Camden Town Brewery

In 2013, Dr Logic and Camden Town Brewery began a long partnership, born from a client referral.

Camden Town Brewery
Raising a glass to further success: A North London success story

In 2009 Jasper Cuppaidge was working at The Horseshoe pub in Hampstead, brewing cask beer in the cellar to meet the demand of top-quality beer, locally brewed.

At the beginning of 2010 Camden Town Brewery was born with just 3 staff working out of the railway arches in Camden and by July of that year, they’d sold their very first beer.

3 years and quite a few thousand barrels of award winning beer later, Camden Town started looking around for a Mac specialist IT support partner; one that could get their IT setup future-proofed to help deliver their ambitious growth plans. We were already providing IT Support to Camden’s design agency Studio Juice and we’re delighted to say they were happy to recommend us to Jasper and his team. And so November 2013 saw the start of our long partnership with Camden Town.

How we’ve helped

As with so many smaller, ambitious brands we started off designing a scalable support package that could flex to meet their demands as they took on more premises, devices and staff.

The first job was to get their file sharing and connectivity set-up improved so we designed and implemented a new networking infrastructure, installed a Cisco Meraki MX60 router and dramatically improved their WiFi service with a number of Cisco Meraki access points. They had been using the ISP-provided router at the time, but by installing a Cisco system we not only ensured they had better speed and reliability, but a much better level of security with IPS (intrusion prevention system). And, as a quick fix, we set up a Mac mini file server so they could quickly and securely access shared files.

We then looked at how they had been running Windows on their Macs and recommended that they moved to terminal services, cutting down the number of expensive licenses they needed and speeding up their Macs in the process. We also migrated their hefty Brewman database from a Netgear NAS onto a PC server which their staff could all work off at the same time.

We didn’t sweat the small stuff either

Any MSP worth their salt is going to forensically investigate every part of a company’s IT set-up and we were no exception:

we put UPSs (backup battery power) in place on critical equipment
introduced Code42 CrashPlan to back up all their computers at the same time
helped with implementing platforms such as Sales-i for their sales teams
And, a while later in our working relationship, worked with Opus to put a state-of-the-art phone system in place

As planned, and expected, the company grew rapidly and expanded its offices into another railway arch. However, as it was at the far end of the viaduct from their existing office, we had to install, test and implement a fair amount of cabling as well as getting a new comms room tested and commissioned.

By 2015, Camden Town Brewery was a well-known brand for London drinkers, selling 12 million pints from more than 1000 pubs, bars and restaurants and so kicked off a refurb project in the pub where it all began – The Horseshoe in Hampstead. In 2016 we project managed the design, procurement and installation of:

A CCTV network
Sonos Sound system
Synology Server to store the CCTV footage
A standalone Mac mini server
A Cisco Meraki MX60 router
Various Cisco Meraki access points

2015 also saw another pub acquisition when the company purchased Camden’s Daughter, a pub round the corner from their original Kentish Town site. They created offices for their Senior Management team on the 1st floor above the pub and our Project Engineers again used Meraki technology – this time to create a shared network across sites using site-to-site VPNs for linking to Camden’s Daughter and, latterly, the soon-to-be opened impressive Enfield site.

Having Meraki across the board means that we’ve been able to manage the whole network from a single dashboard.

New premises, new contract

2017 was a big year for the company when they moved their brewing operation to an impressive new production site in Enfield. This was also the year that we re-contracted with Camden Town and, because by now they had their own in-house IT Manager, much of the strategic project work was handed over and we moved into a more of a pure IT Support role.

With all devices now sat in our preferred MDM platform, Addigy, our support took the form of:

Onboarding new users
Offboarding leavers
Desk-side support from their dedicated Technical Consultant
Network management
Server Backup
Remote Service Desk support
Remote new software and software update deployment
Joint management of their in-house Active Directory

In 2021 Camden Town Brewery, as part of their transition into the AB InBev group, no longer needed an MSP so later that year our long relationship with them came to an end.

We feel so honoured to have been part of their phenomenal commercial success, right from their smaller, humble beginnings and all of us at Dr Logic will raise a glass (of Hells Lager probably) to send them on their journey to further success.