Hall & Woodhouse seamlessly blends heritage with innovation at the heart of British culture
Founded in 1777 by Charles Hall in Dorset, England, Hall & Woodhouse is a fully independent and family-owned business that seamlessly blends its British regional brewery with an operational network of more than 150 public houses across England’s South. Brewing forms the backbone of the business, with classic and contemporary ales brewed under the Badger Beers name, alongside its new craft beer brand, Outland, and served to customers in the pubs, as well as bottled and canned versions for take-home enjoyment.
With such a rich heritage, the business is keen to maintain a key role in the evolution of British pubs as it approaches its 250th anniversary in 2027. “The local pub is such an important part of local and British culture,” opens Giles Mountford, Head of Brand Marketing. “It’s not just about alcohol and beer. It’s so much more; pubs are incredibly valuable assets to our communities and local economies, and it would be a great shame to lose such a key part of this culture.
“We currently operate around 150 houses, with 101 managed by our business partners and 54 managed centrally. We have a robust network, with sites located across the South all the way from Woolacombe in Devon to Parliament Square in London. Much of our focus in terms of growing the network is around building new pubs, as these venues better meet the needs of contemporary customers. We must appeal to guests who want coffee and cake in the day, for instance, as well as typical pub goers and families looking for Sunday lunch.
“We’ve recently completed construction of a new pub in Taplow near London, and we’ve just broken ground on a new project in Crowthorne, Surrey. However, we’re still open to opportunities to take on historical pubs or those in interesting locations as they come along. We acquired the Red Lion in Lyme Regis, for instance, which is currently undergoing delicate refurbishment works.”
However, Giles is keen to highlight that brewing remains at the center of the business. “Brewing is the golden thread that runs through everything we do,” he states. “Our current brewery was built in the mid-2000s and services our entire estate across cask products as well as take-home cans and bottles. Badger Beers has been around for hundreds of years, with premium bottled ales (PBAs), Fursty Ferret and Golden Champion, forming our core offering as they are well-known and well-loved across the country. The Dorset region has served us well and we’re incredibly proud of our long brewing heritage and our award-winning beers, so we remain Dorset born and bred.
“Then we have what we refer to as our contemporary innovations. We kickstarted our journey into the broader ale category with extensive research, which showed that consumers don’t necessarily see as much innovation and interest in the PBA category as they do elsewhere in the beer aisle. We decided to bring some new life into the sector from a product perspective, and we launched our coffee stout, Master Stoat, as well as bringing back an old fan favorite, Golden Glory, a peach flavored ale, amid a trend towards fruity flavors. We’ve recently invested £100,000 in a new brewing technology to ensure we stay at the forefront of innovation.”
Product development
This research also formed the base of Hall & Woodhouse’s new craft beer brand, Outland. “We spent a long time identifying our potential positioning in the craft market, which allowed us to create a brand that we thought would be a great entry point for people coming into the craft category for the first time,” Giles explains. “Some craft beers can be hard to ‘decode,’ so we implemented very clear, consistent branding and product information to communicate to consumers exactly what they are buying at a glance. Of course, the legacy of Badger Beers being a mainstream, but unpretentious brand helped to instill trust in Outland’s products.
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We’ve grown Outland to 2500 stocking points across the UK grocery sector, and while building the Outland brand, we also completed a full refresh of the Badger Beers brand to modernize the packaging. Branding and clear communication is key; we lightly reworked one of our older recipes into the West Coast IPA and with simpler, craft-oriented branding and clear communication of style, ABV, and tasting notes, we saw an impressive 38 percent increase in sales.
“We’ve also just launched an Indian Pale Lager, which is a union of lager and IPA, offering both the clean characteristics of lager with an IPA’s hop classic forward flavors. While it has been a hectic 18 months, we are incredibly proud and excited about these achievements, which have been marked by a myriad of industry awards. These include the World Beer Award gold medals for Outland Ginger Pale Ale and Milk Stout, and Badger’s Golden Champion and Cranborne Poacher. We’ve also received a Grocer Gold Award nomination for Dinks Brand of the Year, as well as being nominated as the Design & Packaging Supreme Champion at the International Beer Challenge.”
Long-term targets
As our conversation draws to a close, Giles reflects on the company’s family heritage and shares plans for the future, including its 250th anniversary celebrations. “We’re currently led by the seventh generation of the Woodhouse family, which enables us to maintain independence and operate with an agile, yet long-term focus,” he suggests. “This speaks to our ethos of making people’s days and enriching our community from generation to generation. The family are still very much involved in the business; Anthony Woodhouse acts as Chairman and his brother Mark Woodhouse still travels across the country to train our in-house teams and get them enthused about our products.
“The business created long-term commercial, team, sustainability, and growth targets for 2027, which we call BHAGs, big hairy audacious goals, some of which we’ve achieved already, such as becoming a Times Top 100 medium sized employer,” Giles concludes. “We’re currently preparing for a year of consolidation and growth of the Outland brand in 2025. Behind the scenes, we’re gearing up for a huge celebration in 2027 to mark our 250th anniversary. We’ve created a unique beer in honor of an important individual in our history each year, with the final year occurring in 2027, when all five special brews will be available as collectors’ items.”