The co-founder of Hackney Wick's CRATE Brewery is threatening legal action against Waltham Forest Council over the council's continued use of the CRATE name at its food and drink venue on St James Street, the Waltham Forest Echo reports.
Neil Hinchley set up CRATE Brewery in 2012. CRATE St James Street opened in 2019, run by a company called Crate Places Ltd, which has no connection to the brewery. Hinchley told the Echo he found the matching names "outrageous" at the time, but challenging them was complicated because the two businesses' trademarks fall into different classes.
The council took over the Walthamstow venue in January 2024, after Crate Places Ltd handed it over. A letter ending the lease says the CRATE name was "licensed to the council in perpetuity".
Hinchley says the shared name confuses customers. "People have regularly shown up to our locations having booked for St James, and we assume the same applies in reverse," he said. The brewery has sites in Hackney Wick and Canary Wharf.
On 22 April 2026 a council officer said in an email that the rebrand would be finished by July 2026. That deadline passed and the name has not changed.
A council spokesperson said: "We stepped in to save CRATE from immediate closure in December 2023." The council says it is turning the venue into an incubator hub for not-for-profit enterprises, adding: "We expect that our work with these groups will be concluded and new branding in place by early 2027."
Hinchley says he doesn't want a dispute. "The last thing we want is a fight with the council. We simply want the CRATE identity we've spent years building to be respected and for the St James Street site to be rebranded," he said.
"We're talking about changing a name, not rebuilding the town centre. We are simply asking them to stop using our brand!"
