Spotlight on Garden City Brewery – Isolation Innovation | Letchworth

During lockdown the owners of Letchworth’s award-winning Garden City Brewery had to innovate and adapt quickly to keep their business afloat and secure its long-term viability.

The business is co-owned by Letchworth residents Holly-Anne Rolfe and husband Nick. “We love Letchworth because it’s got such a lovely community atmosphere. It’s a friendly, leafy and unique place to live and run a business,” said Holly.

“We got off to a great start – people joked that we’d become millionaires and buy a house on The Broadway! But as much as we need a viable business, money really isn’t what drives us. We just want to produce great beer, keep prices accessible and be generous to our staff and customers.”

A harsh blow

By February, thoughts about taking the business to the next level were eclipsed by growing concerns about the pandemic. Holly wasted no time in introducing new safety precautions, including accepting card payments only, rather than cash, and stepping up the hygiene measures and handwashing regime on site.

The March lockdown dealt a harsh blow to the business. Holly and Nick had to furlough all bar one of their payroll staff, taking on more day-to-day duties themselves, but generously decided to top up the 20 per cent shortfall in their wages. Meanwhile, the freelance staff all applied for the Government’s Self-Employed Income Support Scheme.

“We were determined to keep trading so used social media to promote the fact that we were still open for takeaways,” said Holly. “Customers would rock up and tell us what they wanted, having seen menus online. We then poured the beer direct from our casks into containers.”

One week into lockdown, the business added another string to its bow: same-day deliveries from Thursday to Sunday, for email orders received before 1pm.

Lockdown challenges

Like many other brewery businesses, Holly encountered supply problems early on: “It was impossible to get hold of takeaway vessels and we ended up having to pour our draft beer into plastic milk bottles for customers to transport back to their homes. It was hard to get hold of the right sizes, so we had to switch from pints to litres.”

Money was tight, but fortunately help was at hand. “We were saved because we were spared two major overheads during lockdown,” said Holly. “The first was staffing costs, thanks to the Government’s support schemes. And the second was rent, which the Heritage Foundation generously waived for three months – we really appreciated that, especially because we knew the money would otherwise have been reinvested in other parts of the town.”

As lockdown went on, Holly further refined the business model. She set up two separate email addresses: one for ‘click and collect’ pre-orders, to help manage the takeaway queues, and another for deliveries. She also changed the deadline for orders to 9pm on the previous day and dropped the Sunday delivery option because demand was highest from Thursday to Saturday.

“We got into a rhythm,” she said. “We were doing on average around 16 deliveries a day.”

At the start of August, Garden City Brewery opened its doors to customers once again.

“We didn’t rush into it, partly because we didn’t want to abandon all the customers who had kept us going during lockdown,” said Holly. “We took our time to figure out how to operate safely and we put the right processes in place to ensure social distancing. For example, we decided to offer table-service only, so that our customers wouldn’t have to queue up at the bar. And we trained our staff well.

“We reconfigured the indoor seating to create more space between tables, and the Heritage Foundation kindly found us some storage room for our excess furniture. We put up clear plastic screens, hand-made by Nick, and brought in one-way systems and hand-sanitiser stations. We also introduced an advanced booking system for our indoor tables and provided additional seating outside, available on a first-come, first-served basis.”

Despite all the screens and safety signs, Garden City Brewery has retained its unique, comfortable and friendly vibe. “Our customers are absolutely loving the fact that we’re back open again,” said Holly, “and we are delighted to be fully up and running – but in the safest way possible”.