It started under a railway arch, it was bought by a multinational, and the word craft stopped meaning anything
The Camden Town Brewery Lockside Pub holds a 3.7 from thirty-one reviews, which is the dead zone and which we will not use as a rating.
But the brewery is the story, and it is the cleanest example in seven postcodes of what happened to a word.
The arch
It started in 2010, under a railway arch in Camden.
Which is exactly what the word craft meant: small, local, independent, brewing under the tracks because the ground floor was too expensive.
We wrote about the arches at Mother Kelly’s in Shoreditch. Every good railway arch in this city is a rent gradient – the bar went there because it could not pay for anything better, and then discovered a brick tube with a stable temperature is actually a superb place to make and drink beer.
The sale
In 2015 it was bought by one of the largest brewing companies in the world.
And it caused a genuine and sustained row in the industry – because it was, to a great many people, the moment the argument was settled.
The beer is still made. The brand is still called Camden. And it is owned by a multinational.
What the word meant
A small, independent brewer.
That was the whole definition, and it was doing real work – because for most of the twentieth century British beer was made by a handful of very large companies and the product was uniform and mostly dull.
Craft meant: not that.
What it means now
Almost nothing.
The multinationals bought the breweries. They kept the label, the typeface, and the story about the founders in a shed – and they quietly changed the ownership line on the back of the can.
And a customer paying a premium for independence is, in a very large number of cases, paying a premium to a multinational for the impression of it.
Read the small print on the can. It is the only honest thing on it.
The full glossary
Seven postcodes. Seven hundred and twenty-three articles.
Speakeasy: a bar you could be arrested in. Now: a bar with a rope.
Artisan: made by hand. Now: made in a factory in a smaller batch.
Gastropub: good food without the theatre. Now: a chalkboard and higher prices.
Symposium: arguing about love until dawn. Now: a conference with a lanyard.
Craft: small and independent. Now: one of four multinationals.
The pattern never varies. The word describes something difficult, somebody works out how to sell it, and the difficulty is the first thing removed.
Verdict
Thirty-one reviews. Not a rating.
The beer is fine. Read the can.
The defence, which we owe them
And it is a real one, and the trade makes it, and it deserves to be heard.
A brewery that grows past a certain point faces a wall: the tanks cost millions, the distribution costs millions, and the supermarket will not stock you unless you can supply every store in the country every week.
You cannot get there on a bank loan.
So the founders have three options. Stay small forever. Take investment and lose control anyway. Or sell.
And a very large number of them sold – and a substantial proportion of the money went to the people who had spent a decade brewing in an arch.
The Prat’s position is that the word was destroyed and that no individual brewer is to blame for it.
Oeko Angebot ([email protected])
The thing about planning meetings is they’re where intention goes to be processed into nothing by people who’ve learned to make “no” sound like “maybe later.”