Member Article

Banker to Brewer: One grad’s tale of setting up his own craft brewery

YOU MAY not know James Yeomans by name, but chances are, if you love craft beer, you’ve probably drank one of his pints.

The former city boy’s craft-brewery is taking the London beer-scene by storm, and despite only opening nine months ago, Hop Stuff already supplies more than 80 pubs in and around the capital.

Perhaps even more incredibly, James is just 25.

He said: “I’ve always known I wanted to own my own company, but I didn’t necessarily know what, though obviously working with beer has always had a certain appeal”.

“After Uni I started working in the city, but when I moved to the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich [SE London] I saw a huge gap in the market for craft beer in the area, and decided to bite the bullet. The first brew was last October (2013), and in November the first pint was poured.”

However, whilst living and breathing pints may be the dream for many, it wasn’t always smooth sailing for James.

He said: “I naively didn’t quite realise how much paperwork and admin there would be to set up a brewery. All my related work experience before Hop Stuff had been hands on brewing, but what I had failed to appreciate was how many evenings and weekends I would be spending on my laptop.”

Funding the venture, on the other hand, proved surprisingly achievable. James decided to raise capital through crowd funding, managing to raise £58,300 from 72 backers in 30 days, exceeding his target of £50,000 by 17%.

He said: “We were crowd funding the brewery at the right time, a lot of investors were keen to participate and we were offering a product everyone could relate to. It makes us different because it means 72 people (Londoners and further afield) own a little part of the brewery, so they can say with pride it is theirs.

“It does mean more work for us, as it is a slightly more formal set up than most small businesses’, but it sets up a solid platform for us to grow. It also means we could potentially revisit crowdfunding if we ever needed growth capital.”

Making its rapid success even more phenomenal, Hop Stuff is staffed by just two other part time members of staff.

James said: “I do everything from creating recipes, to brewing, sales, and marketing. On an average day I’ll get up at 5.30am, walk to the brewery for deliveries and then not finish until late evening, finally sitting down and completing admin work until bed. We’ve luckily just added a new team member who will become the primary sales contact for all our pubs, which eases the pressure on me a little”.

In order to grow the business and promote brand awareness James relies heavily on social media; “Without a doubt social media has been the most important tool for us to raise brand awareness. For us, Twitter is absolutely massive way of driving business. I use it every day without fail.

“We have also managed to capitalise on the fact there are no small independent breweries in the Greenwich area, which means people are really interested in us.”

But can working 18 hour days really be worth it?

He said: “The hours are long, but then I was working similar hours in the city, with none of the satisfaction. To set up your own business you have to be willing to commit. But the best thing in the world is walking into a pub, hearing someone order one of my pints and having no idea that the bloke who made it is standing right next to them.

“There has yet to be a challenge we haven’t been able to tackle and it is those challenges that make it worth it.”

James opens the brewery to beer-lovers one weekend a month and this Friday (Aug 8) will open 6.30pm-10.30pm and on Saturday (Aug 9)11am-3pm. Hop Stuff is located at Unit 7, Gunnery Terrace on the Royal Arsenal development in Woolwich. For more info see @Hopstuffbrewery

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Author .