How a brewery became much more than a business

Before being planet friendly became an off-the-shelf marketing kit, Stroud Brewery was out there in all weathers working it out. The challenge now is how does it continue to stand out from the crowd?

Dear Readers, 

Yesterday we went to see the man who set up one of the UK’s first organic breweries and has been steering its course for the last 18 years. 

That Greg Pilley runs Stroud Brewery won’t be news to many people, but the interview with him might give you a sense of the scale of the operation now, the challenges the business has faced to get to where it is, and how - when a business is so entwined with the life and beliefs of its owner - the journey for that individual stirs all kinds of emotions. 

When once being organic set you apart the invention of so many other terms suggesting environmental and planet-friendly approaches has rather crowded the marketplace.

We find Pilley in reflective mood, pondering just how to distil the complexity of what Stroud Brewery stands for, doing his best to take as little credit as possible for the business, wondering if he’ll ever earn any serious money, letting slip about ideas for another premises and giving us an otherwise honest view of the never-ending battle that it is to be in hospitality.

He also names the generous investor who gave him the cash all those years ago that made the whole thing possible (and why he's still not paid him back yet! Just don't tell anyone!!).

And despite his best efforts and the obvious challenges, he still manages to make it all sound like a quite incredible adventure.

We would like to thank Greg for sparing so much time and being so open about a business which continues to inspire.

If you have a story idea, want to know more or are interested in commercial opportunities please email andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk or telephone 07956 926061.

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How a brewery became much more than a business

Before being ‘planet friendly’ became an off-the-shelf marketing kit, Stroud Brewery was out there in all weathers working it out and winning fans. The challenge now is how does it continue to stand out from the crowd? 

By Andrew Merrell

Some of the very best salespeople are not the ones wearing the title, but the ones who talk with passion about their business and somehow make you understand what it all means - and how much it all means too. 

Greg Pilley is one of those. 

When we meet at Stroud Brewery, the business he founded back in 2006, the back doors to its warehouse are long open, the orders are coming and going, and on the other side – the ‘pub bit’ that faces the canal towpath - staff are busy getting ready for the first customers of the day. It’s 9.30am. 

Is it always ‘all-systems go’ so early, I ask, wondering if traditional 11am opening has been abandoned in the Five Valleys. 

“We welcome people in with laptops to work from here for as long as they want,” said Pilley, who appears from a mystery office elsewhere in the building wearing shorts, t-shirt and boots.

We sit down with coffees in one of the window seats out of the way.

“We get a little twitchy if they are blocking a table around lunchtime, but there’s usually somewhere for them to sit,” he adds, still on the subject of the laptoppers. 

“We even had an organised group in here for a while, with people working for a while, then networking for 10 minutes, then back to work. 

“In fact, we’re thinking of some kind of offer – endless coffee and a bacon roll to be able to work from here for as long as you want. We’ll see.” 

You can see him mulling over the minor commercial potential of the proposition, and seeming to like the idea. In a business where margins are fine, every win counts. 

But instead of laptops, sometime after 10am people start walking by with musical instruments. I’m about to ask, but he reads the look on my face. 

“We have all sorts of groups use the space. In fact, pretty much anyone can approach us to use it and we usually let them have it for free. 

“Today we have a drop-in music session. We usually get about 40 people. Some of them retired, some not. It’s great. 

“We’ve got a board games group too that has got pretty big. I think there’s about 60 to 70 members on our social media now and they even travel out to an event in Portugal every year too,” he says, looking genuinely pleased how the brewery is being embraced by so many. 

Being a space for people to come together is one of Stroud Brewery’s big things.

“I think we’ve always had spaces in which we’ve made community. In the past it’s been the church, school, in my case the allotment too, but I think hospitality has always played a part. 

“The value of that community has risen or fallen, but since Covid I think we’ve become more aware of what it means,” he said. 

The seeds of a totally organic brewery took shape when Pilley the ecologist stopped travelling, living and working abroad for the likes of the Soil Association, and decided to put down some roots – quite literally. 

“Stroud is unusual. I think I was attracted here first because of the chance to do some small-scale farming,” he said. 

Pilley moved to the Gloucestershire market town with his then partner, from whom he recently separated - who among other things is a programme coordinator at the Real Farming Trust, a food poverty campaigner and still listed as a director at the brewery. 

He remains committed to encouraging better agriculture. It’s where the organic commitment comes from.

He is a founding member of Stroud Community Agriculture Ltd – the beginning of which were what lured him here to start with - a community co-operative which runs its own farm business. 

We briefly divert from talk of the brewery to why he finds concepts like ‘regenerative farming’ good, but how too many terms risk degrading what he feels is the more robust and rigorous definition of good farming practices that is organic.

For a brewery whose ingredients need to be organic, and as local as possible, it all makes sense. 

All this talk about how we need to treat the land better reminds him he will need to move his sheep from the bottom of his allotment later if the rain continues.  

“The land is not good enough for growing anything, so I’ve kept a handful of sheep on it to keep the grass down,” he explains. 

I am wondering whether many managing directors of medium-sized breweries ever interrupt meetings to announce their part time duties as a shepherd might get in the way of best-laid plans, but then I remember I am in Stroud where life is different. 

Perhaps it’s his age, he’s well-into his middle fifties now, perhaps the changes in his personal life, but he can’t help openly reflecting on the future for both himself and the business when I ask what the long term plans are. 

“I do need to think about how the business might pay me a pension at some point, or what that might look like. And about how to make the business sustainable and long term,” he muses out loud, sounding like someone lamenting having the kind of principles that have stopped him pursuing a much more lucrative path, something that might well have left him bored and empty, but certainly feeling much more smug and financially secure.

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