Building up a Head of Steam

Feb 15 2008 by Alastair Gilmour, The Journal

EVERYBODY needs heroes. Heroes exist in every walk of life, but they never regard themselves as such.

Beer heroes deserve a measure of genuflection, so let’s bend the knee to the Sir John Fitzgerald company for flying the real ale flag in its North East pubs when others took the pasteurised, sterilised, homogenised, artificially-carbonated beer route; to the brave band of micro-brewers over the last 25 years who have leapt into the dark – and allowed many of us to see the light – and also to Tony Brookes, an entrepreneur with a social conscience, boundless energy and an exhausting “to do” list bursting with a million ideas.

Tony is managing director of the Head of Steam group which operates three pubs in Newcastle – The Cluny, Tilley’s Bar and the eponymous Head of Steam, and one Head of Steam each in Huddersfield and Liverpool.

They revolve around cask-conditioned ale, imported beer, enterprise, enthusiasm and innovation. In-house beer festivals, choice food, contemporary music and art exhibitions are meat and drink to the 60-year-old Yorkshireman. Loose change (doubled) and charity contributions are sent off to the likes of Water Aid, providing wells in Africa, and Medicines Sans Frontiers, taking medical aid directly to a damaged world.

When Tony started off his first beer business in June 1980 – an off-licence on Heaton Road in Newcastle called Legendary Yorkshire Heroes – many foreign beers had scarcity value stamped all over them. Duvel, Chimay and Westmalle, commonplace today, were virtually unheard of in the North East and he recalls loading a van with Fosters Lager and Castlemaine XXXX in a London dock.

“They were really, really rare,” he says. Changed days indeed.

“Then we had 25 real ales on handpulls from micro-breweries which we collected from all over the country. Our very first beer was Penrhos Bitter in wooden barrels which we delivered to the Cumberland Arms. We ran a wholesale side in parallel with the retail business – one fed the other.”

Whatever the business Tony was going to be involved in was destined to be called Legendary Yorkshire Heroes.

“It’s such a great name,” he says. “Everyone from Yorkshire is by definition a hero, just some are legendary.

“My profession was in transport planning. The thing I knew second-most about was beer. I saw the North East was lagging behind everybody else in real ale and micro-brewing.

“Legendary Yorkshire Heroes was a phenomenal success and we were quickly supplying beer festivals all over the country. If you’ve got your offer right it’s great to be at the front end of the market. We opened shops in Jesmond, Tynemouth, Fenham and Durham. Then, in the mid-Eighties, Margaret Thatcher was doing her best to crucify British business and we suffered the same as everybody else.”

One Brookes bright spark was the guest beer scheme which, again, is routine today but Tony is still astonished that he managed to persuade the likes of Vaux, Scottish & Newcastle and Camerons to take another brewery’s beer in their managed houses. “The idea was completely revolutionary at the time,” he says. “We broke absolutely every industry mould. We were able to show there was a market for quality real ales. Can you imagine it? Scottish & Newcastle were shipping it down south in tankers from Edinburgh – straight down Northumberland Street and not stopping.

“I started the Tap & Spile concept with Camerons in 1985 but they never exploited it in the way they could have. We sold the off-licences and bought 18 pubs from Scottish & Newcastle. It was a big step. It was a right mixture – I shudder even now at the thought of The Independent – it was called The Chesterfield when we bought it. Then there was the Kings Arms on Diana Street in Newcastle which we did up and renamed O’Dwyers after my mother-in-law. But real ale was far too advanced for Arthur’s Hill. Eventually we sold them to Century Inns.

“I’ve always been a market developer, it’s all about being at the forefront and knowing what customers want and satisfying those needs. We’re always campaigning and have recently contributed £15,000 to a Water Aid project in Nigeria – it’s part of our ethos.”

The Head of Steam development came in 1994 when Tony went to look at the space that is now The Centurion at Newcastle Central Station.

“Within 30 seconds the whole concept tumbled into my head,” he says, “It was like a revelation. I knew then what I wanted to do, it was like walking into a film set, all that fabulous tilework.”

The brainwave was to take underdeveloped spaces in railway stations and turn them into “real ale palaces” and entertainment venues. But what he hadn’t allowed for was the privatisation of the railways in the 1990s.

“They were more focused on getting trains running on tracks,” says Tony. “I tried for two years to get a licence and spent a fortune on planning permission. Train operators weren’t used to negotiating with private companies.”

The first Heads of Steam, however, were at Euston in London and at Huddersfield, a paean to Victorian magnificence. Scarborough was opened and quickly closed as it didn’t feel right. Liverpool Lime Street followed and operates well, but it soon became clear that the full railway station vision was slightly blurred and alternative outlets were sought.

Tony says: “We’ve got a beer festival in all of them at the moment with ales from the Irish Republic and the Isle of Man, some of which have never been in Britain before. We always try to go that little step further to keep interest going.

“You’ve got to follow your hunches and pull the market along. The music at the Head of Steam and The Cluny, for example, is brilliant business and we’ve never been afraid to invest. We also support local artists in our pub galleries. Paul Harvey, founder member of The Stuckists, and Arthur Gills, the railway artist, are regulars.

“I always find it difficult to define who our customers are, we attract such a broad spectrum, but it’s basically nice people who care about where they drink and eat and in what surroundings.

“Once you’ve got customers in the door, sell them something more and give them an experience to remember, then they’ll come back.”

And that’s legendary Yorkshire logic.

alastair.gilmour@ncjmedia.co.uk

I always find it difficult to define who our customers are, we attract such a broad spectrum, but it’s basically nice people who care about where they drink and eat and in what surroundings.