Talking to The Morning Advertiser, Robinson says: “Our business will cost £2m more this year to run than it did last year – that’s a real challenge for us.
“We do all sorts of things to make sure we can continue to maintain margin and so we can continue to invest not only in our people but also in our pubs and our colleagues across our business, but we had to look at it in a slightly different way.”
He explains the north-west brewer and pub operator was fortunate in enjoying a good spring, adding April and May were really good and it was a “reasonable” March as well. This was supported by a very good, warm summer and Robinson says “when the sun is shining, people are in beer gardens, they’re out and about drinking”. He adds some of their sites in tourist locations in Cumbria, north Wales and Yorkshireall performed really well.
However, September “fell off a cliff, it was pretty tough but it has been for most people. October was all right as we move into November. November is notoriously the second quietest month of the year but if we have a good December – we don’t want any snow until about 5 January because if it snows when there’s Christmas parties on, people don’t like to travel and you can’t redo your Christmas party really in January – so if we have a reasonable December, hopefully we’ll have another good year”.
12 months to hit
The challenge comes for Robinsons – whose beers include Unicorn Premium Golden Ale 4.2% ABV, Dizzy Blonde Amarillo Pale Ale 3.8% and Old Tom Ale barley wine 8.5% ABV – as it moves into 2026 because, Robinson states: “It takes about 12 months from a major Government change. If we look at employer national insurance contributions, for example, which alone put nearly £1m on our wage bill across 30 managed sites alone – we’ve got the same issues and challenges across all of our pub partners as well – but it normally takes 12 months for that to really hit.
“I do worry about next year because we have more costs going into our business and with our customers having less cash in their pockets and that’s because of what we assume is going to happen towards the end of this month (Autumn Budget), so we’ll be doing OK this year but going into 2026, 2027 and beyond, we continue to have some challenges, and let’s just hope things like business rates reform actually happen sooner rather than later.”
He adds he wants the Government to listen to the sector on the challenges such as national insurance, EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility) and the DRS (Deposit Return Scheme), which comes into force in 2027.
“There’s all these things and you think… just leave us alone,” Robinson continues. “They create another policy that, quite frankly, doesn’t make a huge amount of difference to what we’re trying to do, and it adds further cost on and more bureaucracy.
“We’re trying to finalise our budget for next year and signing that off for the beginning of December. We’re in a reasonable place and in our investments continue to become incredibly important to us.”
He explains the company has done quite a lot of work with a company in London to look at improving business or as Robinson terms it, ‘will it make the boat go faster?’
“We’re not going to do something unless it makes the boat go faster,” he suggests. “Will this enhance our business? Is this going to sell more beer? Is this going to sell more fish and chips? Is this going to sell more bedrooms? If it doesn’t, why are we doing it? We use that philosophy and if it going to help make the boat go faster we look at the investment and the return and decide whether we’re not going to do it or not.”
New brewery
Robinson talks about the opening of a new brewery three miles away from its home for almost 200 years: “We invested about £8.4m in the new brewery and that’s up and running. We’ve been brewing on that since December 2024 and we ceased brewing at the Unicorn Brewery site on 28 March 2025.
“We’re really pleased with what we’ve done. Not only have we got a completely new brewery, and DPV (dual purpose vessel – fermentation and conditioning tanks) is in there as well. We’ve got new kegging line, new cask racking line, new lab. We’ve got a brewery taproom.”
But it means the business has ceased brewing in middle of Stockport where the Unicorn Inn was since 1826 but 1838, which is their ‘founding year’ is when Robinsons began brewing in the heart Stockport.
He reminisces: “I can look out my office window and look up at the brewery tower, and I know in the last few weeks of brewing, I walked around there with some incredibly fond memories because I’ve been around this brewery since I was a little lad who used to come in on the holidays with my mother and come and see my dad grab a hot chocolate from the machine and run around the brewery, annoying some of the guys – whether that was in the brewery or in the painter’s shop – I used to go in there and cause chaos. I used to take the fuse out of the kettle plug so they couldn’t brew or put snap-its in their cigarettes and swap their salt and sugar round and I always used to get told off but they got wise to me in the end.
What to do with the current site
“I was probably four or five years old for my earliest memories of here and now we’ve stopped brewing but we had to make sure we had a business fit for purpose for the next generation.
“Our job is to make sure we hand this business over to the next generation, I say, in a better state than we had it, but in an evolved state because we inherited the running of this business from my father and his two brothers, and it’s incumbent upon William [Robinson, joint managing director] and I, and the rest of the family, to make sure we set it up for the next generation to be able to take it on again, and I’m sure they’ll do their own thing.”
Robinson said of the new site in Bredbury, the company houses all of its logistics, all of its warehousing, transport, bottling line, cask racking, kegging and, of course, brewery. However, with the head office still located in the middle of Stockport, the business is now trying to sell its brewery, which is in the Unicorn tower and is working with the local authority and liaising with local MPs about what to do with the site.
He says: “Can some of it be turned into residential? What part of this site do we want to maintain as our office? Do we convert the tower into our offices, or do we convert where our current visitors’ centre is? We’ve not come to any decisions as yet because we’ve got to work out what the best thing to do is for the town and for us, and also the investment involved but Stockport, as a whole, has a huge investment going into it and Stockport is incredibly well positioned for so many things within the north-west, whether it’s Manchester Airport, the mainline railway station, the motorway network.. it’s wonderful to see so much going on in Stockport and it is evolving at quite a rapid pace.
“It’s probably going to be another year or two before we’ve really nailed that and got something that we want for the long term.”
