Pillars Brewery: Quality-controlled growth

Gavin Litton has summers spent with his grandparents in Munich to thank for his love of lager. “I was trying the beer and noticed there was a huge gap in quality between what was being drunk in Munich and what was being drunk in the UK”. At an age when he was buying mainstream lager in local pubs it felt like an opportunity to produce something that not only tasted better, but arrived at the taps fresher. “The whole premise of Pillars is brewing Bavarian quality lager in London”.

Experience meets passion

Gavin's background in finance and strategy, combined with Omar, Eamonn, and Samie's hands-on experience running a successful franchise chain, gave the four co-founders a well-rounded foundation to launch something new in London.

Basing their technique on Germany’s Reinheitsgebot (the German Beer Purity Law of 1516), they spent two years developing their product in a garden shed. “We were always striving for excellence…in the process, the materials and the people.” After passing their brewers' exams and getting their product just right, the group moved into their brewery and taproom in Walthamstow in 2016.

Learning on the job

In the early years, Gavin found himself juggling multiple roles at once. "For the first three or four years, I was wearing many hats," he recalls. "Omar and I were running the business, and I had finance, brewing, sales and deliveries." It meant they all got a better sense of the industry and their place in it, but came at a cost. When you are covering multiple roles, it eats into your time, meaning your business can only go so far before you reach capacity. 

Pillars hit theirs just before Covid, which gave them an opportunity to rebrand and refocus. For Gavin, it was confirmation that “we wanted to brew to this Bavarian standard, which is the best we can be.” This renewed focus, alongside bringing in two new team members and outsourcing financial admin, opened up more time for the team to focus on growth. As Gavin says, “the culmination of those three things happening…really put us on this growth trajectory”.

Growth over grind

The brand has been growing steadily every year since, after the team made a conscious decision not to sacrifice quality for growth, “if we cut corners, we could do it cheaper, but we’d lose the quality and we’re not willing to do that”.

But with growth comes increased admin. Managing the day-to-day financial admin takes precious hours out of the day, hours you could be using to develop new ideas. By outsourcing time-consuming financial tasks to an accountant and implementing Apron, checking payments, approving payroll, etc. can now all be approved quickly, easily and securely. Saving time and allowing Gavin to keep control of the business, explore new opportunities and build brand awareness without feeling the pressure to keep on top of every financial task.

Freedom to thrive

Today, the business is thriving, with year-on-year growth thanks to the time Gavin is able to spend focusing on building. The set-up with Apron and their accountant means not only can he check and approve payments and payroll easily, but he also gets a clear overview of where the opportunities and sticking points are in real-time. So they can make informed decisions that meet their business goals rather than expending energy just keeping up with the ins and outs.

It’s a system Gavin sees no need to change in the future, 'It just saves me a lot of time… If I can outsource as much of the day-to-day repetitive finance function as possible, that is the way that we want to run our business.' For Gavin, Apron is the tool that makes that possible. Outsourcing essential financial admin so founders can focus on building great businesses is one of the biggest benefits of tools like Apron. As businesses grow, it enables them to scale simply, and on their own terms. For Gavin, that means broadening distribution, increasing partnerships and producing perfect pints.