JW Lees’ long-serving managing director, William Lees-Jones, is the latest guest on BusinessCloud’s Northern Leaders podcast.
In the episode, which is sponsored by Sancus UK, he recalled some of the biggest challenges he’s faced during his 22 years at the helm of the 197-year-old family brewer.
“When I became MD we had 172 pubs,” he told the Northern Leaders podcast. “We now have 138 but we’ve sold 124. Pretty much everything has changed.”
The 60-year-old said he’ll never forget the day in 2020 when Prime Minister Boris Johnson put the country into a lockdown because of Covid
“It was everybody’s worst nightmare,” he said. “I went to six of our pubs on the way home and I could see people were terrified.
“I ended up in our local and went round all the tables buying everyone a drink saying ‘I’ll see you on the other side’ and people said ‘can you keep away from me please?’ You could tell we were going into something unprecedented.”
Lees-Jones has helped grow JW Lees’ turnover to £100m and has gone to war with the Labour government over its controversial inheritance tax reforms.
Last month he used the company’s annual conference to reveal JW Lees is going to distribute Boddington’s Cask Ale under license from Budweiser Brewing Group.
He also told the podcast about the challenges facing his beloved Man Utd.
“I love Man Utd in a completely irrational and crazy way,” he said. “I feel as though Jim Ratcliffe has got his work cut out if this is going to end well.”
Other guests on the Northern Leaders podcast include Jennifer Atkinson; James Whittaker; Lisa Morton; Andrew Turner; Sara Davies; Roisin Currie; Sophie Milliken; Matthew Scullion; Garry Partington; and Nazir Afzal.
You can listen to the episode here
The Northern Leaders podcast is produced by What Media.