Buxton calling in administrators got us thinking about breweries that are merely quite good – and how that’s a tricky space to occupy.
Buxton used to be top tier. Their beer was in all the beer geek pubs. People raved about them and recommended them.
But that doesn’t seem to have been the case for a few years, at least from what we’ve seen and heard.
It’s not that people are going round saying, “They’re terrible!” If asked, in fact, they’d probably say: “Oh, yeah, Buxton – they’re all right.”
But “all right” isn’t ideal in a hyper-competitive, crowded market.
Looking at their published accounts, it’s not clear why they’re in particular trouble now. It could be interest rates and loan repayments, or any number of other things.
But a loss of reputation and stature can’t help.
Years ago, when we lived in Goldsithney in Cornwall, we had a couple of dinners at a nearby country pub with incredible food.
It’s hard to say why it was so great. Perfectly judged seasoning, perhaps? Or a better command of the Maillard reaction?
Either way, we’d sit there making “wow” and “mmmmm” noises the whole time.
Then, one day, the food lost its sparkle. What had seemed rich began to feel greasy. What was savoury became merely salty. The triple-cooked beef dripping chips no longer shattered like glass.
We later learned that there had been a change of chef.
The food was fine, but not transcendent. So, we stopped going, and stopped recommending it to people.
If it had been awful, we might have complained, or felt moved to leave feedback somehow. But as it was, what would that feedback have been? “Make it more special”? “Give it a certain we-don’t-know-what”?
Bad feedback, unpleasant as it might be to hear, is at least possible to act upon. But what do you do in the face of silent shrugs?
This is what we think sometimes happens with breweries like Buxton.
They’re not bad enough to have anything specific to fix, but not good enough to generate word-of-mouth enthusiasm.
People don’t mind drinking their beer, but they don’t seek it out, or detour to drink it.
They might have one pint but won’t stick on it for a session, or stay in a pub to have one more pint than they ought to.
And they won’t order it by the box from the brewery shop.
What can middling-to-good breweries do about this? (If they have the clarity of vision to identify themselves as such.)
We might suggest tasting panels in which drinkers are given their beers blind, alongside acknowledged classics.
If someone tastes their lager against Augustiner Helles, how does it stand up? How does their IPA compare to Thornbridge Jaipur? Or their mild to Holden’s?
If your beer is only “quite good”, how do you give it that extra zing?
Marketing and branding will only get you so far.
For beer, the wow factor probably lives in those small gains achieved through technical excellence. The equivalent of fresh ingredients, confident seasoning, and hot pans.
10 replies on “The danger of being a quite good brewery”
This is a practical example of Michael Porter’s theory of differentiation – as taught on MBA courses and put into practice by corporate strategists and marketeers over the past 30-40 years. Basically businesses succeed by either being low cost and huge scale or niche and differentiating on quality. Those who do neither are squeezed out.
In the pub world look at Wetherspoons at one end and your specialist micropub or historic gastro pub tavern at the other.
With beer, however, I wouldn’t say it all comes down to taste and beer quality (that’s important to a certain segment of the market). Distinctive branding and marketing is another type of differentiation as, perhaps, is unusual beer styles. Certain breweries (Thornbridge and Vocation come to mind) manage to differentiate in all those fronts.
Historically most breweries differentiated by geography, which is still true for many small breweries today whose beers are mainly distributed locally.
At the mass market end of the beer scale look at Madri and the way it’s been marketed.
Being geeky enough to keep a record of every beer drink this triggered a look back over the years at Buxton. When was it at its peak, a definite A-lister, for me? Around the 2015-18 period, with a whole series of beers was raving about – so from about five years onwards into its existence. When did my enthusiasm for its new releases begin noticeably to drop off (though still able occasionally to hit the heights) into more “that’s solidly decent”? From somewhen around 2020-21 it would appear – so around ten years in.
Thinking further, am not sure that’s evidence for breweries having a certain shelf-life but maybe more for the direction some go at certain growth points, the most obvious being the decision/need to expand further than taps, dedicated bottle shops and specialist pubs into a wider market of more mainstream pubs and supermarket shelves. This appears to be a very difficult transition to make, both financially in terms of margins being squeezed, and in terms of maintaining people’s impression of an A-list product.
Got some strong feelings about Buxton, who I did in fact seek out, quite ardently, in pubs and bottle shops about ten years ago.
They made a decision – I don’t remember exactly when – to stop distributing cask (and keg possibly?) outside the local area as they weren’t satisfied the beer was being treated properly. How they did that much mystery shipping I don’t know, but of course the pump clips and badges promptly disappeared, and soon so did the bottles, and we that were not local moved on.
Times and managers and economics changed, and around the end of 2022 the casks were back in London. This was welcome, but did make me think that it happened because they needed the impossibly small revenue boosts they’d get from wider distribution. I’m in a WhatsApp group that had a macabre sweepstake on which breweries would sink in 2023 and I predicted Buxton. Wasn’t far off.
I took my best mate to Buxton for his stag do a few years back and we had a right old session in the tap house. The beer was really good. Axe Edge was sharp and lively and everyone in the group loved it. Unfussy, well made stuff. The kind of thing that centrist dads can really get behind.
I’m sad it’s come to this.
Yes the decision to stop supply cask due to quality concerns was a strange one. I live over the hill (and the next hill) near Macclesfield. We often walk the 14 miles to Buxton on a nice day and always make a beeline for the Buxton Tap, primarily because the beer is good. We were in there just last Tuesday. Pint of Gatekeeper, very nice so the announcement at the end of the week took us by surprise.
The decision to take on three senior people last November must have something to do with this. For starters, wouldn’t be surprised if the salary bill for them wasn’t ~£200k/year. To me, knowing the size of the brewery and the difficult times all breweries are in (IMO entirely of our own making), this seemed very management top-heavy.
Then the rather strange announcement to take over the Treacle Tap in Macclesfield which closed a few weeks ago. Beer Parlours before them struggled to make it work because it’s a very small venue and there’s a lot of competition on the door step.
So whilst I’m sure the current cost of living crisis (and it’s going to get worse) is a contributing factor, I can’t help but feel this was a management problem.
They also sell into Tesco, which could create a perception that they are now just a bit more bland and corporate or that they are having to make compromises to sustain that work.
Interesting that you make the point about the change of head chef at a gastropub. Buxton seem to have lost their spark/innovation ever since Colin Stronge left for Salt brewery.
Mention of Colin Stronge got me thinking about Marble (because I am old). There was a period – a bit after Stronge’s time – when they really seemed to be touched by genius: on one hand an extraordinary run of strongish IPAs (Earl Grey IPA, Damage Plan, Built to Fall, Little Meiko), on the other the barrel-aged old ale series (particularly the wonderful “Anne Radcliffe” sub-series). A bit of investigation suggests both the above date from the mid-2010s, when James Kemp was head brewer, having joined Marble from… Buxton! The right “head chef” really can make a difference. (Kemp’s got quite a senior position in Ellon these days, which is great for him but doesn’t bode well for us ever seeing another Castle of Udolpho or Madame Cheron.)
Buxton seems to have changed focus , probably out of necessity, but as soon as they started getting beers into supermarkets the exciting beers seemed to become rarer. (Its also hard to remain excited by beer once you can pick it up with your baked beans ) .
As an ex employee, the brewery became a particularly toxic place to work. There was a real barrier for new beers to be signed off and a lot of recipes were rehashes of what was successful in the past. That barrier (individual) has recently been removed but the damage has been done. Too many trade customers had been poorly treated by the arrogance of certain members of the company so refused to work with Buxton due to those personal conflicts. The production team has always been a collection of great brewers and it’s annoying to see online communities become fairly dismissive of the output of the company in recent years. These frustrations were often acknowledged by the workforce and it wasn’t without the want of trying. Many great brewers came in but more often than not had their wings clipped. The company still does beer better than most but like Manchester United, it’s no longer the beast it once was.
So one person can make a difference…!