Everards aims to team up with more producers
Published on January 29, 2014
Left: Everards MD Stephen Gould
Leicestershire’s Everards, an independent family-owned brewer and pub operator since 1849, says it is keen to build yet more successful business partnerships with local talented food and drink producers and entrepreneurs.
“The Everards team wants to talk to driven entrepreneurs who we can partner and work alongside to build thriving businesses,” said Everards managing director Stephen Gould. “Recent projects have proven that our business is successful when we attract and work with talented people.”
The news comes as Everards creates detailed plans to relocate its brewery to a new food and drink quarter that it will develop on a 90-acre site called Soar Valley Park, just south of Leicester. Here it aims to create a ‘food and drink hub’ by attracting other like-minded artisan food and drink businesses. Outline planning consent for the park was obtained in July 2013 and Secretary of State Eric Pickles has granted approval not to “call the application in” for further investigation.
Artist’s impression of Everards’ planned food and drink park
Everards says it is seeking to work with talented food and drink entrepreneurs within a proven business model that it pioneered and has honed over the past eight years. The model works as follows: Everards partners the producer/entrepreneur to find a suitable space for his or her business. This space could be located in one of Everards’ 180-odd pubs or pub buildings, or it could be that Everards and the producer/entrepreneur collaborate to find a suitable property for the brewer to purchase.
Everards then installs the producer/entrepreneur in the building and offers him or her business support via its established network of property developers, interior designers, HR experts, marketing professionals and legal advisors. The producer/entrepreneur can brand and run the business as his or her own (as has been the case with Loaf Bakery and The Church pub in Birmingham, as well as with various pubs where a local microbrewer has been installed).
Even though Everards has enjoyed most success with this model by working with small breweries so far, the brewer is keen to extend this to food producers and entrepreneurs.
__________
Everards has just created its 29th microbrewer-partner pub. The Pheasant in Wellington, Shropshire, has been purchased by Everards in conjunction with David Goldingay of Ironbridge Brewery, who already successfully operates Everards’ Old Fighting Cocks in Oakengates. For more on Everards microbrewer-partner model, click here.
