Booths - we're there!

It's a tough choice for a brewer to decide to put his beers into a supermarket. There is always the question about cheapening the brand, for a start. Equally, the question about supporting pubs. One of the things that can be a great selling point for pubs are beers that cannot be found in supermarkets.

And so, it was with some trepidation that we decided to explore listings in some of the better outlets. On balance, the increase in volume sales, that will in time give us the business comfort to enable us to make more of the type of beer we want to make, like our experimental Rhetoric range and our ever more famous Vitesse Noir, is a strong incentive. Extra revenue will help us to invest in ever more advanced brewing plant so we can have more flexibility in what we make.

One of the supermarkets we approached was Booths. We've been successful in getting our beers into the Cumbrian branches. We like them because they have a strong local theme coupled with a great outlook towards quality. It's not a pile-them-high-sell-them-cheap outlet, although obviously they do a little bit of the old 4 bottles for a fiver type of thing, (actually it's 6 pounds) although currently our beers don't feature in that sort of promotion.

Anyway, I think they look great on the shelf, appropriately priced. Yes it's a tiny bit less expensive than buying the same beer in the pub, but then that's what you would expect. I feel confident that this isn't an example of "selling out" and I'm really pleased with the way they look on the shelf. We are hopeful that we will in time get into most of their other branches too, although that will depend on sales volumes. So, if you want to see our beers more widely available, buy them next time you are in a Cumbrian branch of Booths.