Brewing entrepreneur cracks booze trade

by Rebecca Burn-Callander - Friday, 7th November 2008 -

If you think it’s a tough task wangling start-up investment out of VCs, angels or, God forbid, your bank, imagine convincing your father to remortgage his house.

“I liked drinking beer,” said Hick. “And I’d experimented with brewing while at university on a small scale. It was only a hobby, but people liked it. I got an MSC in enterprise and bioscience from Sunderland – there was a business skills module too and I decided to strike out on my own.”

Tom Hick founded the Allendale Brewing Company in 2006. He tracked down a derelict premises, but had no means of converting the place into a brewery. So, he approached his father with a business plan.

Luckily for Hick, his father was a management trainer and saw the promise in the scheme. He remortgaged the family home, and work started on the brewery. The re-fit and launch set the pair back £180,000.

Two years on, Hick is turning over £150,000, with five proprietary beers and a pub under his belt. “Next year we should do £200,000. That’s if any pubs in Britain are still open,” laughs Hick. “What with the smoking ban and the poor weather in summer, pub sales have taken a real hit. But we’re still growing at a difficult time. When the economic climate’s better we’ll do really well.”