For this month’s Behind the Brand interview, where we spotlight exceptional founders and brands in the Active portfolio, we spoke to Russell Bisset, Founder of Northern Monk. Our conversation covered everything from the brand’s Northern roots and community-led approach to creating a Yorkshire tea-inspired beer and a team tea towel. Read on to find out more…
Can you share the inspiration behind founding Northern Monk and what sets you apart from other beer brands in the market?
It really starts with a deep passion for beer. At the time of founding the business you either had cask beer and traditional family brewers that were making incredible liquid and had a real sense of place but maybe weren’t doing anything too progressive with the liquid or the brand. Or you had the craft brewers starting to make more interesting progressive styles of beer, but they felt Americanised and didn’t have a true sense of place.
There is something about beer and provenance. It’s a liquid that’s been around for thousands of years and there is something about the meaning of the place that it comes from. You see it in the big brands, like Estrella from Barcelona, and Guinness from Dublin. Even with these macro brands, their sense of place is really important.
For us, there wasn’t a “craft” brand with a true sense of place in the UK. Over the years, we’ve articulated this as being ‘Fresh from the North’ and that is still as important today, if not more so, as it was when we started 11 years ago.
How has the business changed since your early days brewing beer in a cellar in Bradford? What are some of the highlights along the way?
Our highlights are all closely aligned with our founding vision to create incredible beer experiences. That’s intertwined with the notion of freshness which we’ve brought to life in lots of different ways. We were the first brewery to pioneer peel-and-reveal labels where you peel back the label, and you find out this whole world of information about the beer and the artists involved.
Our head brewer, cofounder Brian is committed to making liquid with true integrity and with quality at its cornerstone. But for some reason he’s wanted to make a screwball pale ale for some time, you know the iconic ice cream with a bubble gum flavour. So, we’ve made that and it’s incredible. It’s really exciting to make those consumer experiences which are so much fun and have the opportunity to brighten up people’s days and create moments that people share.
We’ve done some pretty outlandish stuff, like our Aunt Bessie beer. We spoke to people who shared it around the Christmas family get-together and reflected on how much they did or didn’t like the flavours. It’s a privilege to be part of those occasions.
The other obvious one is people and the team we’ve built. You know at school you had those tea towels where you all did a little portrait? Right now, everyone in the business, 110 people, are drawing a little portrait and we’re going to get a class of 2024 team tea towel made. Everyone is buzzed about it and to be able to create that kind of a workplace is amazing.
Since launching Faith in 2015, you’ve grown an impressive range of beers including IPAs, stouts, alcohol-free and Hop Water. What’s your favourite drink you’ve made so far? What’s next?
It’s a difficult question to answer because it’s like choosing one of your children, but I would have to say Faith. I liken it to certain food and drink experiences where it’s meant to be, like Heinz tomato ketchup. Everything is in its right place. Faith for us is that. We were pioneers of that style in the UK and the first brewery to have a hazy pale ale which has this pillowy mouth feel but is super tropical. At the time it was a new flavour profile to have in beer.
In terms of new products, we’ve got a beer called Northern Rising in the works with a brewery Timothy Taylors who we’ve always wanted to work with. That will be a draft stout. We’re seeing huge growth in that category and bringing new consumers into it, so we’re stoked for that.
You started by selling your beers at local farmer’s markets and you’ve remained very community-led since then. How has your brand and marketing strategy evolved? How do you maintain a strong sense of community around the brand as you grow?
Community starts with the Northern Monk team. It’s always a journey and we keep trying to raise the bar for our team and make sure we have best-in-class working environment. Internally we communicate as often as possible with the team, taking everyone on the journey with us. There is always an opportunity for feedback at every level of the business.
Building out from the team, we have the creative community around Northern Monk. We’re always thinking about ways we use our platform to champion these people like the Patrons Project where we’ve showcased some incredible people who I’d never have dreamt we could work with. The likes of the comic illustrator Chris Simpson as well as some of the best street art and graffiti artists in the UK, such as INSA, Smug, Tankpetrol and Nomad Clan. It’s a real privilege to champion the Northern creative community.
Finally, there is our positive impact, both socially and environmentally through our foundation Faith in Futures. We’ve got several products specifically designed to raise funds for that and we have an ambition to donate £150,000 by the end of 2025 to social causes alongside multiple sustainability ambitions as well. The ambition is to more deeply ingrain those charities into the business. The team votes on the three charities we support and has two paid volunteer days to work with them.
With your Patrons Project and magazine, The Scribe, there’s a lot of creativity running through the brand. Can you tell us a bit more about where this creativity comes from and the inspiration behind these projects?
Our creative concepts have been one of my biggest passions and focus areas. We have an incredible creative team here and it is very much a team effort, and we encourage the whole business to get involved.
Over the years we’ve learnt certain things really resonate with the consumer and that’s obviously a filter. We want to do things that excite and engage people, so we take that lens to it. Finally, and most importantly, is the Fresh from the North piece. This is the ultimate brand filter. For example, yesterday, for Yorkshire Day, we launched Cuppa, which is a tea milk sugar brown ale inspired by a popular beverage in Yorkshire and paying homage to that. Our audience got very excited by that and bringing these iconic food and drink experiences to life in beer form.
Can you tell us a bit about some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced scaling the business? How did you overcome them?
The most obvious one is Covid. I remember walking around the brewery and the tap room thinking, this could be the last time we open, I’m sure many business owners and founders had the same moments. It was such a wild time. But we were incredibly front-footed, the team rallied, and we looked at how we would pivot the business to embrace the operating environment. This meant doubling down on supermarkets, off-trade, D2C and our subscription model. The kind of beer experiences people were able to get delivered to their door.
Between those things, we saw great success and certainly one of my proudest business accomplishments was getting an award for the fastest growing business in Yorkshire, which was over a 3 year period and included the first year of Covid. And then at the same time, we were the highest-rated food and drink company to work for through the Best Companies programme. There are 500,000 businesses in Yorkshire and to come through Covid with that recognition was something I am very proud of. The team spirit during that time showed dynamism, adaptability and agility.
Building a strong team and company culture is a key part of success. What qualities do you look for in people who work at Northern Monk? What’s your approach to company culture?
Our company values are the lens through which we hire. A perfect Monk would be fresh, inclusive, spirited, humble and community focussed. Alongside company values, a real cornerstone of “Northerness” is the notion of triumph over adversity which ties to our central brand message of ‘Keeping the faith’. We look for people that have a track record of showing true tenacity and dynamism. Achieving against the odds.
Since receiving your initial gift of £5,000 from your grandmother to start Northern Monk, the business has expanded significantly. Can you tell us a bit about your fundraising journey since then? How did you decide which investors to bring on board?
The North Star has always been to create incredible beer experiences and that’s what’s driven us. We took the leap of faith after that initial £5,000 gift. Our overheads were small because were operating out of my mum’s cellar and our family and friends offered to do the graphic design and website for free. I was part of a business enterprise fund grant programme, and we got a small grant through that too.
After we started getting some momentum, a friend’s father said he was keen to invest. We took him up on that and then two or three years we did a crowdfund. Crowdfunding in our space was really buoyant at the time and we’d outgrown our facility. I was super nervous, and it was pretty high stakes, but we raised £500,000 in two hours and £1.5 million in 13 days. It was one of Crowdcube’s most successful campaigns of the year.
Then Active approached us a year later and we joined them for a Secret Cinema trip, which was a real eye-opener as to the types of businesses they were involved in. We spoke to other founders they’d worked with, and the rest is history.
Lots of exciting things have been happening at Northern Monk, from hosting beer festivals to the recent opening of the Northern Market. What’s in store for the rest of 2024 and beyond?
We’ve got a 25 vision where we want to hit a run rate of £25m by the end of 2025. This will be achieved by further tap room rollouts and beacons in key cities across the UK. We’ve hired a new commercial director to help drive into the on-trades too. In the off trade, we’re really pleased with our growth. Faith is one of the fastest-growing hazy pale ales in the UK and we want to fuel that growth and look at other retail channels we could play in alongside that.
Finally, what’s your one piece of advice for a founder in the early stages of building their business?
Keep the faith – this is hugely important for any founder-led business. Alongside that, I would say, if you are clear on why you started the business in the first place, and you’ve got a clear northern star and reason for being that’s everything. Then you run at it as hard as you can.
