Called to the bar - Brakspear chief pulls pints for charity

Brakspear chief executive Tom Davies went back to his bartending roots recently, putting in a shift at the Little Angel in Henley-on-Thames to raise money for Sue Ryder, the charity which Brakspear supported for 15 months until earlier this year.

Davies donated £1 for every pint he poured during his two-hour stint at the Remenham pub, raising a total of £150. The ‘pound a pint’ was in addition to an impressive £2,200 already raised by Davies, who had put himself up for auction at the Brakspear annual awards night last year. The winning bid from the Little Angel’s licensee Doug Green secured him the chief exec’s services for the night.

Other members of the Brakspear head office team were also auctioned at the same event and enthusiastic bidding from the tenants in the room keen to put their ‘bosses’ to work for them raised a total of £7,000. Since then, Brakspear’s area managers, finance controllers, marketing team and others have done their bit behind the bar at pubs across the estate.

Davies said, “I’ve worked in a number of bars, as a student and then as part of my training within the pub industry, but I’ll admit my pint-pulling skills felt a bit rusty to begin with! The arrival of summer in Henley on the day of my shift meant the pub was busy, and there were a few colleagues and friends who’d come in to see me work hard – so I was pretty much chained to the beer pumps for my shift.

“It was a great evening and reminded me how hard our pub teams work to give their customers a great experience. And it’s of course wonderful to have raised a bit more money for Sue Ryder, taking our total collected for the charity to more than £51,000.”

Caption to attached image: Tom Davies (second left) with members of the bar team at the Little Angel. Image courtesy of Henley Herald.