Meet The Retailer A profile of SIBA award-winning independent bottle shop 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 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…

Business Basics

Name: Bottle Monkey Founded: Events business began 2018 and shop opened in 2019 Location: Douglas, Isle of Man Owners: Chris Griffiths Number of retail sites: 1 Staff: 2 (Chris and his wife Lea)

Key product categories and

sales mix: 95% beer & 5% soft drinks/hard seltzers (6 draught beers on tap & 250300 packaged beers)

How did you come to launch Bottle Monkey and how has the business developed since then?

“I never actually used to drink beer at all. I used to drink a lot of cider and Jack Daniels was actually my tipple of choice. We used to go regularly to watch the football and obviously have the occasional beer, but the things I like to drink now just weren't available. Then like probably a lot of other people I discovered Punk IPA like eight to 10 years or so ago, in cask in a pub in Liverpool. And that sends you down the rabbit hole. You couldn't get anything like that on the Isle of Man so I started home brewing and it just sort of expanded out from there. I worked in IT at the time - not amazingly happy in that job at that point - so I moved to another job, again in IT, and took the decision to explore beer and the industry. We started doing a few pop-up events and just seeing if there was a market for them because there was no one doing anything like that on the Isle of Man. Not in terms of modern independent beers. It was all very traditional cask. And while we were doing the pop-up events, the idea was that I actually wanted to start a brewery not a shop. And on the back of doing the events and realising that people like the beers, a couple of the venues we used to hire for the events asked me if I could source beers for them. So we did a little bit of wholesale because it just got some money coming in and got the beers out there a little bit. And then we were actually going to open a shop in the south of the island in Castletown. It's quite a tourist destination. We had a shop lined up down there, but unfortunately, the landlord pulled the plug on it just before we were due to go to the licensing court. The business model for that was to have a very small nano brewery in the back and then the bottle shop/tasting area in the front. The local commissioners, which are like the councils in the Isle of Man, found out that it fell through and they were looking to expand what's going on in the town and attract more visitors, so they suggested to us that we put in a tender along with a few other people for the fire station in the town that's disused. And we actually won the tender. So that's always been ongoing in the background, it's taken, probably two, two and a half years to be able to get into that building, which is something we've got for the future. We’re going to be putting a community brewery in there. And while that was happening I got fed up of wholesale and seeing people get credit for serving really amazing beers that we'd sourced for them. Wholesale has a very small margin that you can make on it, particularly because of the shipping issues. So I happened to be walking through into the main town centre. And there's like a cut through road called Nelson Street, which is where we're located. It used to be a fancy dress shop, and they were literally packing the stuff away in the fancy dress shop to move out. So I got the landlord's details, I called him that evening, and within a couple of days we'd agreed to take on the shop. And that was kind of it, we just threw ourselves into it.”

"Our little tagline is ‘make beer matter’ which you will see on all our social media posts, and that pretty much sums it up."

What is the ethos behind the business?

“Our little tagline is ‘make beer matter’ which you will see on all our social media posts, and that pretty much sums it up. My opinion is basically that I think beer isn't quite as revered as it probably could be in the same way as wines and spirits. Particularly in restaurants and food driven places. And when we started up our events, we did a lot of them not just straight tastings, we were pushing for pairing with food, experience driven events. Our very first event was a 60 seater meal with a four course menu, and beers to go along with that, which sold out very, very quickly. When you look at a lot of restaurants, and menus, businesses on the Isle of Man they don't mention their beer, and there's no descriptions, there's nothing. It's slowly starting to change, which I like to think we've been a bit of a catalyst for over the last two or three years. But that's basically our thing is to make people understand that beer is not just, lagers, macro produced with very little flavour. We like to push the envelope a little bit. We specialise in beers you experience not beers you drink. So we’re not looking to push quantity, we're looking to push flavour and experience and enjoyment.”

The Isle of Man is a unique market, how has that affected what you do?

“The challenge comes with shipping and the cost of getting beer here and being able to then sell it on to customers at not an extortionate price. Without that sort of big beer scene on the Isle of Man, there was no volume. So we had to get a little bit creative in how we did things. So we had agreements with a few distributors that offered us a little bit of extra discount in return for us marketing the beers they sell on the island to trade. And then off the back of that, obviously, that allowed us to buy bigger volumes from them, whilst adding in one or two cases of what was probably not mainstream beer for the Isle of Man for us to then stock or use for tastings. And then once we got the shop up and running we were doing half a pallet for the shop and half for trade.”

How do you select the beers you stock?

“We work on the principle of if it's good, we'll have it. But over the last three to six months, there are places on the Isle of Man that are trying to change their beer lineup and get craft and things like that. So they're buying direct from some of the distributors we've used in the past, and we've moved away from buying from distributors because we get enough volume for the shop now we can be a bit more selective and buy ourselves direct. Foster those relationships with the breweries to help with events as well. So over the last few months, we've started coming across in our own van to do buying trips as well. There's obviously trusted breweries in the industry, everyone knows that they make solid beers – I’m talking about Lost and Grounded, Northern Monk, people like that - and on the Isle of Man, because we're quite early in the development of craft beer, things like Tiny Rebel and BrewDog are the prevalent ones that people mostly know. We tend to stay away from BrewDog, because they’re reaching the supermarket more than anyone else on the island. And then we've got also Tiny Rebel we’ve stocked since day one, we used to have all their core range and we've now phased out the core stuff and we only do specials and one-off brews and things like that, as the core range has now become the remit of other bars that are trying to do craft beer. We've sort of taken a step up. So we tend to choose specials and seasonals from the bigger breweries. And then we look out for other small places when we go on trips away, we always visit somewhere local wherever we go.”

"We've sort of taken a step up. So we tend to choose specials and seasonals from the bigger breweries."

What is your pricing strategy, do you have to price up to cover shipping costs?

“We get a little bit creative in terms of shipping and getting hold of things. There are ways and means of getting them to the island. People won't generally want the hassle or put in the effort to do that. It's easy just for someone to say, ‘Can we order a pallet of this, how much is it going to cost?’ And they send it directly and there's no worries about it having to go from A to B to C. We've always from day one tried to work quite closely with other businesses, particularly small businesses on the island. And whether that be allowing them to pop up in our shop, or whether it's a haulage company. We've got a couple of haulage companies now that we're comfortable with, and we've worked quite closely with them, where they’ll accept delivery for us in the UK, and then ship to the Isle of Man. So for example, getting a pallet direct from one distributor will cost us in the region of £150-£175 in shipping. Indirectly, where we get it shipped to a point A in the UK, and then we get it brought to the island, we can reduce that by two thirds. If we can tie that into getting a good deal in terms of purchase price, then we can bring down the prices on the island. In the shop, the retail prices, we try and not price match exactly. But to be within 20 to 30 pence of what it would cost you to buy a beer online and have it shipped to your door. And mostly we are pretty close to being exactly the same or under. It's also a minimum of 48 hours delivery to the island. So people will come to us if they’ve got people coming round and need some beers that evening.”

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"Events are a really good way to explain things to people, actually have some time where you can talk about what they're drinking and explain to them properly."

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

“We want to work with people that have a similar outlook to us. So obviously, at the core of that is the beer, which is the important thing. And that's got to be good. The branding has got to be good. And we also look for the sort of things that no one else is doing. If we're going to buy from breweries, they need to have a fairly good range, because obviously if it's for shipping, we need to build out at least a half pallet. So just having half a pallet of two beers is not really feasible. There is a shelf life on a lot of the products from small breweries of six months. And you know, if we're selling IPAs, a lot of IPAs, which we do, we don't want to have them hanging around for too long. We want to sell things as fresh as possible. And we want to keep the beers turning over so there's always something new. So a good wide range is kind of key to what we do purely because of our location. We have to buy a certain amount of volume from each place to make it worthwhile.”

Events are a big part of what you do, was that always your intention?

“It was a way to educate people, introduce people to things. Events are a really good way to explain things to people, actually have some time where you can talk about what they're drinking and explain to them properly. And that is also part of the reason we got the full licence so people can drink in. We can have a range of six beers on tap and have a different beer, a completely different style on each one. And it gives them the opportunity to taste something new and then we can go, ‘Okay, if you like that, then there's this on the shelf. And there's that on the shelf’. Once people opt in, then changing that up and having the events and things like that, where they actually get to talk to the person who's made the beer, that makes a massive difference, and it pulls people in. I think we've gotten to the point now where people are fed up listening to me talk about beer on the island. And so we need to bring in other people. And doing that, again, it has its own challenges because again, we're on an island. So we moved that online when everyone got used to having online beer tastings during the pandemic. We took it a step further and installed video conferencing facilities into the shop. So we can actually have 20-25 people sat in there with the camera on and they can talk directly to someone who's at the other end of the Zoom call.”

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

“Other people and other businesses on the island have seen that what we do is popular, obviously we've been doing wholesale quite a bit over the last couple of years, but more people have realised there's other ways to get beer. So a couple of customers here are now going direct to the original distributors we used, which is fine, I have no problem with that. The things they're buying, again are the core range things. So although it's competition to a degree, for me actually it will help us in the long run, because more people are having their eyes opened to those sorts of beers.”

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"I think we have instigated a certain amount of change on the island in the way people think about beer and drink beer and what they enjoy."

What are your plans for the business over the next five years?

“I will be out of my day job in the next couple of weeks, I’ve handed in my notice. Then after TT week [the TT races on the Isle of Man] I'm going to be full time on sorting out the fire station project with the hope to have it all up and running before August. It's partially there as it is at the minute. The brewing room is not far off. It just needs equipment and a little bit of plumbing done. But then we've got like the events-based taproom area which is going to be the focus to get ready. So that's another interesting project because that's involved a lot of explanations to the Customs and Excise people, they don't quite know what gypsy brewing or cuckoo brewing is. The business model’s to be a community brewery, so we allow people to come in and use our kit. And obviously we can go through all the admin side of it and the duty side we will pay all that and cover that as our business and then allow them to sell that product if they want to, or they can serve it through the bar in our venue, if the beer is good enough, for a percentage of sales. And part of the plan is to have experience days where people can come in together to have a good day out, like the team on The Apprentice, and they can brew a beer. And then they can obviously have that beer a couple of weeks later for the office party, or some sort of event. In the bar the idea is to have 20 taps in there, which again, everyone has told me is madness, but they all said the same thing about starting a shop.”

What are you proudest of during your time at Bottle Monkey?

“I think we have instigated a certain amount of change on the island in the way people think about beer and drink beer and what they enjoy. As I said, our tagline is ‘make beer matter’, and I like to think we've done that. Obviously, it was very nice to win an award. And that was a particularly proud moment. It was, for me, it was better that I actually got to share that with my wife, because she obviously works on a lot of things in the background. Everyone sees me at the forefront of our business. So she probably doesn't get the recognition that she deserves.”

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

“I like to think we've taken little bits from everywhere we've visited. So the key one for me was when we went to the US and went around Boston and down the East Coast to New York and visited Other Half and Trillium and places like that. Seeing their taprooms and their can and bottle releases when people are queuing around the block. And the way they market their beers and deal with their customers. All that had a massive, massive influence on what we wanted to do, which has partly led to the plan with the fire station, that being a community brewery and having everyone able to do all the jobs and having people come in and learn. And in terms of retail now, I mean, you’ve got places like Hop, Burns & Black who I have visited in the past and had a look at. They focus on the beer, but obviously they've got hot sauces and things like that as well, and it's a little centric community that they have fostered as well. And my personal favourite place to go to is Dead Crafty Beer Co in Liverpool, the guys who run it are amazing. It's where I go when I come to Liverpool, and without any snobbery around beer as well. I think that's the important thing, which is when we're trying to educate people you have to do it from a point of view where you are equal. And then another favourite is the Ship & Mitre where they've managed to marry that really modern craft beer culture in with a very traditional pub and traditional beer as well.”