In the years following World War II, one of England’s largest breweries, Whitbread, had adopted the policy of taking shares in smaller breweries which were struggling. This became known as the ‘Whitbread Umbrella’, and was originally an attempt by them to try and prevent their rivals, Watneys Brewery, from continuing their own aggressive expansion. What ended up happening, though, was that Whitbread became the aggressor, taking up majority ownership of many of the brewers that they had interests in.
This continued into the 1970s, when Batemans were approached about the possibility of becoming part of the Whitbread Umbrella. However, George Bateman was far too wise and wily to be tempted by this. He viewed Whitbread with great suspicion, although he did enter into a separate agreement with them to take five of their pubs off them, at a significantly reduced price and with a payment plan over seven years, in return for Whitbread-brewed Heineken lager becoming the main pouring lager in Batemans pubs.
The expansion of the Batemans pub estate continued with the ambitious purchase in 1972 of the Parade Hotel in Skegness, a 47-bedroom seafront hotel with a large ballroom restaurant.
Meanwhile, John Bateman developed the wine trade at Ridlington’s Wine Merchants in Boston, particularly of the own-branded Pilgrim ports and sherries. Although it had changed ownership on several occasions, Ridlington’s celebrated its 275th anniversary in the 1970s and was developing a selection of wines far more exciting than the sweet German wines and cheap French red wines in fashion at the time. In 1978, it expanded further with the purchase of a Grantham-based wine merchants, Frederick Fletcher Limited.
Although Ridlington’s was part of George Bateman and Son limited, there was talk of George and John splitting the business into two. One half would focus on brewing and pubs, while the other would focus on the wines and spirits trade. This was never taken any further – although it wasn’t many years before a split was to occur…
Until next month, cheers and thanks for reading.
