Yorkshire brewery raises a glass to growth

LEEDS Brewery has secured £395,000 in funding to ferment growth plans and launch its first pub outside its home city.
Sam Moss, founder of Leeds BrewerySam Moss, founder of Leeds Brewery
Sam Moss, founder of Leeds Brewery

The £6.5m turnover company has agreed the finance deal with Santander to expand production capacity and open the Duke of York in central York.

Sam Moss and Michael Brothwell, both York University history graduates, founded the brewery in 2007.

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It now supplies 70,000 pints a week to hundreds of pubs across the country and sells bottled beers to major supermarket chains.

The flagship brew Leeds Pale is widely available across Yorkshire.

Mr Moss said: “We are passionate about brewing high quality beers and running high quality pubs and we are pleased to have secured the funding that we need to continue to grow our business.

“We are delighted to have secured such a high profile site in York and we look forward to creating a brilliant pub.”

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The pub, once the premises of an estate agent, opened at the end of last week and had a very busy weekend, he added. Parts of the building date back to the 14th century.

It is in a prime location at the side of King’s Square in the medieval city.

Mr Moss said: “You couldn’t get a better site in York.”

The pub sells locally sourced food and will cater to a wide demographic, like the group’s pubs in Leeds, he added.

The Leeds Brewery operates six pubs in Leeds, including The Midnight Bell, which opened in 2008, the Grade II-listed The Garden Gate in Hunslet, Pin, The White Swan, The Brewery Tap and Crowd of Favours.

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It opened the Crowd of Favours three months ago in a converted fish and chip shop.

Mr Moss told the Yorkshire Post: “It’s going really well.

“We would like to open a couple of pubs a year, but it’s all about finding the right site. It’s not about numbers, it’s about quality.”

He said it was easy to put a negative spin on the pub trade, but the brewery is struggling to keep up with demand for its beer.

“We have seen nothing but growth,” he said. “It’s a difficult industry, it’s a competitive industry and you have got to work hard to make sites a success, but they work.

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“Walk around Leeds city centre and York city centre and there’s a lot of pubs doing a lot of good things.”

The founders started out at the York Brewery and worked their way through all the various tasks in a small company.

They decided to launch their own business and spotted a gap in the market for a brewery in Leeds.

They now brew in a 20-barrel brew house and produce four permanent beers; Leeds Pale, Yorkshire Gold, Leeds Best and Midnight Bell, alongside a range of quarterly seasonal beers.

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The company says it uses “choicest hops, select British malted barley, and our unique Yorkshire yeast”.

Asked about the biggest lesson he has learned as an entrepreneur, Mr Moss said: “Believe in what you are doing.

“If you are confident what you are doing is right and that you are able to deliver products and services that people want, just keep things simple and basic and you should be okay.”

The Leeds Brewery employs around 70 people and turns over around £6.5m.

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Drew Haymes, relationship director for Santander Corporate and Commercial, said: “We are delighted to support this tremendously vibrant, local business which has strong roots in Leeds and is now expanding in to York.

“Michael and Sam are highly experienced, driven and prudent directors and have overseen a terrific period of growth and increasing demand for their products.

“I am looking forward to working with them during this very exciting time for their business.”

Mixed picture of boom and gloom

RUMOURS of the demise of the pub trade are “widely reported but wildly exaggerated”, according to leading beer writer Simon Jenkins.

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A survey claimed this month that more than a third of Yorkshire’s pubs and bars are at risk of failure in the next 12 months. Figures from insolvency experts R3 show that of 164 active pubs surveyed in Leeds alone, 19 were considered ‘high risk’ and 39 were listed under ‘caution’. Across West Yorkshire, 245 pubs out of 623 were placed in the danger zone.

But Sam Moss, of Leeds Brewery, has said the pubs he does business with are “as busy as they have ever been”.