Page 3 - Chase Case Study Final

The Family Business

Chase Distillery is a family business, with its founder William Chase and
his two sons directly involved with its running. His son Harry, 29, looks
after the farm as well as running his own farming business. His other
son James, 26, oversees "meet and greet" and helps introduce the
cosmopolitan, Instagram-your-cocktail crowd to Chase whilst running the
company's Twitter feed, he has his own bar in Mayfair.

The Chase Distillery team has grown rapidly but is still very much a
family business, with William employing his wife and sons in key

positions in the company. It's quite an egalitarian enterprise, with
everyone being head of something, from William Chase as Head
Honcho, to those on the bottling line - Dave, Peter, Luda, Lyn and Phillip
- being Head of Hand Bottling. Other team members include a Head of

Money, Head of Bee Keeping and Head of Harvesting Potatoes. Sounds
like a fun place to work!

Chase harvests organic potatoes from his farm to be turned into vodka-
and then gin - which means Chase Distillery can claim to be Britain's
only single-estate distillery. Moreover, as well as fermenting potatoes to
make spirits, they do the same with the cider apples harvested from their
orchards. He had plenty of other sites in Herefordshire to choose from,
having spent £20 million buying up farms and farmland with the cash
from his sale of Tyrrells crisps.

“With the continual price pressure from the supermarkets as well, I
realised I had to change direction. I wanted to remain in farming and

produce a great tasting product we could make from potatoes.”

The core belief at Chase Distillery is that using organic potatoes
improves the taste considerably; they use starchy varieties such as Lady
Rosetta and Golden Wonder as they have a high dry-matter content.

“I thought people would be interested in the provenance and the fact that
we grow the potatoes and make the vodka here on the farm but what
has really captured people’s interest is the Englishness in a market
dominated by Russian and Polish vodka.”