From Serving Beer to Brewing It: The Birth of Indie Rabble

In this episode, Martin sits down with Dave Hayward, co-founder of Indie Rabble, to explore the bold journey from running one of Berkshire's best-known micropubs (A Hoppy Place) to launching a community-driven independent brewery.

We chat about:

How Indie Rabble was born during turbulent times in the industry

What it really takes to grow an indie brewery in the current market

The release of Indie Pils, their new core range Pilsner

Why pubs need to support true independents, not just big golobal brands

Lessons learned in their first 2 years — and what’s next for Indie Rabble

Whether you’re a beer drinker, homebrewer, or indie beer advocate, this is a real, honest conversation about starting small, thinking big, and staying independent.

👉 Like, subscribe and leave a comment — and don’t forget to check out the featured beers from Indie Rabble at The Beer Rep.

Follow Indie Rabble Socials

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/indierabble
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/indierabble

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Indie Rabble
• 9:47 Crafting a Unique Brand Identity
• 11:45 Community and Quality in Brewing
• 13:30 Navigating the Indie Beer Market
• 15:37 Challenges of Independent Breweries
• 19:14 Celebrating 2 Years and New Beers
• 22:46 The New Core Range Pilsner: Indie Pils
• 25:49 Access to Market
• 29:30 Defining Independent Breweries and Awareness
• 32:23 Future Plans for Indie Rabble
• 34:50 Final Words and Outro

Transcript

Martin (00:01)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Beer Rep chats with today I'm joined by Dave co founder of Indie Rabble. Dave, thanks for joining us on the show.

Dave Hayward (00:10)
Thanks for having me on, looking forward to a little chat.

Martin (00:13)
Yeah, it's great. I'm great to hear all things Indie Rabble ⁓ should we just kick things off with, know, people haven't discovered Indie Rabble and you've, you've, you're coming up to two years. ⁓ how would you sum up who you are and what you're about?

Dave Hayward (00:25)
So, you know, origin stories and what have you. A tiny bit about us, I know we'll look back to this a few times. So, yeah, so we were established effectively exactly two years ago now. And I think we're going to talk about our birthday plans a little bit later on, hopefully. But I think my personal, we've all got our own sort of craft beer

you know, eye opening moments as it were, the things that moved us over from, you know, being lager drinkers down any given pub to making this our passion, our hobby, that, you know, we started invested hours and hours and hours in where we're to drink, why we're going to drink, all of that. For me, the beer that sort of opened my eyes was categorically Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. And it was in this country, but I've since been to both their breweries, one on the west coast in Chico and the east coast in North Carolina. But

Martin (01:03)
Yeah.

Dave Hayward (01:17)
It was just in a random Fuller's Pub. And I think at the time I effectively ordered it, generally speaking, back then it would have been Becks Vier or something like that that I was otherwise aiming at. Cause I thought it was a better than Carling, you But I was like, what's that weird keg badge? What's that all about? And I think even in, you know, in 2012 or so it was over a six quid pint in the pub I had it in it's like, my God, is this what's, then I had a sip of it. And I like, okay, that's probably.

Martin (01:17)
Really?

gosh. Anything's better than Carling let's be honest.

Dave Hayward (01:45)
going to impact my life, you know, so that's sort of, yeah, financially at least. ⁓ it, you know, it went, I sort of had no idea that beer could taste like that. And it sort of unlocked a bit of a passion in me. And I should add my now wife, Naomi as well, who's one of our other co-owners. You know, yeah, it led several, several many years later into Naomi and I making the decision to open a micro pub, which was in August 2019.

Martin (01:47)
My life is now ruined.

Yeah.

Dave Hayward (02:14)
which is a hoppy place in Windsor ⁓ August 2019 might ring time line alarm bells for anyone that hasn't quite completely blanked out COVID in their minds yet.

Martin (02:23)
I don't think anyone has speaking to many, many brewery founders

and industry professionals. every single conversation always ends up something to do with COVID. We always talk about COVID era.

Dave Hayward (02:33)
Because

exactly, we bet a lot on that. And then six months in, we were told we had to close by our prime minister. And my background, for a little while, it overlapped. Actually, for quite a long time, it overlapped. That's probably why I'm so tired. But it was in IT. So when COVID happened, we got quite a good, I think, web store going quite quickly and really started.

leaning into the community side of things. Like, you Naomi's also in a band. I was a consultant, so I spent a lot of time talking to people. We were like, how do we survive this? And not just for the business perspective, but also for our own sort of personal mental health and sanity. And we started in virtual pubs every single Friday. And most of the time people were drinking beer that I'd spent the week driving around delivering to them, because they kind of weren't allowed out. And luckily I was. And yeah, that's also where we met.

Martin (03:12)
Yeah, definitely.

Dave Hayward (03:27)
our now co-owners at the brewery, Alex and Ali, who were customers of ours and then virtual pub customers of ours. And sort of spoke a lot about what we enjoyed, what we didn't enjoy in the beer industry. Alex at the time was, he'd just come back. He'd been brewing at Thornbridge. He'd just come back time for Windsor actually, because he'd picked up a back injury up there. And had to rehab But we spent an awful lot of time talking about, you know, what we liked, we didn't like. And there's a lot more to it, of course, but things escalated.

And eventually we sort of, you know, those drunken 11pm Friday night ramblings about all that's good and bad in the world led to us floating this idea and starting Indie Rabble.

Martin (04:07)
Yeah, ⁓

Brilliant. Where did the name Indie Rabble come from?

Dave Hayward (04:14)
It kind of follows on from that point. So around and about the virtual pubs and actually just after reopening, my brother-in-law, Jason, who's Naomi's brother, he was our first employee, very much family business. When we were having to book outside seating in the garden of our little micro pub, which had 12 seats, one day for our group, he just put the table booking as the rabble. So effectively, because we spent so much time out in the back, sort of...

I always say strong opinions lightly held, you know, so we were arguing about arguing a lot about things that none of us really cared about over a few drinks. And that's sort of, you know, the sort of South Park rabble rabble rabble thing, you know, and what have you. And then indie, yeah, very much is, yeah, it's dual meaning for us, because we all really care about our music as well. Two of our founders are in different bands. And of course, independence being a massive part of that. So the name felt pretty natural for us.

Martin (04:49)
Yeah, I think we all do that.

Yeah.

Yeah, so the word Indies come from, you know, your music background being in bands and not actually from, you know, being an independent brewery.

Dave Hayward (05:19)
It's definitely both. We thought it very nicely together, the two. But yeah, we wanted to let people know we're a community space, come together, there's good music, there's good beer, and then we'll probably have a fond argument about something whilst we're together.

Martin (05:21)
Yeah.

Definitely. Yeah. So obviously you spoke a bit about who you are, but you know, what kind of really inspired you to decide to start a brewery? Obviously you already had, said you had the Hoppy place, um, micro pub. So from there, where was the, you know, the whole idea of, know, we can start a brewery. it since meeting, um, your other co-owners, Alex and. Alex and Alison. Yeah.

Dave Hayward (06:03)
Alex and Alison, yeah, that definitely

escalated plans. I think what I'd say and definitely come back to the subject of independence and independent pubs a bit later on if we can. But I always knew I wanted a brewery eventually, think. I'd done, for example, I'd done my GCB, so I was a qualified brewer by that point. But yeah, we had our first micro pub. We'd just opened our second micro pub as well, which was in June 2022.

I say micro, that's actually quite a bit bigger in Maidenhead. So whereas Windsor's got about 40 seats, that's got about 100. So it's, you know, I guess it's just a pub. And the reason I was sort of focusing on opening pubs is I was very aware, you know, having had my mind blown maybe by Sierra Nevada in a chain pub, albeit one that was run slightly differently. This was obviously way pre Asahi But there were so few pubs that offered any choice.

Martin (06:38)
Lovely.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Dave Hayward (06:59)
And I started to dig into why that was and understood, you know, the route to market issues that we have in this country. The fact that as things stand 89 or so percent of the UK beer market is locked down to the same six brands and their sort of subsidiaries. And so, you know, I want the brewery one day, but I understand that that brewery needs to have outlets. And we sort of went on this journey to get some outlets open and sort of create our own customers. And then.

Martin (07:14)
Yeah, definitely.

Dave Hayward (07:28)
everything escalated very dramatically. Post COVID, but a conversation with sort of Alex, who at the time, you know, I knew how talented a brewer he was, was thinking about starting his own brewery up separately. And what that would have been was 150 litre batches in a shed in his garden. Somehow, a few beers and a few evenings of a few beers led to that escalating quite

dramatically and us going into business together.

Martin (07:58)
Awesome.

So the idea is obviously already there. And it just took ⁓ a couple of trips to his shed, brewing some beers and tasting them and go, yes, let's take this further.

Dave Hayward (08:12)
Well,

I'd sort of had quite a lot of his beer already, so a tiny bit on his background. He brewed for about 10 years at Windsor & Eton. His first job was in brewing. As you know, he joined, was effectively can I help for free kind of thing when he was a teenager and then got a shift brewer position and then a lead brewer position. He was there for a very long time. He did some lab work for them as well.

Martin (08:21)
Yeah.

Dave Hayward (08:35)
He then chose to go up to Thornbridge, as I mentioned, brewed up there, which is obviously amazing sort of CV stuff. When he was back down here after he picked up, I mentioned before he picked up an injury and sort of traveled back home to get physio. He was attending a local home brew club, as was I. And I had, you know, even beer that he was brewing five gallons at a time was definitely good enough to sell. So I had all that faith in him.

Martin (08:59)
Yeah.

Dave Hayward (09:05)
over our many, many drunk conversations, the four of us, Naomi and I, Alex and Ali, we sort of kept reiterating, are we sure about this? You know, are we definitely going to do this? It's quite hard at the moment, know, bearing in mind this was just about post-COVID. ah yeah, but think, you know, things will get better. Let's go for it. You know, we can do this. I'm not sure things have gotten better, but we did it anyway.

Martin (09:21)
You

Awesome.

mean, obviously your visual identity of your beers and your brand ⁓ stands out pretty well. What was the whole idea of, you did you get someone in to work with you on your identity or was it all a combination of all four of you?

Dave Hayward (09:41)
So thank you for

saying that. I do agree, but I don't take any personal credit for it. So my wife, again, co-owner Naomi, as well as being in a band, was, I should say, a full-time designer and graphic artist. So she was working in Shoreditch in the ragtrade, effectively, so in clothing design and sales. And one of the reasons, if we could just...

go back again a little bit that we started the Micro Pub when we did was effectively Naomi was getting very frustrated with that industry, the buyers especially, but the whole kind of thing and also the commute because that was Shoreditch that it was four hours a day on the train every day. And the conversation in the yes is horrible. And that was pre the sort of Elizabeth line as well, which, one of the reasons we moved to where we did was to get quick access to London and then that took an extra five years. But anyway.

Martin (10:23)
Yeah, that's a long journey.

Dave Hayward (10:38)
We sat down very genuinely, if you were going to do anything else with the skills that you've got, what would it be? And by this point, we've been our main hobby and all of our holidays and most of our friends were all beer. So that's sort of one of the things that led to that. So, yeah, day one, both A Hoppy Place and then later on, Indie Rabble benefited from having, you know, highly qualified designer with a massive passion for beer. So the brand really, once we came up with the name, that was all sort of Naomi's work.

Martin (10:57)
Yeah.

Dave Hayward (11:07)
Obviously iterations are okay with this, but that's her bag. She's been nominated for Design Awards now for our artwork and our concepts. I'm pretty happy with what we've got.

Martin (11:19)
Yeah, it's very handy to have your partner being a graphic designer.

So how would you how do you want people to feel when they you know, when they taste an Indie Rabble beer for the first time, you know, what's what do want them to feel and do you want them to feel proud that they're supporting independent breweries and can make sure that the taste of the beer is top quality? What's your main focus?

Dave Hayward (11:46)
Yeah, both of those things. I think we do work quite hard to put ourselves out there, like as the founders and as our team. We've got some great people with us as well. Be seen and really sort of emphasise the importance of a community. That's like really, really, really key. I think the only reason now that a lot of people would choose to go to pub and pay pub prices is the value that that experience adds to them.

Martin (11:48)
Yeah.

Dave Hayward (12:12)
you know, versus just being at home on the sofa, for example, having cancer or a supernocker, you know, it's far more expensive to support a hospitality business than it is to not. And it's conscious choice people have to make when they don't have that much. So, yeah, I really hope that people feel value in choosing to support a small business like ours. And that's really important to us. And then on the beer, I think I'd like to say that we brew all styles well.

Martin (12:16)
Yeah.

Dave Hayward (12:39)
I think that's fair. know, we love a hazy, but it's none of our favorite beer style, personally. I think all four of us would say that, you know, we prefer lagers, West Coast IPAs, stouts, that kind of thing, even though I think we can brew a good hazy. I think it's critical that any brewery, all of their beers are good. What we're sort of trying to do is consistently brew a wide range of styles pretty well. And hopefully that's what people think.

Martin (12:55)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, is there a particular style that you think is, is dying out or, and a particular style that's coming up? What would you say? I mean, I feel for me, I feel that there's a lot of saturated hazies at the moment. It's the market is just oversaturated with hazy beers, especially in the independent market.

There are many, many great breweries that doing it really, really well. And it's very hard to kind of distinguish which ones are better than the others.

Dave Hayward (13:34)
Yeah.

It's a really interesting question. think, you know, the hazy Pale Ale is a gateway beer style, I think, for a lot of people that either have only drunk lager before or even haven't drunk anything before. It is initially very approachable and that's, you know, that's because it's not especially bitter and it tends to be a little bit sweeter. It's potentially for someone who hasn't drunk much before at all, you know, an eye-opening beer, revolutionary beer, I think most new craft beer drinkers.

Martin (13:50)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Hayward (14:07)
They love the hazy and they drink the hazy. So that's absolutely fine. The counter to that, I think, is everyone thinks they need to have hazy focus because they see maybe what the likes of Deya and Verdant are doing. But that's, is that really any different saying, I need a lager focus because that's what I don't mean this brand, obviously, but Budweiser are doing because that's what I see everywhere. Well, you know, because Heineken are doing. It's maybe quite easy to...

Martin (14:32)
Yeah.

Dave Hayward (14:35)
look at the big guys and think, well, I just need to do that too. And there are only so many hazy pale ales that you can drink. Like I personally couldn't do more than say two or three pints of an evening because I don't find they have that repeat drink ability that some of the other classic styles have because they are quite sweet. But that's just me. I mean, maybe I'm just, absolutely.

Martin (14:54)
Yeah, yeah, very full bodied as well. it's just, kind of fills you up

after about three pints and ⁓

Dave Hayward (15:02)
So maybe I'm just a bit

blinkered and tired of some of these things, who knows, but.

Martin (15:05)
Yeah, but then if I I drink if I drink lager

or pills, no more than two pints and I'm constantly in and out of the toilet all day but

Dave Hayward (15:12)
Fair enough.

Martin (15:14)
just go straight through me. I'm touching on the subject of, you know, people seeing brands like Budweiser, Foster's, Heineken, et cetera, et cetera, in, you know, basically every pub that you walk into. Do you think that, you know, the average customer that goes into these pubs drinking these beers are kind of seeing them everywhere and thinking, they must be the best at what they do?

and just completely forget that there are many UK independent breweries doing them sort of styles of beers, lagers, pills, there's IPAs that are probably better in my opinion.

Dave Hayward (15:38)
thing.

hundreds of ways to answer that question. ⁓ I'll try not to ramble on for too long on this subject because it's a it's a gear grinder for me. ⁓ I think a lot of people are maybe even unconsciously but incredibly brand loyal and you think well why do you owe Heineken your loyalty for example so it's not really what I mean it's just you see it you have it you don't want to think about it

Martin (15:59)
same.

Dave Hayward (16:16)
You maybe don't understand everything there is to know about beer. You either are or are not bothered to try and bridge that. You're just used to what you're used to. Sort of the equivalent of, know, I always buy Kellogg's or I always buy Heinz. I think people always buy Heineken. It doesn't mean it's the best product. And in fact, I would assert quite strongly that it's from a taste perspective, it's absolutely not the best product, but it's consistent. I'm a Branston Bean man, so I mean, I don't know.

Martin (16:22)
Yeah. ⁓

Yeah. Yeah.

even if it was Heinz, could... Branston Bean.

Dave Hayward (16:45)
But I'm sure independent small batch craft beans are available as well. I'm getting laughed at by someone across the desk for that, the way. I'm very sorry. But no, I think people go for what they're used to. It makes it easy for them to just have that choice taken away from them effectively. And that's a big part of the battle we're up against alongside the fact that those people with that

Martin (16:54)
You

You

sick of.

Yeah.

Dave Hayward (17:14)
slice of the market, have the money to, you know, litigate to defend it, to lobby to defend it. And we don't necessarily have the resource to get access to market that we should have, that is fair for us to have. And another part of that is even look at what these brands are doing, buying previously craft oriented businesses and marketing them. So the best possible example that is Beavertown, which Heineken owns. And I know, yeah, Brixton as well.

Martin (17:38)
Yeah, Brixton as well, just been built.

Dave Hayward (17:42)
I know SIBA recently did a study as part of their Roots to Market review that 78 % of people surveyed by YouGov believed that Beavertown was an independent brand and then felt misled about that. So these guys, they're finding every opportunity to keep us down and we don't really have the resource to fight it. So it's an incredible frustration.

Martin (17:56)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, we

were speaking, we spoke to Neil Walker from SIBA and, you know, we asked the question of, know, people are feeling misled because the big brands that buying out, you know, neck oil, Brixton, sorry, Beavertown Town and Brixton, not exactly announcing it to the world, you know, they're not putting it on their badges saying now owned by, et cetera, you know what I mean? They're not going to do that, even though they do put out a press release, but who's going to read that press release in the beer, know, customers, consumers.

Dave Hayward (18:16)
Exactly.

the cost.

No, it's not widely publicised.

The papers, there's no value in the times the Telegraph leading with that story at all. lot of their shareholders would probably be upset if they did.

Martin (18:40)
Yeah.

course, because they'll

be devaluing the products before they've even launched it as their own. But yeah, on to brighter things. Your second birthday is coming up August 23rd. Huge congratulations for lasting two years.

Dave Hayward (18:51)
Exactly.

It's EATS!

Martin (19:00)
⁓ yeah. So, you know, what have you, in the last two years, what's that, what's it taught you in running a brewery?

Dave Hayward (19:07)
So they're kind of similar, but also very differently scaled problems than the ones I had running the two bars. So, you know, a lot of similarities, obviously, managing people, having to balance the books on a monthly basis, having to sort of keep your landlord happy, all the community aspects of ensuring you've got a customer base at all. We do. It's scarier here, though, because the costs are that much higher.

So our lease is that much more expensive. We, the brew kit, haven't yet fully paid off. So there's a big, big slug of money that goes out every month. We have, we have to make quite a lot here before we hit zero every month. So there's a lot of pressure on me as lead sales to ensure we get even just to stand still. Because by default, you know, if I, if I disappeared for a month, we'd be a third of the way close to failing as a business, you know.

It's, it is very, very tough. So there's a lot of pressure, a lot of stress here. But, ⁓ as you say, we've, we've gotten through two years now. The failure rate in those first two years is very high. We've grown our business now to a point where effectively the cash stays the same every month, which is a great starting point because for a while it was going down every month. And now we'll see the next step hopefully is, to make it go the other way a little bit because we'd like, well, I'd like to earn anything to be frank. ⁓

Martin (20:01)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Dave Hayward (20:27)
We'd like a sales team. We'd like to grow the business. We've got production capacity at the moment. If I could sell more, we could brew more. So that's sort of the big next step. But then alongside that, celebrate the milestone. So we're going to have a big, big, big old party in about a month's time. And we're looking forward to it.

Martin (20:34)
Yeah.

Yeah. Any plans

or brews for you to celebrate a special occasion?

Dave Hayward (20:49)
So yeah, we've got two birthday beers that are being released as a set and they're also incredibly different beers, which I hope leans into what I was mentioning earlier about the sort of wide range of styles that we try and brew well. So on the one hand, we did a collaboration with Crisp Malt. So we brewed a 4 % Heritage Bitter. That's going to be canned, conditioned and also in cask. And at the other end of the scale, we've released what we call the Turbo IPA, which is a big, sweet 8.4.

super hazy, punchy, saturated New England. ⁓ So absolutely the two ends of the scale there

Martin (21:19)
No, it's.

what hops did he use for the NEIPA?

Dave Hayward (21:24)
You know, I'd have to double Czech the exact top bill, it's Citra Amarillo definitely in there. We throw a lot of Amarillo, the big beers like that. But it's very punchy, sort of all the tropical stone fruits. yeah, it's bold. It's one of those beers that I mentioned earlier, I might struggle past the second pint off, but maybe at 8.4, that's fine, to be fair. Yeah.

Martin (21:47)
Yeah, it's definitely on a higher

scale of a New England IPA for sure.

Dave Hayward (21:52)
So

I quite like the branding. Sorry, last thing on the beers that Naomi's come up with as well. So we've got, it's a Street Fighter II theme and it's kind of a battle. It's a VS battle. So it's, you know, the heritage versus the hazy. And we're sending them nice sets. So it'll look good in anyone's bar. If anyone's ever not seen Naomi's cask branding before as well, we always try and go a little bit extra to make cask prominent on a bar. This one's effectively a Game Boy Advance cartridge.

Martin (22:01)
awesome.

Yeah.

Awesome. I used to love planning street fire.

Dave Hayward (22:22)
So it's oversized, it's

yeah, it's gonna look cool.

Martin (22:25)
You've also, you're launching a new core range beer called Indie Pills, which is a Pilsner. What made you choose this new style and what's your different take on it?

Dave Hayward (22:31)
We are.

So

it's obviously a very, very hard market to break into. ⁓ The vast majority of lager in this country is the macro lager. And then within the independent pub estate, the vast majority of independent lager also belongs to one or two very well-established craft brands that focus on lager. I think it's the simplest beer style and yet about the most difficult to produce excellently. Because I mean, you'll know because you brew, there's nowhere to hide at all.

Martin (23:02)
Yeah, 100 % agree.

Yep, I brewed my first my first  trial brewing a Pilsner ⁓ and yeah, failed just due to one little tiny, tiny mistake. And it just ruined the whole batch. Yeah.

Dave Hayward (23:06)
Yeah.

Yeah.

sort of,

think, pretty privileged with just how good Alex is at the lager style. We've also got a brew kit that allows us to sort of do temperature raises during the brew process, sort of replicate a decoction mash and things like that. And I think our lagers are very good. So the reason that we're releasing this beer, effectively, we do have a core lager already, which is a beer called Frozen Moon, which is currently 4.8 % and what I would call a Czech Amber lager. So it's got a little bit more sort of

Martin (23:43)
Yeah.

Dave Hayward (23:45)
you know, coloured malt to it. It's got a little bit more of malt bite to it. It's maybe a slightly higher than average bitterness level as well. And I absolutely love it. But I think you'd have to call it a craft lager in so much as your Heineken drinker is going to go, what's that? You know? ⁓

Martin (23:47)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, or anything that's a different colour to a lager, they'd be

like, what's this?

Dave Hayward (24:06)
But maybe. But so the move to Indie Pills is trying to address both of those issues, which is it's a more approachable beer. It's a beer that costs us a little bit less to produce as well. Not a lot, but a little bit less. It allows me to price it quite aggressively and sort of go after some of those small and medium sized independent pubco's with it. And our goal is if, you know, if we can get to brewing that even twice a month, it's going to put us in quite a nice financial position.

in so much as we can then, we can be confident that I can get the extra salesman, which is something that we really need. And so far that I've got, you know, I'm really pushing for the launch next week, trying to get venue signed up for it. A little bit more on the beer, just to say it's a 4.2 % pills, it's it's hopped exclusively of Hallertau, but that's a blend of blanc and traditional. There's still a tiny, tiny bit of colour to it, but it's effectively a very pale beer. It's very, very, very pintable.

Martin (24:42)
Yeah.

Dave Hayward (25:05)
It's, think, fault-free, consistent, and hopefully people really enjoy it when it comes out. So, yeah, we're hoping for big things with this one

Martin (25:14)
Awesome. Sounds great. And we're definitely having that in stock for the beer rep. So you can have a little taste of that for our customers. I'm looking forward to tasting it as well. even order myself one. you go. So, you know, we spoke, we touched a bit about independence and a bit earlier in the conversation,

Dave Hayward (25:21)
Thank you for that.

Martin (25:33)
obviously it was reported, you know, that at least 80 % of, of breweries struggled to find or struggled to access the market to their local, local pubs because just not able to. so with, with Indie Rabble, how has it been for you to get access to market around your area?

Dave Hayward (25:52)
think,

so I know your listeners would have probably already seen the episode that you did with Neil. So I won't say everything that he said again, but I do work. So I'm a SIBA Southeast Regional Director myself, and I work quite closely with Neil. And I think everyone effectively in the brewery, like you say, it's 80 % or so said that their biggest issue day to day is access to market. I think 50 % or so breweries have also said their number one priority for this year is to survive.

It's not to grow the business, it's not to invest in equipment, it's just to keep lights on and the doors open. Those two things obviously go hand in hand. I know we are still in a bit of a cost of living crisis, but wouldn't it be nice if the 89 % of the pub estate in this country that 900 brewers cannot access were made available at some capacity? Yes.

Martin (26:27)
Yeah.

Yeah, it would be amazing. I mean, they've, they've started something up in Scotland, haven't they, where you can ⁓

apply for a guest beer license from your landlord. So to have at least one guest tap on. ⁓ So we'll see how that goes. We need something similar in England and Wales, but to me personally, I think it's not enough. I think we would.

Dave Hayward (27:02)
think we need something similar. We need, yeah, so that's.

I agree.

Martin (27:10)
benefit from something like a 20 % of taps to be free of of tide lines.

Dave Hayward (27:15)
totally.

It's a trade-off between ask for more than you want because you'll get less and the more you ask for the more aggressively companies with massively more resource than we've got will fight back and it's a very hard one to balance.

Martin (27:31)
Yeah. I mean,

I mean, it's so hard to see like the big six ⁓ account for over, what's it 80 % of sales in the UK. And none of that's going into, well, none of the profits are really going into the UK economy. Yes. It creates a lot of jobs.

Dave Hayward (27:34)
so...

Yep. Yep.

Martin (27:50)
But in the same side, all that profit is not a common debt, it's not contributing to our economy. Whereas if we had more independent breweries in pubs, all that would go back into the communities, would go back into the UK economy and would see a bit of growth, which is what the government want.

Dave Hayward (28:11)
Yeah, it's super tricky. I do sort of, you know, a little bit of politicking and in the SIBA circles, especially. And what I can see is the difference in resource that we have even 900 of us versus what, you know, Heineken have what the supermarkets have, what the pubco's have. It's it's stark to see. And I'm sort of backing SIBA as a business quite

heavily myself because I think they're the best opportunity to speak to the actual decision makers that we have in the craft beer industry. There's no point just shouting on Facebook. There's really not You're not going to achieve anything in trying to shout to avoid you. know, Siba has access to politicians that will listen. How much they can achieve still to be determined. But it's it feels, you know, in 40 years we've not had a proper beer review. So this is long, long, long overdue. And I hope I hope you find.

some positives out. We really need it.

Martin (29:09)
Yeah.

⁓ obviously you say you work for SIBA and work quite closely with Neil, et cetera. ⁓ a quick question that I've, that's, I've spoken to quite a few independent founders and, and one of the questions they ask is, you know, sometimes the independent campaign is a bit, a bit cloudy on their, on their wording of what makes an independent brewery. for instance, we have St. Austell brewery who are an independent brewery, very big brewery.

Dave Hayward (29:32)
Yep.

Yeah.

Martin (29:37)
that also own little breweries which are independent, would you class them little breweries as independent even though they're owned by another brewery? And, you know, there's a big question about around this.

Dave Hayward (29:49)
It's an interesting,

it is. I would say, and it makes it muddy, but for me, it depends on the intention. So, you know, if you look at, for example, the Keystone group are doing, they're buying up brand after brand after brand, closing down brewery, losing jobs, amalgamating everything into one or two facilities, and then trying to act like they're still six different companies. I think that's quite different to a brewery that might go and buy

burdened brewery financially and allow that operation to keep running standalone. But it is muddy. I know SIBA has some definitions around sort of the overall hectolitre output as well, which is, you know, it's a tiny percentage of the scale that Brewers Alliance in America has, it's sort of something. So if any of these groups collectively get too large, they would be excluded. But yeah, it's a tough one to answer. I think I can make a judgment by looking at,

way that business is behaving much more easily than I could make a black and white call on what independence is and is not.

Martin (30:54)
Yeah. Yeah.

Do you think, ⁓ like customers are becoming a bit more aware of, you know, where their beers come from and, you know, what makes an independent brewery compared to what isn't?

Dave Hayward (31:07)
I'd have to be careful answering that because I think I'm in a bubble where everyone cares, which is definitely going to bias the answer. I think the average person who goes down a pub on a Thursday or a Friday night doesn't give a single damn about it, honestly. And the only thing that will make them is getting campaigns front and centre prominently in those pubs whilst they're drinking.

Martin (31:22)
⁓ Yeah.

Dave Hayward (31:31)
And the only way to achieve that is the Roots to market argument The Indie Beer Campaign will help a little bit because we talked about earlier how many people feel misled by Beavertown Because that is a craft beer. Because what is craft beer? Is it a style? Is it a production output? know, obviously, Pete Brown's written a book on it and he couldn't answer the question, so I'm not going to try to.

Martin (31:32)
Yeah.

Yeah, right.

Yeah. I it was, I mean,

Dave Hayward (31:57)
biases in place.

Martin (31:58)
Yeah, 100 % agree. 100 % agree. So

what's next for Indie Rabble? Obviously apart from your birthday, future plans, what we got, what's coming in the next year.

Dave Hayward (32:06)
you

So we're still tiny, I should add. We've got about, I think it's around 350 direct customers up and down the country. Some of those very large, some of those have ordered from us once ever. And then, I work with a half dozen or so wholesalers quite well, but that's led to us in the previous twelve months doing about 1000 hect of beer, which is tiny for those that know where we are. You're considered a very small brewery if you do anything less than 5,000.

So we need to grow. We need to grow to make sure that we're on the right side of profitability. And yeah, my next step, as I mentioned earlier, is I desperately need some support on sales because I'm kind of the everything guy. I do podcast pop-ins. ⁓ I turn up industry events and network and politic. I'm trying to deal with the wholesalers, the medium-sized pubco's. But I also, and I've got our events and marketing managers spend a day a week doing what we call doom spamming.

which is the sort of four or 500 emails to people that probably won't answer that she hates and I know is kind of pointless, but someone has to do. And it's keeping our name out there. We need more of that. We need more of that support because some of those tasks, you they're critical, but they're kind of thankless. But yeah, effectively the mission for us, if we could grow 25 % in the next 12 months, that would be amazing. That would put us in the right side of the balance sheet and allow us to be more confident that we're going to stick this out, get to the five year mark and...

Martin (33:12)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Dave Hayward (33:38)
Keep doing what we love doing.

Martin (33:40)
Yeah, definitely. mean, hopefully we'll touch back in a year or so and hopefully you would have achieved that growth that you want. I'm going to hit you some with some quick fire questions and see how quickly you can answer them. And the first thing that pops into your mind quick answers.

Most underrated beer style.

Dave Hayward (33:58)
West Coast IPA.

Martin (34:01)
Ooh, see I like a West Coast pale.

I just find it just, it goes down a bit more easier than an IPA for the bitterness. Westies, not East, not East Coast, Westies. One hop you can't stop brewing with. I think I know this one. Oh really? I thought you said Amarillo, you see. Favourite UK brewery, apart from your own obviously.

Dave Hayward (34:06)
I'll take West East full stop, I'm happy with that.

Centennial, same reason.

Still the Kernal

Martin (34:28)
Yes,

Any, any last words before we close up? Anything you want to touch on?

Dave Hayward (34:29)
Thanks. ⁓

No, I don't think so. Just a call to action to everyone out there. Keep supporting the little guys and thank you, I guess. also thank you for having me on this today. It's been lovely to chat.

Martin (34:45)
You're more than welcome. It's been a pleasure to have you on and plenty of laughs and a bit of politics as well. Anyway, on that note... ⁓

Dave Hayward (34:52)
So then.

Martin (34:54)
Dave it's been absolutely amazing talking to you. I wish you all the best for Indie rabble in the forthcoming months and, and hopefully next year you've achieved the growth target that you want and, and hire the sales person as well to do all the sales work for you. And, yeah, ⁓ thanks again. And, we'll catch you again in another couple of weeks. ⁓ until then we'll catch you later. Bye bye.

Dave Hayward (35:20)
Cheers.