An award-winning Yorkshire micro-brewery has diversified and gone from strength to strength thanks to fast and reliable broadband provided by rural specialist Quickline Communications.
Great Newsome Brewery, based in Winestead, Holderness, East Yorkshire, had invested in a new brewery but was only doing minimal online trading before the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020.
The family-run business previously suffered from a poor internet connection but, having signed up with Quickline shortly before Covid, it was able to be flexible and adapt to the drastically changing marketplace when the pandemic struck.
It moved to focus on online trading to survive when the country was forced into lockdown, with online orders rocketing from being just two per cent of the business to 90 per cent.
Great Newsome, which uses barley from its own fields to produce its beer, now also operates a firewood sales business and offers glamping and holiday home retreats on its farm – all of which have been made possible by its improved internet service.
Matthew Hodgson, director of Great Newsome Brewery, said: “When Covid hit and we went into lockdown, everything changed and the only way we could survive during that period was to deliver straight to our customers.
“Thankfully, we’d switched to Quickline to give us fast, reliable internet. Previously, it had been very patchy at best, and we wouldn’t have survived without the improved service.
“Now, it’s essential to our business. Our software is all Cloud-based and we need broadband for everything from taking orders online, telephone sales and taking payments, to things like social media to promote our businesses.
“It’s also meant we’ve been able to expand to launch our firewood business and glamping and holiday home breaks. It really shows the crucial importance of broadband in rural communities like ours.”
Quickline has already passed more than 300,000 premises with its existing next-generation fixed wireless broadband network in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.It is also blending that with full fibre to create the UK’s only gigabit hybrid network.
The fibre rollout will see Quickline bring broadband speeds of up to 1 Gbps to a further 55,000 homes and businesses this year.
The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) recently highlighted poor broadband connection as one of three key challenges, along with poor transport links and rising energy costs, facing rural businesses in its The Growth Belt: Supporting Rural Small Businesses report.
