Meet the retailer: Bottle Monkey
Monkey business Chris Griffiths was not a beer drinker when he first came across Punk IPA in a pub in Liverpool during a trip over the Irish Sea from the Isle of Man to watch the football. A scouser by birth, Chris was living on the island working in IT at the time, but with no modern craft beer presence on the Isle of Man he was starved of the opportunity at home to experiment with the new style beers he had discovered on the mainland and began instead to homebrew his own. This led in 2018 to the launch of a pop-up events business, showcasing this style of beer to Isle of Man drinkers for the first time. Word spread, and soon Chris was shipping in pallets of craft beer to the island and wholesaling to pubs and bars that were starting to take note of this new trend in the beer market. Originally drawing up plans to launch a commercial brewery of his own, Chris pivoted instead to launch a bottle shop with his wife Lea when the perfect site came up for lease in 2019 and Bottle Monkey was born. With the start of the pandemic in 2020, the Isle of Man closed its borders and avoided the heavy lockdowns seen in other parts of the
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Summer 2022 | SIBA Independent Brewer | www.siba.co.uk
UK, and Bottle Monkey had a captive audience of thirsty beer drinkers queuing up to order beers online or from the shop which boasts six draught lines as well as hundreds of packaged products. Bottle Monkey rode the wave, putting on events including live-streamed tastings on a large screen in the shop with brewers across the country. The business’s success clinched victory at the SIBA Business Awards in March when Bottle Monkey was named Best Independent Craft Beer Retailer (single site) at BeerX. Looking to continue leading the emerging craft beer market on the island, Chris now has plans for a second site – an old fire station – and has moved away from the core beers that cemented the shop in the local market to more adventurous and experimental beers that reflect maturing tastes among his customers. This means he avoids competing with retailers, bars and pubs on the island that now stock craft beers, but are generally confined to fairly mainstream core beers. Independent Brewer’s Caroline Nodder spoke to Chris last month to learn more about Bottle Monkey and the unique market it serves on the Isle of Man…
