'We're doing all we can to help people keep the beer trade going': Cannock family-run beer wholesaler keeping drinks flowing across the West Midlands
A family-run beer wholesaler has been working hard to support pubs big and small across the region with a large range of quality beers and ciders.
Set in the heart of an industrial park in Longford in Cannock, Ales R Russ has been working for the last 15 years to supply beers from as far away as Cornwall to bars, micropubs and beer festivals in the West Midlands.
The company is owned and run by father and son Steve and Stuart Russell, with the name a play on words, and was founded in 2010 when 34-year-old Stuart said that they had both been made redundant from their jobs and his dad had decided that he wanted to work for himself.
He said: "It was a bit of a strange decision as we both got made redundant at the same time, him as head of sales for Bass, Marston's and Samuel Smiths and me as a road worker, where I was driving diggers and dumper trucks.
"My dad decided that he didn't want to work for anybody any more and wanted to do his own thing, so we talked about doing this and I convinced him to give it a go as I thought that working with beer was more palatable than road working.
"We started with a tiny depot, probably a fifth of this size and, in our first week, we did 40 barrels, whereas we're now comfortably doing more than 300 or 400."
Mr Russell said the company made a real effort to supply micropubs and pubs in the area which were family and community based, saying that all of the customers they had were known by name, not by number.
