Whole Lotta Beer: Music legend’s son Logan brews up a storm with his beer business
Logan Plant, son of Led Zeppelin frontman Robert, has big plans in store after lockdown saw his craft ales flying off the shelves.
The former Stourbridge schoolboy has built himself a stellar career in the beer trade, after giving up ambitions to follow in his father’s footsteps with a career in the music industry.
And with many businesses struggling through the pandemic, Logan said the closure of pubs saw more people head into shops to buy his craft beer to enjoy at home or outdoors – sending sales through the roof.
Logan, who attended Ridgewood High School, said: “When the Government shut down the whole of hospitality that was probably 85 per cent of our business, which was a huge blow for us.
“Thankfully, we’ve got really good relationships with some of the big supermarkets and our sales through them went through the roof when lockdown happened.
“Our little webstore which was doing £1,000 a week was suddenly doing £100,000 a week and within two weeks it had gone from this cottage industry to an industrial outfit. Without the support of the partners that we have currently, our outlook over those three or four months would have been very different.”
The 41-year-old first began experimenting with brewing beer in his kitchen.
Now, eight years on, his company Beavertown is selling its beers in pubs and retailers across the country and has just opened Beaverworld, London’s largest brewery.
The new facility in Enfield, a 129,000sq ft unit spread over six acres of land, has been funded by Dutch beer giant Heineken, which spent £40 million on a 49 per cent stake in Beavertown in 2018.
Logan, who lives with wife Bridget and two children, expects the new brewery to create 150 jobs over the next three years and hopes to eventually open a visitor centre while providing space for local businesses such as markets and remote workers.
Capacity
It will give Beavertown the capacity to brew 90 million pints of Beavertown’s beer every year – 10 times more than at its original site in Tottenham.
Speaking to the Telegraph, Logan added: “If we can get great beer on every street corner of the UK then we’re giving people a choice.
“Craft beer is now mainstream, people want to experiment and drink IPAs and sour beers.
“The beer industry has changed massively over the past 10 years and it’s not often that an industry is turned inside out and changed so much; we want to spearhead that.”
Despite being a Wolves fan like his father, Logan has tied Beavertown up with Tottenham Hotspur to bring craft beer to the masses.
The football club opened its new stadium last year on the famous old White Hart Lane site and is now home to a microbrewery run by Beavertown.
And while many businesses struggled during the Covid-19 pandemic, Logan’s brewery firm took off as more people flocked to the shops to buy his beer to enjoy at home or outside – as they were not allowed into the pubs.