Winner: Wold Top Brewery

Finalists: The Dog Walker, Plump

BEFORE picking up the crown of Business of the Year 2014, Wold Top Brewery took to the stage to win the Small Business of the Year award.

The business was founded out of a need to diversify from traditional farming 11 years ago and has grown from producing 100 gallons a week with no paid staff to a team of 17 churning out 4,300 gallons.

Wold Top Brewery was established by the third generation of the Mellors, a farming family from Wold Newton, with husband and wife Tom and Gill combining their homegrown malting barley with their chalk-filtered Yorkshire Wolds water to brew award-winning ales.

As the brewery has grown Mr and Mrs Mellor’s daughter Kate, representing the fourth generation, and Kate’s husband, Alex Balchin, have joined the team and are responsible for the bottling plant business, Agricola.

Alongside the bottling plant, the business has further diversified with the launch of an events venue venture, hosting wedding and special celebrations at the farm.

Tom Mellor said: “This is a fantastic award and we are very humbled to receive it. We’ve had a fantastic year, producing special beers for the Tour de France, and for the Mallard 75, and it is wonderful to top that off with this award. We feel very humbled and extremely proud to receive this award, especially in front of such excellent peers.”

Guests at the awards heard how judges had said this family business had “an exceptionally well thought out and structured business plan”.

The judges were impressed with Wold Top’s “impressive” year on year growth and profits. They said the operation invested heavily in expansion and had been able to self-fund that investment due to the performance of the business.

The company recently secured additional listings in Morrisons supermarkets, supplying 112 stores with its red beer, Headland Red, and 21 stores with its Scarborough Fair IPA.