A growing brewery business has moved into a new Northumberland base after the pandemic triggered a heady rise in home delivery demand.
The First & Last Brewery business started out in 2016 as a limited company with founders Sam and Red Kellie ‘cuckoo brewing’ in other people’s breweries as they tested the market. Having brewed and traded successfully from a small space in Elsdon village, and made it through Covid-19 with a rapidly rising demand for home deliveries, the pair said it was essential to find bigger premises to allow expansion.
The brewery makes a number of cask and bottled pale ales and stouts, supplied in casks, mini casks, bottles and variety packs, plus seasonal canned beers using local flowers and fruits, such as Damson Porter and Gorseflower Pale. It produces 6,500 pints per week. Now, having secured undisclosed funding from the Ray Wind Farm Fund, which is operated by Vattenfall and donates money to the rural communities that fall within the catchment area of the wind farm, the business has moved to Foundry Yard in Bellingham.
Read more: People on the move - key North East appointments and promotions
Mr Kellie said: “We were lucky to find such a useful space in Bellingham, with opportunities for more local footfall and sufficient room to expand and add to our current offer, such as the shop and tap room. The Covid pandemic showed us that we needed to work on our business resilience and financial sustainability. Thankfully, our funders have been fantastically supportive. With financial help from the Ray Wind Funds, banks and others, we have doubled our capacity – just in time, as people have been calling to buy direct from us – and that’s before we have erected signage or drawn up a formal marketing strategy.”
Chair of the Ray Wind Fund board, David Burn, said: “Times are tough currently and it takes plenty of cash, positivity and enthusiasm to expand a business anywhere. Red and Sam have shown a huge degree of integrity, commitment – and determination – not just in moving premises, but being brave enough to see it through. The board wishes them every success.”
Red and Sam Kellie went to the same school in Lancashire, but only met again as science graduates at Newcastle University. They shared a passion for brewing country wines and beers and set up ‘StuBrew’ - a microbrewery at the university, a partnership between the biology, science and engineering faculties with label design, marketing and accounts all done in-house.
Ms Kellie is currently the sole brewer in the enterprise, but the couple have taken on another local brewer three days a week and now have four full time employees, including a delivery driver. As the business develops further, more staff may be recruited. There are also plans to offer F&L Brewery experience tours and develop new brews and products.
Mr Kellie added: “We want the F&L to be the best it can be, providing the best brews this region can offer to customers who relish eating local food and drinking local products. We work very hard to ensure we can sustain that - and are grateful to our backers, funders and customers who believe in us and we look forward to welcoming them at the brewery.”
Like this story? Go HERE to sign up to have North East business newsletters delivered to your email
READ NEXT
