is a fully paid up member of Hook Norton Brewery.
Howard Bentham: I know we're sort of joking about that, but there is that ripple effect locally on something like a cricket club, that will have a huge effect on that area and obviously that all comes back to you.
James Clarke: Yeah and it's all about, you know, obviously we want to sell our products, but we very much want the local franchise and it's not just like when I go to the pub, it's not just for the beer, pubs aren't just selling beer, they're selling an experience when we sell beer to customers, you know, pubs, sports clubs, we should be sending that as well. You know, we have regular delivery staff that have their regular runs, they get to know the outlet. So, is it a cellar underground? Is it in a shed? Do I have to get a key? Do I have to be here between this time? Am I not to get there too early? All these sorts of things and we can do that and be flexible, because we have the shop on site, we offer trade collections of beer seven days a week. So if you have a busy, you know, Friday night, you can come to the brewery Saturday and pick up some more beer. It's quite competitive out there because consumption is under pressure and we'll sometimes find we'll be undercut by another company and we might lose a customer, but quite often two or three months later they're coming back and saying actually the fact that you delivered regularly, the fact that you were flexible, the fact that we could pick up here at the weekend, you know, the fact that you provided a few prizes for our raffle, this sort of thing, come back. So it's a case of selling that whole experience again to the customer.
Howard Bentham: The pub trade, though, is having a tough time. Is the pub industry dying?
James Clarke: The public industry is under a lot of pressure and it's mainly due to changing lifestyles, as we said earlier, and I think we need to not lament too much the fact that a lot of pubs have closed. It's sad, but if they were commercially viable, they wouldn't close and when you drive around a sort of urban or suburban environment and you see, you know, a supermarket chain, one of their sort of smaller, on a corner, then there used to be a pub, then that was a pub retailing liquor. It's now a shop retailing, amongst other things, liquor. It's still a retail outlet and it's still probably employing, I don't know, half a dozen, maybe a dozen people. So, we need to be mindful of that, because we can't just have pubs that are empty. You know, lunchtime drinking now is all but disappeared. So we have to just be mindful of that, we've lost about 10, 000 pubs, I think, over the last 10 years in this country. But consumption has followed that pattern as well and you never see in the press about a pub that opens or reopens. You know, maybe you just don't see that because it's good news, which is often not seen as news. So pubs are under a huge amount of pressure from changing consumer habits and from the cost base. But there are still some amazing pubs out there and you have to get that experience right. There are lots of pubs now reducing their food offer because they, you know, looking at the balance of the cost of the kitchen team versus that and actually, people sometimes are quite happy to go to Pub with a limited or indeed even no food offer. Certainly in, you know, a city you would find that lots of pubs can survive on liquor only, but in the rural pubs, people are adapting, pop up foods become quite a thing, because you've got no overhead, when it comes and it keeps people there. So people are being innovative and this is where if you have an owner operated business, which you do with a tenanted model, hopefully they can put their flair on it and just be a bit different. But you know, people don't just default to the pub now, they've got so many other leisure things at their fingertips. So the pub has got to be... and the pub is competing with home entertainment. So I remember when it went from three to four TV channels now, and you look now, you know, you scroll along Prime, Netflix, iPlayer, whatever else it is and you've literally got access to thousands and thousands of hours of entertainment. So we're up against that sort of competition. We've seen a lot more festivals over the last probably 10, 15 years. They're under pressure a bit this year because of the costs of infrastructure, but people, if they're going to a festival for a weekend, they spend several hundred pounds. But pub visits would suffer as a result of that. So we're seeing pubs do a bit more with music. I'm a big believer in live music in pubs and I think, that's something that's having a little bit of a renaissance. So yeah, it's hard for them, I think there will be a few more pubs go countrywide, but hopefully what's left will be better. But if you wound the clock back, you know, a few decades rather than just the last two, you'd see that pattern anyway, you know and there's, I remember the Bell Inn that closed probably 10 years ago and then there were a couple of other pubs that 40 years ago, you know, life moves on and we need to not forget that. As we said, you know, with all this tradition and history, hang on to it where we can, but we want to make sure. So what we don't want in this country is 60, 000 pubs that are all lacklustre. There'll probably be 45, 000 pubs, but hopefully they'll be better and they'll be busy, yeah.
Howard Bentham: Yeah, I mean, like many small breweries, the aim of late is just survival. Are you feeling more optimistic about the future?
James Clarke: I mean, we are in a more fortunate position where we have very little bank borrowings, because we own our freehold property estate andx you know, that's been significant help and comfort to us as we invest. We tend to, you know, most of our long investments are taken for, with very much a long term view. But yes, we're optimistic, we're moving quite fast, we're investing in greener energy. The brewing process is quite energy intensive, so we've worked with, parts of the Enterprise Partnership looking at our usage and looking at our data, so we'll be investing in some new energy raising kit, some green energy in terms of solar as well. Our aim is to go to 50 percent solar within probably a year, but also looking at pubs where there's an opportunity to do that as well. You've got the complexity there of lots of the pubs are listed buildings or conservation areas, so that will be a longer burn, but we thought we could get the brewery on that side and then investing more in the retail experience, so the visitor experience.
Howard Bentham: Just at the moment, so, what's the sort of percentage wise, in terms of bulk of your business? Is it in the pubs? Is it online sales? Is it the spin offs like the Visitor Centre? How, does it break down?
James Clarke: At the moment about, two thirds would be into pubs, clubs of some nature and the bulk of the rest would be, a little bit of wholesale, a little bit of export and then the rest would be direct to consumer and, but we see that growing. I think that will grow to at least, probably go to half in the next 10 years, I think.
Howard Bentham: Interesting. It's a family business and obviously you're the boss and you're the great grandson and the history is there. Do you invite engagement from employees or people outside the family with different ideas or maybe business organisations to offer some help? Or we've always done it this way, we're going to keep it like this?
James Clarke: No, I try and be absolutely the opposite, you know, we've always done it this way, but that doesn't mean it's the right way, you know, I've been doing this for 30 years, well you've been doing it wrong for 30 years is sometimes my response. I think you've got to be we're very lucky because we're in a very social industry, so we have regular meetings of sort of finance and IT people from probably 20 companies of our sort of they meet up annually, production groups. I was on a barley walk on Tuesday with some barley growers in Norfolk and there were, I think, half a dozen other brewers there. So as well as looking at the barley and talking to the farmer, you obviously talk about wider issues. But no, absolutely always taking on advice and always trying to encourage staff to have ideas and say, you know, accept the fact that nine out of 10 of your ideas will not go anywhere because they won't, but don't stop having ideas because that one in ten, you know, could be massive, but don't be put off by the fact, you know, let's have these ideas and let's talk more with discussing best practice across, you know, we're very, you know, we mentioned earlier, we suffered the fire in May, and I had, you know, not dozens, but lots and lots of offers of help, you know, do you need this? And it was genuine help. It wasn't people trying to take advantage, it was what can we help with? We were lucky because it didn't really affect our operations, but that's the nature of the brewing industry.
Howard Bentham: Rob, OxLEP's main market, if you like, when it comes to providing business support, tends to be businesses that have just started out perhaps, or those in the very early stages of growth. How often do you support the more established businesses that have been around for a hundred plus years?
Rob Panting: Yeah, more often than you would think. So we did an impact report at the end of 2023, and that looked at, so the past six or seven years, the type of businesses that we've supported and around about 10 percent of those are growing businesses, which would sort of classify as 10 percent annual growth and 5 percent are scale up businesses, which represent 20 percent growth per year. So it's a decent proportion of our client base, are your more established businesses. I think from our perspective, you know, it's important that we remain aware of the challenges that face those sort of more established businesses and as we touched on earlier, the rural business community too, I think there's a lot more awareness now, perhaps within the general public in terms of the challenges for rural businesses. I think, you know, speaking from personal taste perspective, something like Clarkson's Farm, you know, whether you like the guy or not, he's raised a huge amount of awareness, around the challenges facing the farming community and you know, actually how much money it costs to run a farm and what you get at the end of it, you know, I think it's, been quite eye opening and you know, there'll be examples of that, not just in the farming industry, but across all rural, sectors. So just having greater awareness, I think is really important and for organisations like ours to learn those challenges and be on top of them and understand them very different to perhaps the challenges of more urban based businesses.
Howard Bentham: So on something like an established brewer or a company of similar sort of history, what kind of advice are you being asked for?
Rob Panting: I think, like most businesses, and particularly off the back of COVID, quite often the discussions are based around access to finance. I think a lot of businesses still are looking at how they can invest in their business and take it to the next level where that's introducing new technologies to perhaps make things a bit more efficient. We spoke about the sustainability aspect of businesses that comes at a cost quite often and for some small businesses they don't necessarily have that budget readily available. So quite often it tends to be based around those but equally you know looking at ways in which businesses can innovate and look at new ways of doing things. The introduction of AI, that seems to be the hot topic for a lot of businesses at the moment, how they can use AI and different methods to perhaps sort of shorten processes, things like exporting as well, that maybe that hasn't been tapped into in the past. So there's lots of different areas that we do support businesses with and in particular rural businesses.
Howard Bentham: Perhaps over the years, James, you seem quite happy to ask for help, maybe rewind the clock, look at the business in its sort of previous incarnation. Did you ask for help or is it always the family sort of looked in as opposed to looking out?
James Clarke: No, I think we've always been very open and asking for help is a strength in my mind, not a weakness. You know, I like to think I'm competent and strong at some things, but I probably know those areas after 30 years where I'm not and I won't be afraid to ask for help and you know, I try and encourage that as a culture within the staff all the way through the business, you know, clearly if someone asks for help for the same thing three or four times, you know, you have an issue there, but again, you need to reflect on a bit, I think, you know, did I train them properly? And there's a big difference between showing and training, which is something is a bugbear of mine. I showed that person how to do it, zbut did you train them? Because they're two completely different things. but absolutely asking for help is a strength.
Howard Bentham: And the family business thing, again can that be a hindrance or is that a strength? How do you view that?
James Clarke: For us, it's certainly been a strength. So during COVID, we didn't charge any of our pubs any rent because they were closed, now they were in a contractual agreement that said, you know, you owe this rent and you should look to claim it back from whatever source of government funding there was. But our concern was if when we got through the COVID, I then had three dozen sets of keys on my desk, I'd have three dozen closed pubs and that was no good to anybody. So I think when the lockdown was first announced, we took a management decision to cut their rent right down, but the board came back and said, no commercial rent. So they only paid a very small rent, which is there for their domestic element of living in the pub and we knew straight away that, you know, that we'd post a thumping great loss because the rental income is important as well as the sales. But the view of the board and most of the ordinary shareholding sits with the board was that we've got to do this as a long term view and you know, investments go up and down, that little caveat that's on every advertisement on the telly, they go up and down, people only tend to read the up bit. So it was decided that, no, we would make sure that I'd take a long term view for our business and you know, consequent no dividend for two or three years while we recovered. But that was what we decided to do, you know, when times are good, you'll make something from it and when times are tough, you've got to stand up and be counted for the long term benefit of the business and so that came from the non execs.
Howard Bentham: Who are not necessarily family members.
James Clarke: Three of them are family, one of them is independent, but they're all non execs, so they're not in the business on a day to day. You know, that was their view, we need to do this. We've got to protect these people.
Howard Bentham: Fascinating. I guess in a family business that's nearly 200 years old, do you feel the weight of history on your shoulders? I mean, you wouldn't want to be the one when they look at all the paintings on the wall that he was the one that messed it up!
James Clarke: Yeah, of course I've just been, well I've had a beer writer write a book, which I've obviously been closely involved in, and he's written the book and it's just about ready to go to print, and then I keep checking it, I've had it proofread and I look at it and I find another piece of, history or document or something, I think, oh, I should really put this in there, but I can't, because I can't put everything in there, but we're so lucky to have this great history and I've got to try and leave it in better shape than that in which it was, I took it over, you know, allowing for changing market conditions and everything else. But I hope, you know, I need to leave and I've added some value and leave it in the best shape I can.
Howard Bentham: Rob, just talking about traditional businesses, throughout the podcast here. I mean, are they quick to embrace innovation like Hook Norton Brewery has been? Is that your experience?
Rob Panting: Yes, I think so. Probably the best example we could cite is our recent innovation support for business program that closed down last summer, 2023 and we supported over 700 businesses through that program alone and I think that generated upwards of 100 new jobs for the county and specifically that program addressed businesses looking at innovation and new ways of doing things. So there is a, there's definitely a culture for businesses to do things differently, to do things perhaps more efficiently and ultimately to generate opportunities in the county as well. So the fact that that program and you know, this is only like a small sample set, there'll be examples of businesses embracing innovation outside of business support programs, but the fact that that supported a hundred new jobs for the county, that's a hundred new jobs that wouldn't have existed without the support. So I think our experience is yes, businesses are looking to embrace innovation, however that might...
Howard Bentham: And the fact that you can tailor that, it is bespoke.
Rob Panting: Absolutely, yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously there are programs that we run that perhaps focus on particular ways of doing things, we mentioned earlier, you know, businesses perhaps experiencing exporting for the first time and understanding that may be looking at apprenticeships, that's something that we spoke about prior to the recording and how they can make a big difference to an organisation, support the growth of their business that way, get people very much bought into the culture of a company. So innovation is, can be termed in lots of different ways and I think, you know, most businesses are very keen to embrace it.
Howard Bentham: James, how important are organisations like OxLEP in helping to guide businesses in the right direction?
James Clarke: I think it's, you know, extremely important that we get, professional information from a number of different streams and this is a very important one of them, you know, that there's the sort of peer group, talking about things, but then when it comes down to more specifics, I mentioned earlier with that energy project, you know we had, I forget the gentleman's name, which is not very clever of me, went through all of our half hourly electric data for the best part of a year, so crunched a huge amount of data, and you know, which was bread and butter to him, but it was really useful to us and then we could get some idea of what our consumption was, so having that, you know, practical support as well. But I think it's just, it can be quite lonely as well sometimes. I'm quite lucky I've got, you know, a reasonable sized team, but it can still be very lonely and I think, it doesn't matter what size your SME is, you know, 10 people or if you're up to the 250, having this route of contact and sometimes it's not just about, I need to know something, sometimes it's just about, I need to talk about this and I think if anything, that's something that we probably need to promote more and more.
Rob Panting: That is a good point actually. I think a lot of our support that we offer, yes, there's the practical learning new skills side of things, but we run quite a few peer networking groups, and whether that's CEO, MD level, whether that's a specific remit, so the finance directors, getting that group of like minded individuals together to perhaps discuss common difficulties, common opportunities, actually that is far more valuable than maybe access to finance before. Actually, for a lot of businesses, just the peer support that's out there from, you know, similar sized businesses or equally, you know, businesses from within different sectors, just looking at how you do things differently. We've had some great feedback on the peer network group. So yeah, that's just equally as important.
Howard Bentham: Let's bring our conversation to a close, James. Some final thoughts from you, what advice would you offer someone wanting to pursue an independent business idea?
James Clarke: Obviously do your research as broadly as you can, you know, get an overarching idea, try and explore, talk to other people, because people are really willing to talk, even if you think they might be a competitor, you'll find that there'll be lots of people out there with good experience. Make sure you incorporate your work life balance with that. Don't be too all consuming because at the end of the day, you know, do we live to work or work to live? Well, probably a bit of both, I think getting that balance right. But yeah, just talk to people, there's so much information, professional help, experience, whatever you want to call it out there and you know, look very broadly at that, you know, look at organisations, look at other businesses, look at you know, retired people, even talk to other people who have similar ideas as well and perhaps they want to form their business. So just really, you know, do your research, get the balance right, but be brave, take a bit of risk, risk more of your time than your money, but you know, go for it.
Howard Bentham: Legacy is a big thing, isn't it? I mean, we talked about the, you don't want to be the one that drops the ball, but you've got kids, you're the great grandson of the founder, are your children going to...?
James Clarke: Yeah, I'm fifth generation and I've got four sons. one works in the business in the brew house, been there about seven years. my young, yeah, my youngest son is actually, working for Gypsy Hill Brewery in Crystal Palace in London, a very new way VC backed business. So very different to us, grain and gate experience and we mentioned apprenticeships earlier, so, I don't know whether you'll listen to this podcast or not, but my son Ed didn't do particularly well with his A levels, he then did a brewing apprenticeship over lockdown, which had been all face to face, straight away went to virtual learning, passed with a distinction. The Brewing Apprenticeship seems to be a really good qualification because it suits small, medium and large brewers. It's well recognised. He's now, say, he's at Gypsy Hall and he's enrolled on his diploma within the Institute of Brewing, which is the sort of next step up. So, fair play, he didn't like school, but then he found something he did like. So, yeah, there's some interesting appetite there, but I think all my boys probably want to see a bit more of the world before they possibly consider and you know, whether they're all involved directly or indirectly or, you know, there's lots of things. So, but we're all very close, so we shall see.
Howard Bentham: And how will that long standing legacy of Hook Norton Brewery enable it to continue and grow in years to come? Paint the picture for the next ten years. What's it going to look like? When your beard's a little greyer, perhaps?
James Clarke: I think Iit willbe more consumer retail focus, we'll have stronger links with our consumers, we'll also have stronger links with our suppliers in terms of, you know, farmers, raw material suppliers and so on. I think the quest for information about your food and the drink and provenance will continue to grow, so we'll need to be satisfying that. They'll probably be a broader range of flavors and styles of drinks, so we'll need to look at that further. But I think essentially we'll still be in the same location, making beer, what styles, how much people are drinking, how much they're allowed to drink, how much the government tells them they can or can't drink, how much AI monitors how much they do actually drink. I don't know, yeah, quite frightening. But I think essentially, you know, I'd like to think there'll still be a brewery there and making a product that people can enjoy, but as I said, it's not just to be a business selling a bit of fun.
Howard Bentham: Huge thanks to James Clarke from Hook Norton Brewery and a big thank you also to OxLEPs Rob Panting too and thank you for listening to OxTalks. There are a growing number of editions of OxTalks available from where you normally get your podcasts. Check out some of the previous editions, featuring Andrea Stewart from Oxford University Innovation, how to find the right business support for spin outs and start ups, sarah Powell, HR Director at Le Manoir, on how to create a happy and motivated workforce and catch Artem Korolev, Founder and CEO of Mission Street, on why you should invest in Oxfordshire. Every episode is well worth a listen. Please spread the word, tell your friends or colleagues about us and if you feel so inclined, leave us a review. You can share your thoughts and suggestions on our social channels and you can email your questions for inclusion in future editions too. The address is on the podcast description. Business support in Oxfordshire is very close at hand, OxLEP is at your service. The OxLEP business support tool can signpost you to expert help in a matter of minutes. Why not take a look? Find it on our website, Oxfordshirelep. com. But for now, from the whole OxLEP team and from me, Howard Bentham, it's goodbye.