Craft brews distributor installs and services draught beer equipment

James Winans was sitting in a Texas bar with friends, debating whether Guinness was really better in Ireland.

“I had the harebrained, last-minute idea that it’d be fun to fly over to Dublin and find out if the story was true. Once I got here I kept extending my visit a little longer, a little longer, until I ended up staying.”

That was 14 years ago. Winans is still here and worked as a chef in pubs and restaurants before focusing more and more on craft beer.

He “always had a passion for craft beer . . . more the drinking side of it than anything else”. Yet he was disappointed with the selection in Ireland and missed the microbrews then more widely available in the United States.

Microbreweries started popping up in Ireland, and Winans began ordering from them for the pubs and restaurants he worked in. He said the beers sold well but were difficult to source. He spent a lot of time meeting brewers and transporting beer in the back of his car.

He also noticed a steady stream of brewers driving across the country to deliver small amounts of beer. “Surely they were better off staying at the brewery and making beer,” Winans said.

“In an effort to streamline my own ordering process, I started to come up with ways to make it easier for pubs to get craft beer. Then I looked at what I was doing and thought: I have a really good business idea here.”

The idea was Vanguard Beer Collective, an Irish craft beer distributor that provides a service for both brewers and the pubs, restaurants and off- licences that buy them.

“Our job is to make everybody’s life easier and get more craft beer out into the market,” Winans says.

He left his job in mid-2012 and spent six months on planning and licensing. He started trading in 2013.

“I can’t say I was 100 per cent ready to go on January 1st, but we just did it anyway, from an angle of absolute ignorance and blind abandon. There’s been a lot of on-the-job training. There’s also been a lot of making it up as we go along.”

Winans says the company made substantial gains over the first year and now distributes craft beer all over the country. Exports are the “next big plan” for this year.

A “huge part” of what Vanguard does is draught sales and service, rather than bottled beer, which sets the distributor apart from others.

“When I was in the pub, we had to go to each different brewery and get them to instal their equipment and clean their lines. Whereas now the pub can buy through Vanguard and one person instals 12 beers and manages them.” The service includes “all the auxiliary stuff that needs to happen to service draught beer”.

“The timing couldn’t have been better. We’ve been able to ride the wave of public excitement and interest in craft beers.”

Vanguard Beer Collective is a finalist in the AIB Start-up Academy. For more information go to vanguardbeer.ie.