Sign inTHE BRITISH PUB IN HQ DEUTSCHLAND
Watch our video (or read the story) on how a market-leading medical technologies company preserves a small measure of the UK's pub culture in its German HQ. It's a sentimental story of a friendship that outfought WWII pressures and lives on two generations since Dreve built its solid foundations in hearing care and dentistry.
While what Dreve puts in a bottle might refresh the earmoulds or dental castings other companies’ materials cannot reach, you wouldn’t expect your visit to this medical devices company in Unna, near Dortmund, Germany, to remind you at all of pints being pulled.
But if you are a lucky enough visitor, perhaps with a big order for one of Dreve’s special formulas for injection moulding or resins for dental casting, your first impressions (ouch…sorry!) might be formed in a tiny, cosy corner of Britishness where the company makes people feel at home.
Courtesy of Dreve
Ideal for hosting customers and contacts, what we might frothily refer to as the Dreve Arms is a tight enclosed seating area, complete with a bar, booze, and character jugs, and is designed with maximum love and respect to reproduce the details of a traditional pub.
Courtesy of Dreve
Why? How? And on the rocks, please!
This quaint tale was revealed to us by Victoria Dreve, who at 24-years-old is now learning the family business started by her grandfather Wolfgang, and inherited by her father, Volker Dreve, the current Managing Director.
The origins of this curious space go back two generations before Victoria, and to before the moment, just after WWII, when Wolfgang and his wife Inge founded their dental laboratory in the heart of Unna, where they were soon to become pioneers in the production of custom earmoulds made from acrylic, which were first manufactured in Unna in 1955.
A pub that recalls a friendship disrupted by war
“My grandpa actually started as a dental technician, and one of his best friends had to flee to the UK in the World War,” Victoria Dreve explained.
“The friend had his office there in the UK and did dental work for levels in society that included the royals and patients from the Middle-East. My grandpa sent him all his own inventions and mixtures,” continued Victoria.
Courtesy of Dreve
Victoria Dreve (right) with her father and Managing Director, Volker.
Courtesy of Dreve
With those formulas working wonders, people wanted to know where they were from.
“He said ‘I got them from my best friend in Germany’. And that’s how our expansion strategy started,” said Victoria, “because the exports started. We not only sent to the UK, but all abroad.”
“Because my grandpa loved his connection to his best friend, and because that was also the reason we grew internationally, he said ‘I love to be in the UK, I want to bring the UK to Germany’. And we love it to this day. We just renovated it a bit but kept the charm so it’s fresh and very nice to welcome everybody there,” added Victoria about this nook full of green leather seating and dark wood furniture that once served for the company’s Christmas parties.
“It’s very cosy. We have all sort of licors there, and old pictures, and also many gifts given to us by friends and customers. It’s just a nice history, not only the pub, but all those aspects you can find in our pub all resemble the history we have in our markets,” Victoria expands.
Courtesy of Dreve
