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Darryl said: “From March last year, when we first went into lockdown, we met as a leadership team every day for the first hundred days. “We made a lot of changes! We worked through the whole process, from the production line to the focus of our stockkeeping.” Westons was forewarned and as a result, forearmed, when Darryl got a taste of things to come in early 2020. He was in Australia, looking after the company’s antipodean brewery, when Covid-19 began to emerge. “I flew out of Melbourne just as it went into lockdown and I got back saying ‘we are going to follow suit’,” he said.
“OK, yes, the on-site business is coming back pretty swiftly as pubs and restaurants reopen,” said Darryl. “The recent spurt of good weather has certainly helped there and each time there is a lifting of restrictions, we see a bit of an uplift.
Our best guess is that while people are returning to pubs and restaurants, they will probably go out less often, but will expect a premium offer when they do. For us that means they will drink less, but choose the best.
“There was an almost instant recognition that business had to change and we pretty much got on with it.” In a sure indication the team did indeed find the sweet-spot for consumers suddenly house-bound, Westons’ online turnover of yesteryear, somewhere in the region of £50,000 to £100,000 per annum, has become £1.5m. While the online takings are small beer in the scale of things – the business as a whole has an annual turnover of £60m – the team recognises the shift forced on consumer trends in the past year is here to stay.
“But with the way the online orders are flowing in, they will soon account for 2.5% of our overall turnover. “Our best guess is that while people are returning to pubs and restaurants, they will probably go out less often, but will expect a premium offer when they do. For us that means they will drink less, but choose the best.”
Established in 1880, the company is now in the care of the fourth and fifth generations of the Weston family. Managing director Helen Thomas is the great-granddaughter of founder Henry Weston. Using the wide variety of regional fruit grown in the surrounding orchards, Henry started pressing and blending the ciders and perries that went down a treat with his thirsty neighbours. Today The Bounds, the charming 17th century farmhouse and cider mill where it all began, is still at the centre of the business.
WESTONS CIDER westons-cider.co.uk
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