Meet the retailer A profile of award-winning independent bottle shop and hot sauce haven Hop, Burns & Black

Issue 9 Spring 2022

Top of the Hops

Cover Story

Top of the hops

Indie retailer Hop, Burns & Black was born of two people’s love of craft beer, hot sauce and vinyl records. Jen Ferguson and Glenn Williams arrived on UK shores from New Zealand, where they had already seen the growth in the number of small independent breweries mirror a similar explosion in the number of craft and artisanal hot sauce producers. Arriving in London’s Peckham/East Dulwich area, the pair loved the community spirit but saw a gap in the market for an independent retail site specialising in craft beer and hot sauce, with a side helping of vinyl records thrown in. In November 2014 they took the plunge, giving up their day jobs to launch the business, which was embraced by locals while also, as one of only a handful of independents of its kind in London at that time, becoming a destination for those from further afield. In 2018 the business added another retail site in Deptford, and with sales growing from their online shop during lockdown, a new warehouse was added last year. Despite this expansion, the business has stayed true to its roots, focusing on creating a welcoming, inclusive environment, championing local breweries and producers. Independent Brewer’s Caroline Nodder spoke to Jen and Glenn back in January to find out more about their journey and plans for the future…

Business Basics

Name: Hop, Burns & Black Founded: November 2014

Location:

Shops in Peckham/East Dulwich and Deptford in London (plus an online warehouse)

Owners:

Jen Ferguson and Glenn Williams Number of retail sites: 2 Staff: 7 (including owners)

Key product categories and sales mix:

Beer (60% of sales), natural wine, cider, spirits and hot sauce

How did you come to launch Hop, Burns & Black and how has the business developed since then?

Jen: “Both Glenn and I were fairly bored with our day jobs, and we asked ourselves what is it that we love? And the things that we love the most are craft beer, hot sauce and music. So yeah, that's how Hop, Burns and Black was born - originally ‘hop’ was the beer, ‘burns’ was the hot sauce and ‘black’ was vinyl records. Although during the pandemic, that's one of the things that has gone by the by and we don't sell the vinyl anymore, but music is still an integral part of the business.”

Glenn: “Coming from New Zealand, it was one of those things that we'd seen coming up with craft beer, was craft hot sauces and locally made and small batch interesting sauces made with crazy foreign chillies. Then we started to see brewers working with hot sauce makers and vice versa. So making chilli beers and beer-based hot sauces and then having festivals together. It was one of those things that coming to the UK we had already seen was working together. And we would always have a shelf of hot sauce in the fridge along with a shelf of craft beer. So it just for us came naturally that these two things would come together.”

Jen: “We've always got a big rotating selection of hot sauces, but it's always more than 100 and depending on what time of year it is, it can be much more than that.”

Glenn: “When we started the shop back in 2014, we wanted people to walk in and get this wow factor. So we had a big wall of beer on one side, and then on the other, this big wall of hot sauce. We wanted people to be just like, wow, look at that, and then turn around and see something else and go, ‘This is so strange. We've never seen this before in the UK’.” Jen: “So we started in 2014 with our Peckham/ East Dulwich branch. We've been living in Peckham since 2013. And we just love it. We just knew as soon as we moved here that it has this fantastic community spirit, and we thought we really want to be more closely involved in our community.”

Glenn: “And thinking back to 2014, in London, there weren't that many places where you could go and buy craft beer off the shelf. There were a couple of other businesses that started elsewhere in South West London and East London early on in that year. But prior to that, there were just some incumbents that had been around since the 90s, doing Belgian beer, that sort of thing. So we really were setting a precedent.”

Jen: “Then Deptford we opened in June 2018. That came about as it was a place that we often went to, and again there was kind of not much there. Certainly not much in terms of beer and wine retail. So there was an obvious gap in the market.”

We really wanted to be a place where you could get the best of the best. So the product selection would wow people coming in.

What is the ethos behind the business?

Jen: “We wanted to have this destination, which was also at the heart of the community. And the general ethos is basically be excellent to each other and be excellent over all – just to misquote Bill and Ted! We really wanted to be a place where you could get the best of the best. So the product selection would wow people coming in. We've always wanted customers to be able to rely on us and know that every product that we stock is going to be of the highest quality - from breweries, from businesses who have good people as well. I think importantly as well, for in-store and obviously with the customer service online as well, we want to make sure that it's always a warm and friendly and a fun environment to shop in. We want to ensure that it's never intimidating to shop with us. We've all had these experiences when you walk into a wine shop and the staff are quite snooty and you feel a bit uncomfortable. Or you'd walk into beer shops and bars, and it would be quite an off putting ‘bro’ environment. We always wanted to ensure that we would never create uncomfortable environments, we'd never sneer or never look down our noses at you if you don't know much about the products that we sell - that's what we're there for! We're here to take you on the same journeys that we've all made.”

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How do you select the beers you stock?

Jen: “The number of breweries in the UK now, it's hundreds and hundreds and growing all the time. And certainly by the number of samples that we get sent every week, there's a lot of new breweries popping up all the time. We tend to work with breweries that we know can be relied upon for consistency and for quality. Consistency is such a key point. We've been burned a few times. We'll try samples and think, well, these are really great. And, of course, we get the beers and they've been sometimes just terrible, terrible quality. So I think that's one of the most important things that a new brewery can get right is to be consistent.” Glenn: “And we're lucky now because most of the breweries we do stock have been around a few years now and have nailed the quality and consistency, and also what they're about. So for a new brewery to knock one of those out and get on our shelves, there's quite a high bar to meet. So first of all, we've got to love the beer. That's number one. There's not a beer in the shop that we haven't enjoyed.”

What do you look for in the small brewers you work with?

Glenn: “There's a strong focus on local for us. Because our customers also want to see the local beers. And we're very lucky that we've got some fantastic local breweries like Brick Brewery, like Villages, like Gypsy Hill, that have, over the years, nailed their consistency. So there's no problems there. But the issue comes in choosing the breweries from further afield. Those breweries that approach us, they might be down on the south coast, or they could be up north and they might have a good local offering. They could be local heroes where they're from, but in order to be on our shelves they have to be doing something that's an X factor, something that makes them a little bit more special, and also something that our customers are demanding.

A good core range would be good for that brewery in their local area, you know, lager, pale ale and IPA. But what is going to make those special enough to be put on a shelf hundreds of miles away? So we look for breweries that are leading the charge with perhaps a certain style. So you look at Verdant or Deya, just as an examples of two breweries that led the charge with the juicy hazy New England styles that many other breweries are now doing, but because they were the first they're now incumbent on our shelves and our customers demand them week to week. One of the key elements is branding, of course, as well. What does it look like on shelf? What does the range look like as a whole? And some of these are a real X Factor.” Jen: “What I love to see as well is when the personality of a brewery really shines through. I think social media does a lot of that. I mean, if you look at the likes of, for example, Donzoko Brewing. Reece [owner Reece Hugill] is this fantastic force of nature online, and for a one-man band, essentially, he's got a lot more volume than many others.”

They could be local heroes where they're from, but in order to be on our shelves they have to be doing something that's an X factor, something that makes them a little bit more special. How has your retail operation developed?

Jen: “I mean, obviously the last two years have been a massive rollercoaster. We pivoted in various ways. And we're very lucky that we were quite a tight unit that could have the flexibility to be able to pivot in a few ways. When we first launched our online shop, which was in 2015, for a long time we were able to do all the operations from our pick-up shop site. Although that was a tight squeeze, you know, it wasn't without its issues. Then during the pandemic, when we closed during the first lockdown, we closed our in-store operations halfway through March 2020 and operated pretty much solely online and with the local deliveries from our pick-up shop. But after we reopened, we had to move online to its own warehouse. Before the pandemic online made up 23% of our revenues, and it now makes up 40%. And before the pandemic a lot of our online stuff was going all around the country. I'd say the vast majority of stuff was being couriered to places outside of London, whereas now a lot of our stuff is bought online for local delivery. We do that in our electric van that we got last year.”

We would always have a shelf of hot sauce in the fridge along with a shelf of craft beer. So it just for us came naturally that these two things would come together.

What do you think is the key to a successful online operation?

Jen: “I think the biggest thing is the website interface. If you think about it as a customer yourself, if you go to an online shop and it is slow, it's taking ages to load, doesn't give you the information. So I think a smart, a smooth, fast, intuitive website is key. And obviously, you know, a range of delivery options. We've now got courier shipping across the UK, we've got same day couriers across London, we've got our local delivery service, or people can pick up from the shops. So there's all these different ways that people can get their hands on our products. Confident shipping partners is really important. So many online businesses have worked with courier partners who have let them down.”

Glenn: “It is also about creating packaging solutions that enable the product to get to the customer in good condition. That has also been helped by most breweries moving into cans as well. Certainly back in 2015/2016, it was a combination of the packaging, which was not so great, but also so many bottles as well, we were getting a lot of breakages. And also, customer service. You’ve got to be available to answer questions, people need to know that someone is there, and it's someone who is real, and we are a small business, so we are available to answer any kind of question - whether it be about choosing products, or the whole delivery process, or when to expect a package or any kind of follow up questions. That's really important. It’s also about being really in tune with your stock. So over the years, we've really got to know how much to order, how long that's going to stick around for, and that ties in with what our customers are demanding. Because you can often go to some other websites and see products that are reduced to clear - we don't do any reduce to clear stuff. We have a bin end section, but that's only because it's the one thing left of a particular line, and it's not actually reduced.”

What do you see as the key challenges currently for a business like yours?

Jen: “One of the obvious challenges is the decline of the High Street. Peckham, for example, has apparently declined by 26%, which is huge when you think about it. But at the same time, we've come out of the pandemic with vastly more competition than we had before. We've got competition, obviously, from supermarkets who are getting very much into craft beer in a big way, then other retailers who might have been bricks and mortar have now moved online during the pandemic. So whereas we might have been selling to lots of customers in Cardiff, for example, the local beer shop’s now gone online, so that's taken some of those customers away. And you've also got competition from other businesses, like cafes, or bars, or bookshops, or places that became bottle shops during the pandemic. And many more breweries are now selling direct to customers than they were before. Everyone's out there fighting to survive. So we don't blame anyone at all. But there's so much more competition out there. It’s challenging. And for us personally, another challenge at the moment is growth. How do we scale up while we still run it. We don't have investors, we do everything ourselves, so it's how do we take that next step to getting even bigger and better?”

Have you seen any change in the product mix you are selling since you launched?

Jen: “No and low alcohol beer is one of the success stories of the last few years. I think sales of no and low beers were up 23% last year, and 37% in 2020. Which is tastes changing, but also a lot more breweries bringing alcohol free beers into their range, or sessionable under 3% beers. And I think people, especially over the pandemic, I think people have moved away from kind of chasing the hype beers, you know, those Imperial stouts and hype hype hype, to a lot more comfort drinking. Certainly when the pubs have been closed, the likes of bitters and pale ales, to replace the pub experience.”

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Have you taken any steps to make your business more sustainable?

Jen: “It's always been a huge focus for us. Things that have always been part of the business have been using green energy, obviously a bit more challenging with what's coming up this year, I would say. Always avoiding single use plastics, we've always had paper bags, always used cardboard. And recycling all the standard stuff. But certainly for us the investment in the electric van was a big thing. And we're exploring at the moment, other ways to do deliveries around London. For ones that are outside our local delivery area we are looking at partnering with green cycle curries and things like that.”

Glenn: “From even pre-pandemic, from breweries we were trying to choose steel kegs rather than the one-way key kegs. And whenever we did get a one-way key keg, we would save them up and then give them to recycle to The First Mile, who are the only ones in London who take them apart and recycle the bits individually.”

How do you, as an independent retailer, compete against the large supermarkets?

Jen: “For us, we recognise it as a threat and a growing threat, but we've got so many things that we can do that supermarkets don't have. Service and selection, you can't go into your local Tesco and ask someone about this beer or that beer or what I should buy to go with my steak tonight. We've got 400 beers, they’re all kept well, our shops are all fully refrigerated, you know, we're complete cold stores, everything like that. So you know, you're going to get a better beer when you come to us. We ensure that we never overlap. So we only stock independent breweries that aren't stocked in supermarkets. For the most part, we'll give a pass to our local breweries, there might be some of our local guys that are in the odd branch of M&S.”

Glenn: “But when that's the case, we negotiate. So we negotiate an equivalent price or near enough, and we've been successful at doing that.”

What are you proudest of during your time at Hop, Burns & Black?

Jen: “I think from my side, I'm most proud of the fact that we've created a workplace where our team want to stay a long time. We've created this wonderful award winning business, but, the team, they've all been with us for such a long time and we've got this fantastic range of talent. I find it really brilliant that we've managed to not only attract great people, but retain them.”

Glenn: “We spoke a little bit earlier about being centred in the community and feeling part of the community. But for me, that was something we always wanted to do, but it kind of crept up and it was a surprise aspect of setting up a shop. Once we were rooted in a shop and staying in one place, and people were coming to us, it was just a real privilege to get to know everyone and feel like you're part of something a little bit bigger around you. I’m just really proud that we are a place that people want to come and spend their time and have a drink and sit down at the tables outside.”

What is your all-time favourite beer?

Jen: “It changes almost every day, depending on our mood, depending on the weather. We love classics like Orval, like Saison Dupont, and The Kernel Export India Porter or Export Stout are always gonna hit the spot as well. Deya’s Steady Rolling Man pale ale is a modern classic. But mostly Glenn and I and actually all of our staff as well just drink German lagers. We’ll drink Augustina until the cows come home.”

Who do you most admire in the craft beer market at the moment and why?

Jen: “As a retailer, from a brewery point of view, the business we've always most admired is The Kernel. They plough their own path, according to their values and their ethics, they're not driven by market demands, or trends. They could have tripled the size of that business, but they want to do things their way and they want to do things the right way. They've got a really close knit team, which again, we love to see, and they just keep on keeping on doing it their way. Good people doing good things and forging our own path.” Glenn: “All businesses are on their own trajectory and doing their own thing, but that is one model that shows the way that it can be done.”