Beer Hawk to spread wings thanks to funding

The Harrogate-based business, which delivers premium bottled beer from around the globe to homes across Britain, has also moved to new offices and has plans to take on more staff. Mark Roberts and Chris France left senior positions with Laithwaites Wines and Procter & Gamble to launch the venture last year.

Mr France said they have been “blown away with the response”, adding that the business experienced “a great Christmas trading period”. “We were in the fortunate position of raising more money than we needed so we’ve chosen our investors carefully and are now getting on with our growth plans, opening new premises and taking on extra staff.”

John Holberry, owner of the Old Growler brewery in Suffolk, and Charles Mardon, a wealth manager at St James’s Place, have invested in Beer Hawk in return for an undisclosed stake in the business. Mr France and Mr Roberts are still the two principal shareholders in the company. Mr France said the investment is “well into six figures”.

Beer Hawk, which currently has a turnover in the “low hundreds of thousands”, hopes to reach £5m in its third year of trading. The Beer Hawk website offers more than 200 premium bottled beers, alongside mixed cases and a beer club for customers wishing to receive a regular delivery of speciality beer.

Mr France said: “The difference with our site is that we fully endorse every beer that is on there. We’d have it in our fridge or cupboard. We have to like the beer before it gets listed.”

As well as selling to individual consumers, Beer Hawk is also keen to strike further deals with corporates to provide rewards and incentives for staff and customers. It already has a tie-up in place with East Coast Mainline.

Beer Hawk works with breweries across Britain, including Ilkley Brewery and Saltaire Brewery in Yorkshire. About a third of its range is British, with the rest hailing from markets such as Belgium, America, New Zealand and Germany.

“America at the moment, despite its awful reputation that it built up in the 80s and 90s for having terrible beer, is producing some amazing beer because it’s having – pretty similar to us really – a bit of a craft beer revolution”, said Mr France. “There’s small breweries springing up all over the place.”

Beer Hawk was initially based in small premises in Harrogate Business Centre. It has now moved into larger premises on a lease basis at Claro Court Business Park, also in Harrogate. Local MP Andrew Jones officially opened the new offices.

He said: “Beer Hawk opening new premises in Harrogate is proof that this is a desirable place to start business and bringing new jobs to our area is welcome.”

Speaking from the new offices, Mr France said: “We are expecting to grow and expand and being based here certainly gives us that capability. If we grow out of this unit then there are other units available that we can expand into.”

Currently, there are six people involved in the business, including Mr Roberts and Mr France. “Initially, we were doing everything from choosing the beer to designing the website to packing the boxes, but we’ve now got some admin support and we have got some packing support as well as a couple of sales reps out on the road finding beer and selling the idea of what we do,” said Mr France.

This week has been Beer Hawk’s busiest ever with Father’s Day coming up on Sunday, he added. “This week our turnover has been more than we did in August, September and October combined.”

“We’ve not been through the full cycle yet as we started trading in August so we didn’t realise Father’s Day was going to be that big.”

Mr Roberts and Mr France started the business because they found that consumers couldn’t easily get access to speciality beers to drink at home.

Mr France said: “It’s very easy to get hold of really average beer from a supermarket, it’s much harder to get hold of the great beer that we knew was out there, the great beer that we tried at the pub, you just can’t get it at home.”

Commenting on market trends, he added: “People are discovering new beer... and beer is shedding its image of ‘old men with beards in pubs’ and you’re getting a younger audience starting to express an interest in beer that’s beyond the supermarket standard.”

A hotbed of brewing

WORKING in the brewing industry is a stark contrast to Chris France’s former job as a sales director at consumer products group Procter & Gamble.

He explained: “People in the brewing industry are very friendly. It’s much different to selling soap powder which is what I used to do.

“People are more excited about their products and are more engaged in it so you do get into a network of people who just frankly love beer and Yorkshire’s a brilliant place for us to base ourselves just because there’s so many microbreweries in Yorkshire.

“But Britain’s doing its thing as well so the rest of the region’s are also producing some great breweries.”