Merry Crimbo? ...

With the festive period only a few days away we thought we would focus our latest blog on what's going on in the industry right now and how it's affecting us.

What a last two years hey? We have so many people who assume we were crazy busy over the last two years but what the reality is behind closed doors is not all is as it seems. 

Firstly, we are very grateful and feel very blessed to be here and still surviving. Many of our friends/colleagues have lost jobs or closed their businesses down due to this pandemic. Without getting into the politics of the world/our country right now, we, like everyone else are just striving to keep going, whilst still trying to be at the top of our game.

Many of us cut back on spending because we weren't out and about once in lockdown. Yeah, a lot of us went online, but this has it's pro's and con's for us Indies. It was great in spurts to be nicely busy. However, there wasn't as much beer available, and some breweries were keeping beers for their own online shops only. It was tough trying to meet the demand. When things levelled out, suddenly there was a huge amount of new bottle shops in store and online.  We have always been aware of competition, and we continue to just do what we do best. We are always aiming to improve, be better, be cheaper where we can. After many weeks of deep thought and discussion earlier this year, we decided to have a complete re-launch. We re-launched our branding, re-launched the website and made the saves boxes concept even better than it's ever been. It's been a great success and we are still tweaking things to the website including the mailers which we hope will be all ready to go very soon. We are of fighting spirit to still keep doing what we love as well as providing for our young family.

Times are tough. We have some amazing colleagues, friends and customers who have just stood by us throughout and we can't thank you enough for getting us through. 

Although Santa is coming, it's a very uneasy foreseeable future ahead. Our industry is being hit hard once again. Everyone is cutting back, our December was busy but not the normal busy buzz we are used to. Everyone is unsure, bills due in January and a possible lockdown coming into play means we could be home bound again. 

Could breweries sell their beers at the same time as us indies and not a week before, giving us a chance to sell them when they perhaps have some hype? Some/most now even have guest beers that they sell making it even harder for us.

It will be hard for anyone in the industry to enjoy Christmas with all this hanging over our heads but, we will do our best to enjoy and we will get through it once again. We will be taking a few days off ourselves and enjoying a few beers so will definitely post a blog in-between so you can see what we liked.

Plans for January? Well we feel it's going to be a hard year ahead anyway so we won't be doing dry January again. However, there will be non-alcoholic/low abv beers available throughout the month for those of you who are. We look forward to the breweries bringing their special beers out, 'Putty' anyone?! It's always an exciting month when the brewers start coming up with the new concepts. We have some fresh Stateside beers already planned to be arriving early January so keep an eye out for those. Plus, as we've mentioned above the mailers should be live and running up by then, which will also include some exclusive offers.

Probably a blog you didn't expect us to write, but it's something you needed to be aware of if you weren't already. It's our fifth year in the industry, our third as Premier Hop. We love it, and we will keep fighting and doing what we do best. We would love to hear your thoughts so get in touch. In the meantime, Merry Christmas, stay safe and lots of love.

Hema & Rohit