MERCHANT PROFILE
Is this the woman in
Sarah Dodd and Mia, Sandwich, September 2021
Everybody in the tiny Kent town seems t o
dip in the sea, locals want to discuss their
S
arah Dodd is pleased to have a roof over her head, because it wasn’t always the case at her previous
premises.
“You’d be sitting there and the wind
would get up – it would lift the roof panels and unfortunately not always put them
back in the right place,” she remembers.
“You’d have a gap in the ceiling and have
to call the landlord to get him to put them back again.
“You can imagine if it was pouring with
rain and it comes through the ceiling and
hits cardboard boxes overnight. Now I can
lie in bed on a stormy night and not have to worry that the roof is still on.”
In January, Sarah relocated from a
warehouse in the quaintly named Moat
Sole, in the middle of Sandwich, to a shop
just around the corner on a busy shopping
street. The move marked the latest chapter
in the history of a business that has seen its share of twists and turns over the years. It started in 2006, when a vet called
Andrew Lomax opened the warehouse in Sandwich. One of his suppliers was the
now-defunct HwCg (an amalgam of Hedley Wright and Castle Growers). It was while working for HwCg that Sarah met her
future husband Kevin; the couple married in 2007.
Growing restless in his HwCg role, Kevin
saw potential in the fledgling Hercules
business and eventually bought it outright, with Sarah joining the company two years
THE WINE MERCHANT october 2021 42
