meantime history
Here at Meantime we are very conscious of and proud of our Greenwich heritage. The Thames flows past our door, and we look towards it for inspiration for the things that we do. Once ships laden with casks of Porter and India Pale Ale, brewed on the river's banks, sailed on the ebb tide to all four corners of the globe, so we brew London Porter and IPA. Ships weighed down with goods from the same four corners floated in on the tide past Greenwich to the London docks. Those cargoes inspired our Coffee and Chocolate beers. At Meantime we will continue to look to the timeless river to suggest new ideas and flavours to stretch our brewing skills.
Alastair Hook, Meantime Founder and Brew master
Meantime was the brainchild of Alastair Hook, a south Londoner who was lucky enough to have an inspirational teacher, who gave him a passion for beer, even though it wasn’t on the curriculum. A degree at Heriot-Watt in Edinburgh, the UK’s leading brew school, and postgraduate work at Weihenstephan, the world’s leading brew school, gave Alastair the formal training, and a well-thumbed copy of Michael Jackson, plus a stint in the USA gave him the practical training required to turn him into a brewer. Equipped with a much more cosmopolitan outlook than the average British brewer, Alastair was convinced that the British drinker was being shortchanged by the brewing industry. He, he determined, would set that right, and he would do so by example.
Alastair's mission was simple. To demonstrate the full flavour potential that beer has to offer and place it before the drinking public. In 1999 he gathered around his family and like-minded friends to help him realise his vision to connect with the British drinking public in a way that no one else was doing.
The company was founded in Alastair's flat and the search for premises in Greenwich began. In December 1999 the concrete floor of Units G & H 2 Penhall Road were dug up to lay drains. By February offices had been built in the Units, and the largest and most expensive start up brewery seen in the UK for over 80 years was installed and commissioned, complete with bottling line. The first brew was packaged in April.
The early days were all about brewing and bottling for others. Meantime knew it could not walk into the lager market without marketing millions or a tied estate and be taken seriously. It was going to be a long slog to get to the point where it could start to develop its own brands, although own brands there were. The first was Union, a Vienna style dark lager with esoteric label designed by London artist Ray Richardson, the original painting for which now hangs in the Greenwich Union pub. Ray also came up with the name. Meantime, he said, was a 'union' of friends just as the beer was a 'union' of malt and hops. It was an easy sell.
Other beers followed. As Meantime gained a reputation for quality beer, it was able to appeal to the more far-sighted restaurateurs who appreciated the value of offering extra quality to their customers in all aspects of their operation, including the beers, which are so often overlooked.
Oliver Peyton, Alastair's old boss, at Mash was the first, though Donald Storey at Gaucho Grill and Jonathan Downey at the Match bars also decided they wanted beers that were superior to the mass market products, that they would be proud to put their name to. The company was quickly at capacity, indeed throughout its time at Penhall Road it was operating pretty much at capacity, new tanks were soon added and new brewers were employed.
2001 was a watershed year for the company. By a stroke of luck the lease to the Observatory on Royal Hill was swiftly picked up, and after the usual quick but frantic pub refurbishment, the Greenwich Union opened in November 2001 selling a full range of Meantime brewed beers and no national brewers products at all; the only pub in London to do so. Within a few months of opening it was short listed for the Time Out, Evening Standard and Class magazine Pub of the Year awards.
In many respects 2002 was an even more significant year. Firstly, it was announced that 20 years of lobbying by the Society of Independent Brewers, Peter had paid off and the Chancellor was finally persuaded to introduce a system of progressive beer duty for small brewers.
The contribution of this tax change to Meantime was immense and allowed further expansion, as well as enabling the replacement of the first bottling line, which soon became inadequate for the company's growing needs.
2002 was also the year in which Alastair negotiated a lifesaving deal to supply J Sainsbury's plc with their entire Taste the Difference range of beers, a hugely prestigious contract that any regional brewer would give their eye teeth for. Sainsbury's and Meantime developed a close and friendly working relationship throughout the period of the contract which came to a natural end in the second quarter of 2009, by which time the Meantime/Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference range had completely redefined the popular perception of supermarket own brand beers from being seen as inferior to being recognized as superior.
The big news of 2003 was the installation of the new bottling line costing some £600,000, and making Meantime unparalleled in its class for bottling ability. The new line enabled Meantime to extend the sophistication of its contract packaging business, contract brewing having been made uneconomic by the Chancellor's tax rules, and in 2004 Meantime managed to sell pretty much all its surplus packaging capacity to Greene King, for whom it bottled IPA and then Beer to Dine for. 2004 was also a year of taking stock, and planning for the future. Financial restructuring took place to accommodate the realities of the growth the firm had achieved.
In the spring Meantime became the only British brewery win any medals at the World Beer Cup, in San Diego, for its Munich Fest Beer and its Vienna style lager, the original brand No.1 - Union. With this recognition that Meantime were doing something right it was decided, with Meantime's 5th birthday only some nine months away, that the time was right to start phase two of the corporate plan; build the brand.
With a blank piece of paper the entire corporate image, was recreated by design house someone (then called No One), using research conducted by former Whitbread marketing men, Aubrey Johnson and Brent Smith (Brent liked us so much he joined the company in January 2006). On the 25th of May 2005 Meantime held a launch party to present the new branding and product range to the world, including IPA and London Porter in corked and wired 750ml champagne bottles, the result of a further £80,000 capital investment, making Meantime the only British brewery capable of packaging in this format.
If 2005 was all about rebranding 2006 was all about brand building. This was helped by Meantime achieving its stated goal of winning a gold medal at that year’s World Beer Cup. This was awarded to our Coffee Porter, which also had the distinction of being the UK’s first fair-trade beer on account of its use of Rwandan coffee from the Aubhuzamugambi Bukawa co-operative.
2007 saw this continue with some new and key strategic partnerships - in particular our deal with Adnams - and increased sales through Waitrose in the London area. 2007 was also an excellent year for awards, with no fewer than four Meantime beers being classed in the World's Top 50 as compiled by the International Beer Challenge. Meantime picked up an additional 5 awards in the Beers of the World magazine's World Beer Awards.
In 2008 Meantime repeated the feat of having four beers in the IBC World Top 50 and continued to grow the numbers of outlets taking the beer, adding cask ale to the range for the first time in the shape of London Pale Ale. 2008 was the year when the bankers nearly broke the world, and Meantime expected to take a hit as its customers found fewer feet coming through the doors. In point of fact sales held up well as quality became an increasingly important area of competition on the high street as drinkers responded to tougher times by demanding a better bang for their buck. What did go by the by were Meantime’s relocation plans and plans to increase the tied estate.
2009 was dominated by two major projects; raising finance to fund the investment needed to move the brewery out of it’s now hopelessly inadequate premises, and preparing for the opening of a second retail outlet. It was a year of mounting excitement as Meantime plunged into the world of high finance to raise the necessary funds and as plans for the new, bar, brewery, café, restaurant at the Old Royal Naval College took shape. The outlet was to be called The Old Brewery, in recognition of the fact that by installing a three story brewhouse against one wall of the Pepys building Meantime were reinstating brewing on a site that had seen brewing take place continuously between around 1450 and 1860.
Fit out completed the new restaurant-brewery opened officially on March 23rd 2010, with London Mayor Boris Johnson pouring the inaugural pint. Rave reviews followed, both for the beer and for the food, meticulously prepared by Michelin star trained chef, Daniel Doherty. There was, however, to time to rest on any newly won laurels, for no sooner were the builders out of the Old Brewery than they were into Meantime’s new premises some one and a quarter miles west of Penhall Road. Team Meantime took a brief pause in April to have a party and celebrate the brewery’s 10th anniversary with suppliers, clients and friends, but then it was straight back in planning the move, plus the accompanying rebranding and product review that was to lift the firm into a new division as would suit the state of the art Bavarian brew house being built for the new Blackwall Lane home just south of the O2.
World Cup rivalry didn’t prevent English and German teams of welders working together to put the brew house together in time for the all-important first brew on August 27th. The first tanks headed down the Woolwich Road from Penhall Road to Blackwall Lane on August 10th with the last following on September second, taking the remnants of the production team with them. Suddenly the Penhall Road site, still home to sales and distribution, was looking rather empty and more than a little forlorn.
We take leave of our old home and it is a hard heart that does so without a little tear on reflection of all the things that have happened there over ten long years of blazing hot summers and the freezing cold winters; the sunny days and the sad days. Some friends have left, new faces have joined, the team is larger and the standards are higher. Equally the stakes are higher and the risks are greater.
Ten years ago Meantime opened the largest new brewery in London since Giles Gilbert Scott opened the Park Royal brewery for Guinness in 1936. Today Meantime are tripling their capacity and are factoring in yet more capacity for the future. Ten years on the £2m spent in 2010 on Blackwall Lane again constitutes the largest new brewery in London since Giles Gilbert Scott opened the Park Royal brewery for Guinness in 1936.
No one at Meantime possesses a crystal ball; however, everyone at Meantime knows that the next 10 years will look nothing like the last ten. Truly the good ship Meantime is setting sail for a brave new world.
November 2010.
