Craft beers spreading a little cheer Shop owner taps into new opportunities to deliver an essential service for customers
OUTSIDE of lockdown, Grunting Growler is a craft beer shop and bar. We have 200 rotating beers in our fridge and six taps for fresh pours that can be taken away – or customers can sit in with them.
It’s always lively and, because it’s such a small place, strangers always end up becoming friends. Everyone has a good laugh and split beers with each other.
Before lockdown officially came in, we were closing up – until we got the news that off-licences were essential shops. Never in a million years would I have expected that to happen, and we changed our plans overnight.
We’ve just celebrated our fourth birthday and have great customers, so we’re happy we can keep providing a service to them because they’ve been so supportive of us. Beer is a great way to keep socialising. Even if we can’t connect physically just now, we’re all doing online quizzes and chats with friends and family over a beer these days.
It was stressful adapting the business so quickly to start doing a click-and-collect and delivery service.
We had to get the website updated so that it could handle orders that were coming in quicker than we could manage them, and install a new tap so that it would keep the free pours fresh when we bottle them.
I’ve always been last-minute with things, but that’s when I excel – and we made it happen and it’s going great.
The first time I went out on deliveries, I was getting lost and going round in circles. It’s been really nice delivering to our customers and seeing them for a minute or two, although running up Glasgow tenement stairs made me realise I was pretty unfit when I could hardly talk to them when I got to the door.
Thankfully, I’ve gotten much fitter in the last few weeks, and I guess I have lockdown to thank for that.
●Head to www.gruntinggrowler.com for their click-and-collect and delivery service within a five-mile radius.
As told to Elaine Livingstone, in line with social distancing guidelines.
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