Leading speciality beer importer crowdfunding to open 3,000 sq ft taproom, bottleshop and blendery in Hackney Wick.
Cave Direct are proud to announce that in January we’ll open our first pub, the Beer Merchants Tap, in Hackney Wick. To help fund the project we’re running a Crowdfunding that offers people £2 to spend in the Tap for every £1 they invest.
Fifteen years after closing our tiny bottleshop in southwest London to focus on distribution, we’ll open the doors of an old book store right by Hackney Wick station. The 3,000 sq ft site will be an industrial but comfortable space with a large beer garden, encompassing a taproom, bottleshop and Belgian sour blendery. The pub side of the site will be dedicated to the best beer around the world, with over 20 keg lines and cask, bringing in our core portfolio of Paulaner and Kona as well as rotational lines from our incredible Belgian, British, Norwegian and American range.
The Tap will also work as a physical extension of our online shop, Beer Merchants, allowing customers to pick up online orders free of charge and buy beer to drink in or takeaway. We’ll have over 700 different beers available in the fridges, as well as a bottle-ageing project hidden away for schedule releases. Finally, over the next few years we’ll be starting a barrelageing and blending project, taking spontaneous beer from the UK and abroad, then ageing it ourselves to create Belgian-influenced sour beers, available only from the Tap.
The site will also work as a school of excellence in beer serving and cellarmanship, and we’ll be offering training to our Cave Direct trade customers in both sommelier skills and cellar management. It will also provide a venue for trade meetings and tastings so customers have even better access to the incredible beers we import.
Managing Director, Colin Gilhespy, says: “My dad founded Cave Direct back in 1979 and when I joined my first job was setting up our little bottleshop in south-east London. Since that closed, opening our own taproom is something we’ve always wanted to do. The Tap allows us to create a wonderful place for beer lovers to try the hundreds of incredible beers we bring in, as well as a centre of excellence to help our customers look after their beer and make sure their own sites excel.” The crowdfunding, which launches today, aims to raise at least £50,000 to go towards fitting out the building. Members can pledge between £50 and £1,000, and in return will get double that on a gift card to spend in the pub as well as 5% off at BeerMerchants.com for life. The more we raise the less we will have rely on the banks to fund the project, but the pub will open whatever total we hit”
The Crowdfunder page can be found here: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/opening-the-beermerchants-tap
For more details contact Jonny Garrett on 07766015541 or jonny@cavedirect.com