Young Henrys: From beer club to one of Australia’s biggest success stories
IN 2012 Oscar McMahon and Richard Adamson started a brewery in a warehouse in Newtown. Now their beer’s sold in more than 500 venues as well as bottle shops nationally and they’re on track to sell six million litres of beer this year. Here’s the Young Henrys’ story.
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WHEN Oscar McMahon and Richard Adamson started a beer club nine years ago they never dreamt it would kickstart Sydney’s craft brewery revolution and evolve into one of Australia’s biggest business success stories.
The Young Henrys founders met, you guessed it, over a beer at the former Roxbury Hotel in Glebe where they bonded over a mutual love of knocking back a few schooners while talking about music.
“We started a beer appreciation club and through word of mouth, we ended up with 120 members who were really interested in what was happening in the craft beer scene,” Mr McMahon said.
“Richard said, ‘How cool would it be to start a beer company that gets people as excited about beer as beer club does?’ and that was the defining moment.”
They scraped together about $800,triple-0 so they could start brewing with four small fermenting tanks — and no employees — out of a warehouse in Newtown in 2012.
“It took us six months before we started getting paid. You know how people always remember the good old days? They weren’t the good old days; it was so much hard work and so much stress.”
It wasn’t until 2013 they could afford to pay five staff, enabling them to sell about 300,triple-0 litres of beer.
Their first customer was the Petersham Bowling Club.
Fast forward five years and Young Henrys is now sold in more than 500 venues as well as bottle shops nationally and they’ve just hit 70 employees.
The craft beer pioneers are on track to sell six million litres of beer this year and they now have 18 fermenting tanks, each one bigger than the original four put together, at their Wilford St brewery.
Did they ever think Young Henrys would get so big?
“Not in my wildest dreams; absolutely not,” Mr McMahon said.
“I remember waking up in the middle of the night just before we opened after putting all the money I could borrow into this business and thinking, ‘How the f--- am I going to pay this back?’
“Honestly for the first few years, the only thing that got us through was a belief in Young Henrys.
“The strength of the business was we supported things we believed in as people; the independent live music scene, arts and culture and we still do that today and that’s the DNA of our company.”
That philosophy has earned them a cult following in Newtown, which Mr McMahon, who lives and went to school in the suburb, described as Young Henrys’ “spiritual home”.
“Newtown is a place where you’re allowed to be an individual and the people here stand up for independent companies which support the local community and hire local people,” he said.
As they had “outgrown” their Wilford St premise, they would “eventually” need to start another brewery in the inner west, where about a dozen breweries have opened within a 5km radius of Young Henrys since the trailblazers took the plunge six years ago.
“Our next move will have to be relatively close to home,” says Mr McMahon, who believes their success has mirrored the craft brew industry, which has grown at an annual rate of 9.7 per cent since 2013, according to IBISWorld.
Attending to the business side of things doesn’t leave a lot of time for brewing.
“I miss brewing because brewing is really fun; it’s a cathartic process, it’s creative but also methodical but to be honest the brewers we have are a lot more talented than we are,” he said.
“It’s really hard — you need to have a creative and a scientific mind and those things are quite often mutually exclusive.”
YOUNG HENRYS BACK IN 2015
While he doesn’t get sick of beer, it is surprising to hear what he likes to imbibe in after a hard day at work.
“We know most people think we sit around drinking beer all day but that’s not the truth unfortunately,” he said.
“When you spend your days scrutinising beer I like to have a glass of red wine when I get home because I don’t analyse wine; it’s my switch off.”
They have no immediate plans to expand overseas but as most of their beer is sold in NSW, Victoria and Queensland, they are starting to make some “great traction” in WA and SA.
“I know it’s going to sound strange …(but) there’s not an overarching strategy except to keep doing what we’re doing,” he said.
“Every time we stick to our guns and keep being who we are, things go well for us so that’s our game plan.”
