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At last week’s meeting of the local CAMRA branch at the Blossoms in Stockport, we were given a talk by Oliver and William Robinson of Robinson’s Brewery. They are cousins, but very different in both appearance and personality. These are a few of the points that I noted:
  • Oliver and William obviously have a clear vision for the future direction of the company and give the strong impression that they are in it for the long term. As John Clarke (chairing the meeting) said, it's unusual for brewery representatives not only to say what they are doing, but also to explain in detail why they are doing it.
  • Robinson's no longer supply beer in any cask sizes bigger than firkins, and are currently investing in a large number of pins. They see it as important to give customers a choice of cask beers.
  • They also saw it as very important that all their pubs opened seven days a week, as finding a pub closed can seriously damage its reputation.
  • The vessels for their new brewery are being sourced from China, which might raise a few eyebrows. However, they made the point that alternative suppliers were also overseas, in places like Bulgaria or Canada, and would be several million pounds more expensive.
  • They hoped to start production in the new brewery in the second half of next year.
  • There were no definite plans yet for the future of the old brewery - a lot depended on the view of Stockport Council.
  • They were supplying about 15,000 barrels of cask beer each to year to their 257 pubs, which is only just over one barrel per week.
  • They were targeting 35% of beer sales in their pubs to be their own production, covering both cask and keg.
  • They had sold their wholesaling business in 2019, before Covid hit. They made the point that when they sell beer to a wholesaler, it goes out of their control and quality can no longer be guaranteed.
  • They had experimented with offering a range of outside guest beers in some pubs, but with a handful of exceptions such as the Black Horse in Preston the formula hadn't worked.
  • They firmly intend to reopen the currently mothballed Bull's Head and Pineapple in Stockport town centre when the time was right.
    They had applied restrictive covenants to pubs they had sold on rare occasions, but this was as likely to have been at the request of the buyer. It certainly is not a general policy (and indeed there are numerous examples of former Robinson’s pubs having been acquired by other operators).


Nobody asked them about pub refurbishments, but I suspect they would have given a blunt answer that they weren't running a museum, and that they needed to invest in pubs to guarantee their future.


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