Does David Craddock truly have Good Intent?

A Birmingham bar opened in 2019 claiming all profits would go to charity. Five years on, it hasn’t started giving

Dear readers — The Good Intent is a plush pub in Birmingham city centre’s historic Great Western Arcade. It is one of five pubs owned by the Stourbridge business Craddock’s Brewery. But the watering hole is more than just a well-oiled bar — all of the pub’s profits go to local charities. Or do they? When The Dispatch received a tip-off that organisations weren’t receiving the money, of course we had to find out what was going on. But before we get to that, your Brum in Brief has a roundup of this week’s top stories so far.

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Brum in Brief

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🚄HS2 Curzon Street station cost-saving design change: The design of the new Curzon Street HS2 station has been changed in a bid to save money and as a fire safety measure. Grimshaw Architects have adapted their 2020 proposals for the under-construction, seven platform station, changing the material for the arched roof from timber to aluminium. Elsewhere, the concrete facade has been swapped for washable and graffiti-proof ceramic tiles. Find out more here.

💸Druids Heath housing scheme budget gap: A housing regeneration scheme in Druids Heath has a £307m shortfall, the council has revealed. Birmingham City Council is planning to demolish 1,864 homes on the estate, which featured in TV drama This Town, and replace them with 3,267 new ones. At a committee meeting yesterday, Paul Langford, strategic director for city housing said it was not unusual for a long term project to have a large financial gap. "It doesn’t mean we're short of that cash on day one," he said. Read the full story here.

🏆Cancer nurse at Birmingham Children’s Hospital wins arts award: A nurse who works with children who have leukaemia and sings with the Ex Cathedra charity choir has won the Sky Arts Hero 2024 Award. Sally Spencer co-leads Ex Cathedra’s Singing Medicine project which has been bringing music to babies, children and young people in hospital for 20 years, and also supports adults affected by stroke and dementia. She said: “This award means a lot to me because it acknowledges the importance of what we do.”

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Does David Craddock truly have Good Intent? 

By Alex Taylor

In October 2019, the Great Western Arcade — the historic shopping thoroughfare in the heart of Birmingham — welcomed a curious new arrival. The Good Intent, founded by the award-winning, Stourbridge-based Craddock’s Brewery, would be the UK's first not-for-profit bar. It was a welcome addition to Birmingham’s bustling pub scene, with altruistic drinkers assured that all of the pub’s profits were going straight to local charities. The communal passion behind the project was clear: it raised over £18,000 via the online sponsorship platform Crowdfunder, and companies donated tens of thousands of pounds in equipment.  

David Craddock, owner of the eponymous brewery and four West Midlands pubs, first proposed the idea after finding out a friend had secretly been volunteering at a retirement home for years prior. Craddock was less keen to give up his Saturdays to shower the elderly, so he opted for beer mats over bathwater and found a cause more suited to his skill set. It worked. “It was rammed in there every night,” one regular of The Good Intent tells me. “All the young businessmen and women soon cottoned onto it when it opened. They’d come piling out of their offices on a Friday night because not only was it an actually nice place to go, but a place that you knew was ethical and doing good things.”

David Craddock. Photo by Sarah McDowall

Philanthropy aside, the bar itself, nestled across two units near the centre of the Great Western Arcade, is undeniably, actually nice. On a recent Friday night, walking up the arcade’s sloping entrance hall, I’m greeted by echoing laughter and chatter, carried by the cold chill that blows through the thoroughfare. The Good Intent’s huge bay windows, lined with hanging, illuminating orbs, comfortingly shimmer an amber hue across the chequered marble floor that accentuates the click of expensive shoes.

Craddock’s confidence was such that he signed a 15-year lease on the property. “If my kids are going to keep running four pubs and a brewery, I want them to keep this one going and keep giving the money away,” he told Beer Yeti in 2019. Craddock had created something truly wonderful. Or so it seemed — until a few months ago when The Dispatch received a tip-off. The Good Intent does not donate to charity — and it never has.

After ringing up The Good Intent and making some enquiries of my own, I was told what was left after expenses (10% of the income) was split between LoveBrum, a non-profit that supports local, volunteer projects, and St Basils, an organisation that helps young homeless people. I contacted both charities but only heard back from LoveBrum, who told me they have not been receiving the foretold 5% of the profit payouts.

The Good Intent pub. Photo by Alex Taylor/The Dispatch

Despite the bartender on the phone marketing the bar as an active donor, the details available on Companies House are a little damning. The Good Intent failed to donate any money to charity between 1 February 2022 and 31 January 2023. Despite this, LoveBrum is keen to stress that there is no issue here and that The Good Intent is “all good with us.”

So why the absence of donations? It’s worth considering the monumental challenges facing the service industry, where turning a profit alone is an achievement. On top of site fees, staff costs, restocking expenses and additional outgoings, The Good Intent is hundreds of thousands of pounds in debt, and therefore unable to generate any profit to donate. 

The story of the Good Intent is certainly an intriguing one. A pub set up amid huge fanfare purporting to be raising money for charitable ends, which doesn’t seem to give any money to charity at all (while saying it does) is always going to raise eyebrows. One former employee who spoke to The Dispatch unspooled a concerning theory that Craddock purposefully keeps his pub in the red by over-charging for beer from his brewery, thus never needing to make a charitable donation — though the company employee is unable to evidence this claim. Craddock staunchly denies it. And there’s another, simpler possibility in play here. That is, that running a profitable pub in 2024 is simply very, very difficult.