The Big Interview: Tim Woodrow

By Phil Mellows

- Last updated on GMT

Related tags Palmers Beer

Mould breaker: Tim Woodrow was the first and only non-family director of Palmers Brewery
Mould breaker: Tim Woodrow was the first and only non-family director of Palmers Brewery
It’s a toss-up as to who’s going to miss who the most when Tim Woodrow retires from Palmers later this year. With 45 years in the industry behind him, and the past quarter-century and more with the Dorset firm, Woodrow is going to have to play an awful lot of golf and geocaching (look it up) to make up for it.

And Palmers will struggle to replace a tenanted trade director who has done so much to ensure the family brewer survived the turmoils of recent decades and left it in such good shape.

Man and brewer share a special relationship. In 1991, six years after joining the company, Woodrow was invited onto the board. “I became the first and only non-family director,” he says. “It was one of the proudest moments of my life.”

It justified, too, his decision to abandon a high-flying career at Guinness for a small brewer that looked vulnerable amid the upheavals of the UK brewing industry.

“People said to me ‘you’re mad’, but I knew what I was doing. I knew what I could offer and recognised that I could make a difference.”
Indeed, from the beginning of his career in the trade, after a false start optimistically coaching choirboys to play rugby, Woodrow has demonstrated he can make a difference.

Too busy playing rugby and cricket to get the qualifications for university he joined his local brewer in the Wiltshire city of Salisbury — Gibbs Mew — as assistant to the wine and spirits manager.

“I went for it because I liked pubs, but it was pre-Christmas and I spent my first week unloading trailers of Red Hackle, the house whisky. It was hard, physical work, and it didn’t stop until late on Christmas Eve.”

After two years of that he asked for a transfer to the brewing side of the business, an unheard-of move back then. He was offered a two-year pupillage under the head brewer.

“By 1972 I was running brews myself and had the keys to the brewery, so I was a very popular chap around town! I remember helping myself to beer from the sample room to drink while me and my mates listened to rugby on the wireless.”

There was a more serious crime going on though. “Keg beer was the future, then, and in the early ’70s I must have ripped thousands of
handpumps out of pubs,” he says, shuddering at the thought.

Woodrow “realised things were not right” at a company that was later to close its brewery and sell the pubs to Enterprise Inns, and decided it was time to move on.

“I wanted sales experience and the two most respected companies in the industry were Bass and Guinness. I was put off Bass because the rep who called on us wore a bowler hat, so I applied to Guinness.”

Woodrow was hired as the company’s youngest sales manager.

“I did everything. One day I was installing the new Draught Guinness in pubs, one day merchandising shelves in supermarkets and one day taking Guinness directors’ beer allowance to their homes in Budleigh Salterton [Devon], where they all seemed to live for some reason.

“I was also responsible for the quality control of the beers we bottled for other brewers, and I came to Palmers to collect samples.”
Woodrow got to know the brewer well, but in 1982 he was promoted to sales manager and transferred to Cardiff, where he had eight reps under him.

He had played rugby union, then an all-amateur sport, for Dorset and Wiltshire, before becoming captain of Exeter and Devon. But he was surprised when they offered him a spot in the second row for Cardiff.

“I was surrounded by stars, and that opened doors for me.”

He became a well-known figure across the city. Then Guinness got a new chief executive — tycoon Ernest Saunders, later jailed for fraud.

“Everything changed with Saunders. He started giving jobs to people outside the industry, and Guinness lost a raft of people.

“I’d bumped into John Palmer, the future chairman of Palmers, at a trade golf day, and of course I remembered the brewery from the old days. I’d got quite close to them. I’d been the only outside rep allowed in their pubs. I was privileged.

“Nobody could understand why I joined though. Everyone thought Palmers was going to close.

“But I felt I understood the culture of the company — the fourth generation of a family holding the brewery in trust for the next generations. They were hands-on, proud people and I liked that.

“This trade is based on relationships like that, it’s not all hard selling. And Palmers brewed only cask beer, so that was another attraction.”

Woodrow moved back to Dorset in September 1985. “I had no job description as such. They just want-ed me to develop opportunities in the freetrade and to professionalise the tenanted estate. I was given a completely free hand and defined the job myself, really. The Palmers ethos is great. You work with them, not for them. I’ve never felt managed by the family.”

In the beginning Woodrow concentrated on developing the free-trade through wholesalers, and — after seeing Palmers through “a difficult time” when the Beer Orders coincided with a recession — he became tenanted trade director in the mid-1990s.

To the outsider, perhaps, not much seems to have changed at the brewery. “We’ve had to play to our strengths,” confirms Woodrow. “We stick to what we know, to our geography, and we’ve never been tempted to diversify.”

Unlike some other brewers it never flirted with keg beer, nor with leases. All its 50-odd pubs in Dorset remain on traditional tenancy agreements.

“We believe in the tenanted system, and now others are coming back to that way of thinking. There has to be a huge amount of mutual trust to make it work, though, and that means a personal relationship with the tenant.”

One change that Woodrow did introduce was to base rents on pub turnover, a radical move in that it relies on tenants having enough
confidence in their brewer to disclose takings. The figure, split between wet, dry and accommodation, allows Palmers to track each business and act on any weaknesses or opportunities that appear.

“It may be unique,” he maintains. “At least, I was doing it before today’s open-book agreements were invented.”

Probably the only time Palmers has hit the national headlines was when Woodrow personally put in a massive effort under the 2003 Licensing Act to get every one of his pubs a 24-hour licence. He was 95% successful.

“We’ve still got the highest percentage of 24-hour licences in the country. The pubs aren’t open 24 hours, but it allows us to maximise any opportunities.

“We were inundated by the gutter press when that got out. The whole of west Dorset became a den of iniquity! But we kept quiet about it. If you say anything it gets twisted, and it soon becomes yesterday’s news anyway.”

Woodrow still gets “a huge buzz” from recruiting newcomers to the industry. He adds: “That’s very rewarding for me. I’ve a passion for pubs and for people.”

He confesses he’s “a little perturbed” about the emphasis that Palmers places on recruiting caterers, “but that’s the way of the world. Our pubs have got to be focused on food now, and Palmers was ahead of the game in that”.

Woodrow adds: “The point is that it’s still a pub, and the English pub is the envy of the world. It’s our heritage. What’s changed is that there’s a more professional attitude now. Our pubs are more profitable businesses, and I’d like to think that I’ve helped with that.”

My kind of pub

Marquis.of.Lorne
Palmers gem: the Marquis of Lorne in Nettlecombe, Dorset

“A country pub like the Marquis of Lorne, a Palmers house in Nettlecombe, Dorset, which has a great feel to it and tenants who pay attention to detail. Or if I’m in London I’ll go to the Guinea, a Young’s pub in Mayfair.

“There are different pubs for different occasions, really. That’s the beauty of it.”

Key dates

1967
After a term coaching rugby and teaching French at Salisbury Cathedral School, Tim Woodrow gets a job as assistant to the wines and spirits manager at Gibbs Mew Brewery

1970
Transfers to the brewing side and begins two-year brewing pupillage

1973
Joins Guinness as its youngest sales manager, covering east Devon and west Dorset

1982
Promoted to area sales manager for Cardiff

1985
Joins Palmers

1991
Appointed sales director, becoming the first and only non-family member of the board

1996
Takes over as tenanted trade director

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