Charles Wells Changes Name to Wells & Co
Charles Wells, an independent, family-owned business with an estate of award-winning pubs in England, has announced that, in line with the start of construction of its new home in Bedford, it is changing its name to Wells & Co. The creation of its new home and the growing investment in its managed pubs are reflective of its strategy to meet the changing needs of the next generation of customers. The switch of name from Charles Wells to Wells & Co echoes this.
Justin Phillimore, chief executive of Wells & Co, comments: “After 142 years and five generations of family involvement, we have not embarked on this lightly, but we feel it embodies the change of direction we have taken as a business. This includes the significant investment we are making in our pubs and the creation of a beautifully designed new home capable of producing a range of beer styles that we would not have dreamed of ten years ago. It is a statement of confidence about our future direction as a company.”
Work has now started on Brewpoint, a new company home, housing a pub-restaurant, a retail shop, a coffee roastery, company offices and a visitor centre, focused around the creation of exceptional beer. It is due to open in early summer 2020. Brewpoint will be located on a gateway site to the north-west of Bedford at the meeting of the A6 and the northern Bedford bypass, making it readily accessible to a wide area of Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire.
Brewpoint’s brewing capability will be highly flexible, enabling the creation of a huge range of beer styles. It will have the capacity to make 30,000 hectolitres of beer each year, equivalent to five million pints. Over the last couple of years, the business has been creating collaboration brews every month with some of the UK’s finest smaller breweries. The resulting beer sold under the Wandering Brewer name has been poured in Wells & Co pubs since October 2017. In summer 2020 Brewpoint will start brewing, selecting the most popular of the Wandering Brewer beers to brew, alongside its existing Charlie Wells Dry Hop Lager and Triple Hop IPA beers. The majority of the beer brewed will go to pubs within the company’s own estate.
