Vicky Colclough, managing director of the Midlands-based brewery and pubco, also told delegates at The MA Leaders Club meeting in London last week (4 March) the business is trying to emulate its beer offer with a wine one to match.
She said: “We’re seeing a big demand for value. Every penny is hard earned so quality and value need to co-exist and balancing that is really sensitive.
“We are reviewing our pricing proposition and, this might shock you Londoners, but in the Midlands, we need to ensure we have a pint of cask ale on the bar for under £4.
“It’s really important to us to ensure the pub is an everyday luxury and not a weekend or a one-off in the month – that is something we pride ourselves in doing.”
The operator of 46 sites across the Midlands and as far south as Ludlow, Shropshire, and up to Chester, also said Joule’s is seeing “a big growth” in low & no drinks and expects this to continue.
On the subject of wine, Colclough joked she was ‘moderately delighted’ when the business recently acquired a vineyard called Chateau Bessan in Bordeaux, France.
“We need to ensure we’re as rounded as possible. My husband is a craft beer drinker and in a pub he can have a variety of different, quality products across the bar while I get presented with a moderately adequate option of wine.
“We have a value proposition with our beer and want to translate that to wine. It’s a slow burn and new territory to us but we fundamentally believe it’s going to be part of the brand of business moving forward.”
Hone down on recipes
Joule’s Brewery’s success is born from a really strong brand proposition, Colclough stated and added its brewery taps across Staffordshire, Shropshire and Cheshire allow the company to “really hone down on every recipe and really invest in that quintessential English taphouse experience”.
She explained how the business has progressed in more modern years. “When we launched – what is kind of a second generation brewery – we got the brand back from Molson Coors in 2010, and we launched our own beer into the free trade and in 2017, we decided to withdraw from the free trade and honour the fact that Joule’s Brewery Taphouses would only have our own-brewed beer, mainly to support the tenancies.
“It was really difficult to explain to our tenants why we could sell beer down the road cheaper so, with the wine proposition, which is small batch, we want that predominantly for Joule’s Brewery Taphouses to ensure its quality.”
Its cask beers lead from the front. Colclough stated its range is varied and creative so while there are no guest beers on any of its bars, the portfolio remains strong.
She added: “Very much like chefs do specials at pubs and restaurants, we tailor the breweries to delight our customers.
“We only have 46 brand partnerships so creating that stability has given us such freedom to be able to build confidence in our beer, build confidence in our partnerships.
“We have two fundamental propositions: DIB – ‘draught is best’ and NQG – ‘no quibble guarantee’.
“We don’t bottle our beer, we don’t pasteurise, we don’t heat treat. Beer drinkers want a fresh, crisp pint served in the right glassware, not out of a bottle.”
The ‘no quibble guarantee’ launched in 2018. Colclough said eight out of 10 drinkers won’t tell a pub or bar if they had a bad drink but they will tell their friends so NQG is a pledge to combat that moment. “It’s written in all our pubs stating ‘if it’s not right, we’ll swap it’,” she said. “That goes for all Molson Coors’ products, Diageo products, Joule’s Brewery products. If you’re drinking beer in a Joule’s Brewery taphouse, it has to be the best experience ever. If we can change a negative experience to a positive experience, why wouldn’t we?”
A lot of buzz
In the past two years, Joule’s has been working on expanding the brewery. It is a “modest-sized regional brewer” that produces just shy of 7,000 brewer’s barrels a year.
Joule’s has also been working on education and confidence in partnerships, which includes working with its tenants and investing heavily in its sites, training, induction, recruitment to create a healthy business model.
Colclough, who joined Joule’s as brand & PR manager in 2014 and moved up to become managing director in 2024, also talked about how she feels being a female leader ahead of International Women’s Day.
“I don’t wake up and just remind myself I’m a female leader,” she stated. “I understand it’s a really interesting topic and it’s certainly something that gets a lot of buzz and interest.
“For me, the opportunity was build confidence, the opportunity was brought from a family of strong women and also joining a business that was run by a male.
“When a business is led by the wife or the husband it doesn’t detract from the performance and having that visualisation that women can lead businesses, women can thrive in this industry.
“It’s very much about getting the right person for the right job – and that’s what I believe.
“And for women in brewing, it’s not about special treatment, it’s just about equal opportunity – that’s all I ask for.”
And on the future, Colclough concluded: “We have a WhatsApp group with all 46 clubs in and when the Budget was announced, the group was the busiest I’ve ever known it. It was a wave of sheer panic and that’s the thing people appreciate. It’s the ripple effects that it has on individual businesses. We lost one of the fantastic operators. We’ve been genuinely just panicked about the future and what the challenges will bring.
“We’ve gone through so much already – Covid, price rises – hospitality is robust, we keep driving forward and the consumer is there. People want to socialise. It’s human need. We need to remind people of that and stick to what pubs do really well as that cultural thing.”
