How Yorkshire's Black Sheep Brewery aims to stay ahead of the competition

AS its name suggests, Black Sheep Brewery was founded with a sense of difference at its core, and it’s an ethos that chief executive Charlene Lyons clearly aims to maintain.

Ms Lyons, who took the helm at the Masham-based brewery in January having impressed as a consultant, has been instrumental in helping it stay ahead of its competitors during a period so commercially challenging that any misstep could have proved disastrous.

She describes herself as “very fast-paced”, “very strategic”, and “very visionary”; under her way of working “everything has got processes and plans associated with it”.

“I’m always looking forward, which is why we were able to react so quickly to the Covid situation,” she said.

“Before the pubs even closed, before business changed, we’d already got plans in place to understand how we were going to manage that whole situation. We started thinking about it at the very end of February, so we were very much ahead of the game.

“When we thought that our pubs might close and we may go into lockdown at some point like other countries, we’d already got plans that we were able to mobilise.”

Those plans included an overhaul of pack styles and the introduction of mini-kegs, a huge social media drive that has expanded the firm’s database and kept its brand and products highly visible, the launch of its new Deliver EWE delivery service, and a total refocus on online sales, which rocketed by 3,000 per cent.

“The postal companies only ever used to bring small wagons to Masham but they’re now bringing big ones, because they have lots of pallets to distribute,” said Ms Lyons.

Crucially, the Black Sheep team had foreseen that its third-party packaging firms would be forced to draw in their horns and concentrate on their own products, potentially leaving breweries like theirs without bottling capabilities. So they sourced smaller companies that could fill the breach and haven’t had to endure any interruption to output.

“We’d done everything that we needed to do, so that when we went into lockdown it wasn’t a shock; we were able to just push the button and do what we’d already planned,” said Ms Lyons.

The fast, pre-emptive action was especially needed because the brewing industry is so heavily dependent on the hospitality sector, which was effectively mothballed as soon as the Government locked the country down in March.

“Over 70 per cent of our business turned off overnight, so we’ve taken an enormous hit,” said Ms Lyons.

“Don’t get me wrong – the changes that we’ve made and the plans that we’ve put in place don’t go very far to compensating for the lack of income in general – but we’ve made the very best of a bad situation.”

That “bad situation” has already seen some brewers and pub groups collapse into administration, and more bankruptcies are expected as the wider economy labours under the post-Covid burden over the coming months.

It’s a cause for concern for everyone in the sector, and Ms Lyons is no exception.

“I’m worried about the industry as a whole,” she says. “The pubs are now open, but it’s really difficult commercially to make money out of opening in the way you have to open now. When people are indoors, with table service, it’s a really different, and difficult, business model. So I do really worry about some of our local direct landlord customers.

“In general, the support that we as an industry have had from the Government has been really quite poor. Hospitality hasn’t really been helped hugely; we’ve had no reduction in beer duty; we’ve still got huge bills to pay. It’s going to be a real challenge. Some will survive and some really won’t.”

Yet she remains resolutely upbeat about Black Sheep as a business and its ability to weather any storm.

She says she was “flattered” when chairman Andy Slee offered her the top job, but insists that the company’s success in coping with Covid has been very much a team effort, involving everyone from fellow directors (and brothers) Rob and Jo Theakston to all the staff at every level.

“My definition of leading is interesting. Yes, I’m the chief exec, but we are very much a collaborative team,” she said.

“For example, Rob’s very much leading the charge with the new packaging line and he’s done the most incredible job throughout Covid to get it up and running. That’s his absolute passion; he’s incredible. And he leads production and makes sure our beer is of the highest quality.

“I can’t do that, just as he might find it slightly more difficult to mobilise plans to completely change the direction and strategy of the business in two weeks.

“We have complementary skills and we work incredibly well together.”

As for the future, predicting pretty much anything concrete has become a tricky business lately, but that appears simply to have kicked Ms Lyons’ strategic capabilities into overdrive.

“We’ve seen a bit of a drop-off since the pubs reopened, and that was expected. But we’ve just pushed the button on Phase Two, which is a whole other level of things that we’re going to be doing online; more of that to follow in due course.

She added: “What we’ve seen from corona is that this is a real business opportunity, and my view is that there are lots of silver linings for all businesses to go out there and find, and this is one of ours.

“We’ve developed a really successful online e-commerce business from pretty much nothing, and we’ll absolutely keep pushing that hard post-corona."

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James Mitchinson