Our community

Fun fund-raising: £3 million for CLIC Sargent

Our staff and customers need little encouragement to link arms and come up with creative fund-raising ideas which have already helped us, as a team, to raise over £2,900,000 for our chosen charity CLIC Sargent.

It’s about more than money – we aim for our local events and activities to encourage real community spirit.

As well as organising thousands of local events annually, our fund-raising efforts include a national five-a-side football tournament (Kick for CLIC Sargent), in which around 250 Wetherspoon teams take part annually – raising over £190,000 in 2009.

From auctions to all-body waxes, fashion shows to footballs, head shaves to half Marathons – our pubs and customers have real fun fund-raising.

Got a great idea for fund-raising? Chat to your local pub manager.

Making a real difference with CLIC Sargent

At any one time, 3,000 children are undergoing treatment in the UK for cancer and leukaemia. CLIC Sargent wants to help to provide practical support to children suffering from these diseases, as well as to their families.

The charity currently operates eight ‘Home from Home’ venues, providing free, self-catering accommodation, close to regional paediatric oncology units, for children and their families. CLIC Sargent aims to have a ‘Home from Home’ at each of the UK’s 22 specialist paediatric oncology centres.

The charity also funds paediatric nurses and play specialists, as well as providing care grants, where possible.

Further charitable support

Wetherspoon makes further donations via a charity committee and at local pub level – to local good causes.

Award-winning Wetherspoon – Wetherspoon sets the standard

Since opening our first free house, in 1979, we’ve taken pride in delivering a consistent, high-quality and adaptable pub offering for customers and also a great place for staff to work.

Our success is measured not only by the fact that that initial pub has grown to 740 pubs or that millions of you regularly visit our pubs every week; it’s not measured simply by the fact that we have over 21,000 staff, a steadily growing number of whom have been with us for more than 15 years; no, our success is also measured by the fact that, over our 30 years, we have won literally hundreds of national and regional awards, acknowledging excellence in all aspects of our business, from design, training, catering and retailing to recycling and employee relations.

For the sixth consecutive year, we’ve featured in Britain’s Top 100 Employers handbook, published by The Guardian, while our training team swept the board with three top awards at the BII NITAs – the national training awards for the licensed retail industry, recognising excellence in training.

We received an award from the Employers Forum on Age for ‘leading our sector’ in its area of age-positive employment; indeed, our oldest employee is the ripe young age of 90!

So, whether it’s our Green Champion Award for environmental responsibility, a design award for pub conservation, our Retailers’ Retailer of The Year award 2009 or our ‘Brammy’ award for service to the British apple – we are justly proud of them all.

Britain’s biggest supporter of real ale

Wetherspoon is passionate about real ale and proud of our wide and ever-changing range of ales and our beer festivals, all backed by the Cask Marque assurance of quality.

More Wetherspoon pubs are featured in the Campaign for Real Ale’s (CAMRA) Good Beer Guide 2010 than from any other pub company – 193 in total, our highest-ever number. Incidentally, we had a clean sweep in Northern Ireland, with all nine of our pubs there receiving CAMRA’s recognition once again.

We are immensely proud of our achievement with real ale, as we actively support local brewers of all sizes, throughout the year, holding meet-the-brewer events, brewery visits and local ale festivals – all designed to support the UK’s growing band of microbreweries.

Britain is blessed with an astonishing array of microbrewers – and we do our very best to bring you a variety of tastes from the smallest brewers and regional favourites. Many beers which we sell are very rarely found out of their local area and so are a real treat.

Regulars at Wetherspoon will be familiar with our twice-yearly international real-ale festivals, showcasing up to 50 guest ales across the fortnight, including a range of international beers. These international beers are extra special, since brewers literally fly in to the UK to brew their great-tasting beers at UK breweries’ sites.

Spreading the word on real ale

In the last year alone, over 6,000 Wetherspoon customers have joined CAMRA, thanks to the Wetherspoon promotion which offers £20 of real ale to all new and existing members.

FREE real-ale vouchers worth £20, when you join CAMRA.