Last night I went to a fantastic talk given by Steve Farrell from Wimborne’s Eight Arch Brewing Co., hosted by fellow beer enthusiast Nigel Jones and the Barclays Eagle Labs team at Foundry in Poole.
I’ve been drinking at Eight Arch through the various iterations of their Friday night tap room sessions, since I first got into craft beer around 2015/2016 (browse my archive of breweries, bars and battleships visited). I’ll confess to not having known all that much about the story of how the business came to be until last night though.
Steve was very generous with his time (and beer samples) and answered lots of great business based questions from the other attendees, and a few nerdy, fan boy questions from me too.
What was fascinating for the audience was to hear about how Steve has grown the business, but reached a happy level that he’s now looking to maintain, as it suits his quality of life. Far too often we default to endless growth as marker of success. As our mental health and wellbeing continues to be given greater consideration, I think we can expect to see a shift in mindset for business owners, away from growth for growth’s sake, and much more focus on the working experience for themselves and their employees.
I think we can all say cheers to that?
Liam Toms 