For a small wholesale business, managing stock at the right levels and getting new business form part of a difficult acrobatic exercise. But when pubs close with a days’ notice and you no longer have customers, it becomes a nightmare. Imagine starting your business and growing slowly, then you get a veritable asteroid hit; that was COVID in March 2020.
Best Cask Ltd became fully operational in August 2019, when we commissioned our cold store and we could keep beer and cider at 11 to 13 C to maintain our link in the cold supply chain. At first it was an uphill struggle to get customers, surrounded as we were by Ei, Punch and Star pubs who were forbidden to buy out of tie. Yet we managed to get beer out to festivals, and we grew a core customer base of independent free houses by the start of 2020. Then, bang, that asteroid hit and we delivered to just three pubs during the whole month.
We were not alone of course. Medium size competitors like Dayla and Pigs Ears and larger national wholesalers such as Small Beer and Matthew Clark also felt the effect, furloughing staff or completely closing operations. Breweries stopped production and some, like Reunion, closed. Other small brewers, Kew for example, decided to relocate and start again. The options laid out for a small wholesaler were few; pack up and go home, keep going and hope for the best or push into new markets and grow. We chose the last.
With the Good Beer Guide in one hand and typing away at WhatPub, the search began to widen the footprint beyond our initial focus of 50 miles. This brought in West Berkshire and Wiltshire to the west, Essex and south east London and Kent to the east, and, to the south, the coast from Southampton along to Brighton. Micropubs popped up, as did small cask-oriented free houses and taprooms. E-mails and phone calls followed and, while not all replied, a new customer base emerged. In April we delivered 16 times, May just over 40 and by September 65. One man, one van, and pubs desperate for beer for takeout and home delivery. We diversified into cans and took on more kegs, but cask was what pubs wanted, so we obliged. Local breweries were able to shift cask stock too, which otherwise would have been poured down the drain. Larger wholesalers started delivering again, and we met Pigs Ears drivers at the odd pub or brewery along the way. Everything seemed to be going to plan…
Then came Tier 3, Tier 4 and finally full lockdown in December, with only 20 odd deliveries and, in January, just 13. With a reasonable amount of Christmas stock left over and getting close to or past the seemingly arbitrary ‘best before’ dates on casks, we face new challenges. Our customer base has grown incredibly given the circumstances and, with excellent support from them and suppliers, there is a glimmer of hope that once through this, small independent wholesalers can survive.
Doug Scott
Director Best Cask Ltd
Editor’s note: Doug is a former CAMRA London Regional Director and was the organiser of the first Feltham Beer Festival, the forerunner of Twickenham Beer Festival. He was also involved with the Small Beer beer agency in its early days, along with his brother Dave.
