This year has been another landmark one for Titanic Brewery – and one which has helped to kickstart its ‘20/20’ vision.

The Burslem company, which has been operating for more than 30 years, wants to have a portfolio of 20 venues by 2020.

At the moment, Titanic boasts a number of popular pubs – including The Bulls Head, in Burslem, The Greyhound, in Penkhull and The White Star, in Stoke.

But this year saw the opening of the company’s new ‘bod’ café-bar concept.

The first bod bar was opened in Stafford, in April and was followed by a new branch at Stoke Station in October. Now work has started on the next one – bod Trentham.

Andy Slee, Titanic Brewery’s non-executive director, said: “We are over 30-years-old so it is important that we stay relevant and interesting to our customers.

“We cannot afford to be complacent, we have to innovate and we always have to be doing something different which is where the idea of bod came from. But, above all, the quality of our product has got to be very, very good.”

Dave and Keith Bott outside the new bod cafe bar at Stoke Station

In the past 12 months, Titanic Brewery has invested more than £200,000 into the business to increase its capacity and allow it to brew more beer.

The latest cash injection brings the company’s total investment over the last five years to more than £500,000.

It has also launched a number of new products – including Plum Porter Grand Reserve and Titanic gin.

Andy said: “We want to be the most admired brewery in the area and we want to have a national footprint.

“To do that we need to stand out from our competitors which is why we are always looking at ways to develop new products.

“We launched Plum Porter five years ago and today it is our best-seller, so we launched Plum Porter Grand Reserve which has also been hugely successful.”

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Andy added: “We also released a new gin because we noticed that gin sales were growing massively at our pubs.

“At the moment it is quite a small concept but it is something that we want to grow.”

Titanic Brewery was bought out of receivership in 1988 by brothers Dave and Keith Bott.

Today it sells four million pints of beer to pubs, supermarkets and online retailers each year – and boasts a workforce of more than 150 staff who are employed at the brewery and its pubs.

Titanic was recently announced as a finalist in the Best Brewing Pub Company category at the Publican Awards, and now it has entered The Sentinel Business Awards, in the Business of the Year category, sponsored by Bentley Motors.

Joint managing director Keith – who was awarded an MBE for services to British brewing in 2017 – said: “We actually bought the brewery on a whim. We just thought we would give it a go, but neither of us ever expected it to become what it has become and I still look forward to coming to work every day.”

He added: “We are proud of the fact that we are based in Stoke-on-Trent and we know that the community is very loyal which is why we are still here. We love our customers and our community and we want to continue to grow.”