This summer we have been told multiple times that our beer is as rare as hen’s teeth and heard the lengths people have been going to to get hold of a bottle. For around six weeks during the height this years tourist season most of our beers were SOLD OUT in our online shop. In this blog we hope to be able to explain our decision to risk being sold out to avoid "selling out".
When we moved to Harris in 2014 our new life gave us the opportunity to do the things we love and for Nick this was making beer. He would brew tiny batches of beer from our kitchen table to share with our family and friends and his passion for homebrewing grew. When we started telling people about our plans to start a small brewery we were inundated with support. As well as the many applications for the job of taster, many friends offered financial investment to buy commercial equipment and rent premises. It was a great confidence boost to know that the people who had tried our beers believed in us but this wasn’t our vision for our little business.
In Oxfordshire Nick and I started a company with Nick's dad. Within eight years the company had grown to employ over twenty people. It was a great success, but we worked long hours and had a lot of responsibility and sleepless nights. What we learned from that time was that we loved working together but we weren't driven by ambition or money, so from the outset our plan for the Brewery was clear. We wanted to build a business for the two of us, working from home and without going into debt. We felt that it was important that we have control of the whole process brewing, bottling, labelling and even delivering our beer ourselves. In our first year in business it has been really interesting to see how far we can reach within these boundaries.
On July 9th 2020 when we launched the Brewery the demand for our beers was incredible. Naturally I am much more conservative than Nick and I was nervous that we had so many crates of beer filling our kitchen. Nick will be delighted that I have put this in writing but…he was right. In the three weeks of July we received 99 orders and sold nearly 900 bottles of beer. All this with no marketing budget and a fifteen square meter self built Brewshed. Nick, as usual, was confident but ever the pessimist I was worried that our success in the first month wouldn't continue. Again…he was right! Despite COVID 19 and reduced visitor numbers our sales grew and grew. As we started selling more beer we also increased capacity. We doubled the size of our brewing vessels and fermenters after just one month and now just one year after we launched our batch size has increased three fold.
So we’re brewing more beer…where is it?!
After a busy Christmas we made a decision that we would prioritise time spent in the Brewshed. This meant reducing the time spent delivering beer. So we outsourced deliveries to our brilliant local courier Woody’s and agreed to supply some of our favourite independent island businesses. Our chosen stockist in Lewis was recommended to us by our customers, another COVID start up and a fantastic family business The Island Spirit Whisky Shop in Stornoway. The success of Craft Beer in a whisky shop has been a surprise to both us and owners Iain and Mary. We started with a small weekly order, doubled it and doubled it again! Closer to home an obvious choice for a stockist in Harris was Sally at the Anchorage Restaurant in Leverburgh. This is our local restaurant, just two miles from the Brewery, and our favourite place for family meals and milestones. Again we vastly underestimated the amount of beer Sally would sell and we have all been amazed at the demand there has been for local craft beer.
This year has shown us that our business has a huge potential for growth and we have lots of exciting things planned for next season and beyond but our ambitions for the Brewery are tempered by our original dream of staying at home, being our own bosses and doing everything ourselves. Next year we are planning to supply new local stockists and we’d love to open a small bottle shop here at the house so we can meet our customers and show them what we do. We feel that this is achievable without undermining our original vision. Our preparations for a busy Christmas period are already underway and by the time the last of this years visitors leave our stock levels will be building in preparation for the start of the 2022 season. Our principles have been tested many times in the last year. We have had some incredible offers of help, financial investment, business premises, promotional opportunities and requests from potential stockists. However this would mean we would be working for investors, employing staff and we would be in debt (financial or otherwise) to our backers. The brewery would risk becoming a commodity with a primary purpose of making money rather than making great beer!
We're thrilled that our beers have been so popular but this means they do sell fast. So, the bad news is that we can't guarantee that we won't sometimes be SOLD OUT but we can guarantee that we'll keep working hard to brew great beer, without compromise and without selling out.
