Zero-waste store lands a Kilo blow A Birmingham-based zero waste supermarket has converted one of its sites in the city into a café bar and refillable takeaway wine shop. The Clean Kilo has rebranded its Digbeth site as Kilo Ziro to distinguish it from its supermarket brand. It continues to operate its other original Clean Kilo shop in Bourneville in the city and has opened another in Moseley. The Kilo Ziro bar offers a self-serve range of five on-tap wines from 20-litre Cocktails are made from local and sustainably-made spirits
refillable kegs supplied by Sustainable Wine Solutions. It also carries 25 wines for off-sales in deposit-paid bottles that
wines for the shops. To get a premises
customers can have refilled or recycled.
licence to sell three lines of wine wasn’t
on,” Wong adds. “When we do use fruit,
going to work for us, but to do it on a
we use the skins to make sugar syrup [for
bigger scale with the café bar was.
cocktails]. If we have any wine wastage
Kilo Ziro is serving cider made from locally-sourced apples, and cocktails made from sustainable and local spirit brands,
“There’s lots of experimenting going
“We think about not just about each
when we pull the first glass out of the tap
flavoured with citric acid instead of whole-
product, but about how each one comes
wall, we use it to make vinegar. We have
fruit garnishes to cut down on food waste.
to us and about how it’s disposed of – the
a new cocktail menu which incorporates
whole cycle.
waste fruit and veg.”
“The pandemic changed a lot of consumer shopping habits,” says co-
“There are so many spirits being distilled
Former menswear designer Wong and
founder Jeanette Wong, “and we found with
around Birmingham and local craft beer
business partner and ex-chemist Tom Pell
Digbeth, which has a lot of surrounding
and cider is easy to find here. But we won’t
set up The Clean Kilo in 2018, specialising
offices, that things didn’t return to normal,
take bottles or cans, only keg.
in loose food ingredients to cut down on
and that really affected sales. “As a grocery store – where people are encouraged to bring their own containers to cut plastic pollution – it was difficult. “We didn’t want to give up on the concept
“We have two carbon-negative local gins and Scotch whisky from a carbon-neutral distillery.” Kilo Ziro is also selling spirits in bulk refillable “eco-pouches”.
packaging waste. “Between 2018 and 2021, 500 zerowaste shops appeared in the UK, and we were one of the first five,” Wong says. “Taking that idea into the drinks and
of what we do, which is local sourcing and
hospitality industry can hopefully raise
reducing packaging, so we thought about
awareness that it can be done and be a
what we could do in the space that would
positive change for the environment.”
fit Digbeth. • The award-winning Bodega wine bar and
“The council’s pandemic recovery grant gave us the confidence to diversify the
shop in Christchurch has been sold by its
business and move the contents of the shop
founder after six years of trading. Megan
to Moseley.
Fowler-Spink handed over the keys to Jason Giddings and Dave Burns, owner of the next-
“Bourneville and Moseley are more residential and Digbeth has an established
door-but-one Thomas Tripp pub, on July 2.
social scene around bars and restaurants.
They intend to keep the Bodega name and concept with operational “tweaks”.
“We had always thought about refill
THE WINE MERCHANT july 2022 4
