Joules Brewery is in the process of developing plans to invest in its home town of Market Drayton.
After purchasing the Stags Head pub, which adjoins the Market Drayton Brewery, plans are now developing for the site. Anna Brakel, the Development Director, is managing the whole project and explains the scheme.
Anna Comments, ‘We are finalising our plans to invest in Market Drayton. We take great pride in investing in Shropshire, and our Brewery’s Hometown. We have a great belief in Market Drayton as our epicentre and believe if we continue to invest other businesses will have the confidence to do the same. A key focus will be creating the site to become a community hub, somewhere everyone can gather. We also have exciting plans to develop the Brewery to increase capacity following ten years of growth, and of course an even better Brewery Taphouse.’
First, we will invest in our onsite Brewery Tap at the Red Lion, which dates from 1623 and is a grade II listed building. The pub will be enhanced; we want to increase the space in our main bar, which can get busy so that people can enjoy a beer in the shadow of our brewery tower. The kitchen will also be enhanced to develop our classic pub menu and appeal to a broader audience. We hope to enhance the dining area to complement that capability.
Some of this work will be made possible as we will relocate our special occasion space to the Stags Head at The Brewery, our new sister pub on the opposite side of the courtyard. The Stags Head will be designed and adapted to hold local events, showcase our Brewery and host tours, to hold our brewery archive material, and host all the events that happen now in our Mouseroom; this will include all sorts of special occasions for our local customers who will be able to have a whole pub to themselves. Being a dedicated special occasion venue, we will fully focus our hospitality offering away from the everyday operation of the Red Lion.
Finally, our Brewery is now at full stretch, and to keep up with our cold beer offer, we need to invest in the Brewery itself; this will include some new DPVs, and our specially designed Green Monkey ageing tanks. Because we naturally lager Green Monkey, we need more maturation tanks; the maturation time gives the beer its depth of flavour and natural sparkle, showcasing the Shropshire Pure Mineral water. These will be located alongside the current ones on the land at the rear of the Stags Head.
Victoria Colclough, Operations Director at Joule’s Brewery adds: “We are delighted to be investing in the Brewery and creating additional jobs in the Town of Market Drayton. It also offers us the chance to invest in our Flagship Taphouse the Red Lion Inn, which also adjoins the brewery. This investment will give us some vital extra capacity which we need as we grow, this news also marks our total and unequivocal commitment to Shropshire and to our hometown of Market Drayton, some good and welcome news for the hospitality sector.”
We are working on the designs and hope to hold public consultations over Spring 2024. The total investment on all these parts will easily exceed £1 million, and we are very happy and proud to be investing so heavily in our hometown and to serve our Shropshire heartland.