The History of the F Jones Initiative
Wrexham Lager: The beginning
1882-Wrexham lager was set up by two Bavarians Ivan Levinstein and Otto Isler, who chose a site in Wrexham to engineer a brewery based on a traditional German brewing method. They originally brewed a dark lager, which was deemed a superior quality to local ales, this gave them the confidence to brew their first pale lager, and thus Wrexham Lager was born! The Brewery was then taken over by a local, German-born industrialist, Robert Graesser.
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He forged connections with merchants enabling Wrexham Lager to be sold all across the world. It was also the only lager available on the Titanic.
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It was bought out by Ind Coope and Allsopp (now known as Carlsberg) in 1949. Commercial production of
Wrexham Lager stopped in Wrexham in 2000 because the original brewery was demolished and a retail park was
built in its place.
Where we come in
In 2011, when our family joined forces with an ex-microbiologist and an ex-head brewer of Wrexham Lager, Martyn Jones, and Ian Dale. We invested in a microbrewery as a new venture and built a state- of- the art German brewhouse, in the heart of Wrexham and thus Wrexham Lager was re-born!
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Since 2011 we have gone from strength to strength, created a new logo to modernise the brand, opened a brewery shop, seized the new e-commerce opportunities, and expanded our business and product range online.
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Our lager has won numerous Gold medals in worldwide competitions! We featured on the ITV Love your weekend show, to rave reviews from Alan Titchmarsh and his guests. Recently we are very proud to carry on sponsoring Wrexham AFC, with a stand named after us!
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We are determined to use the growing awareness of Wrexham Lager, to help Wrexham in different ways, collaborating with other local businesses and organisations. We have set up the F Jones Initiative with our other business, F Jones Food Service as a platform to make a difference and to do just this.
Fish shop and food service
We were actually created in 1931, born from Jones’s Fish and Chip shop in Wrexham. In 1911, Francis Jones, our great-grandfather opened one of the first fish and chip shops in the region, in a wooden hut, with a coal fire cooking range.
In 1931, his son Fred followed in his footsteps and opened his own fish and chip shop, Jones’s fish and chip shop remains on the same site today, run by his family. Wrexham lager brewery lives behind the shop.
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The wholesale business, F Jones Food Service was created in 1931, when a friend, also in the trade,
asked Fred if he could supply his shop with fish. Ever resourceful, Fred delivered the first order of fish in a 3-wheeler van, and thus the F Jones Food Service was born.
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F Jones Food Service was originally located behind Jones’s Fish and Chip Shop, however, we outgrew these premises in 2001 and moved to our current location on Wrexham Industrial Estate.
