Best Supermarket for Craft Beer?

If you have been following Hardknott for any length of time you'll know we've had great success with our beers into Morrisons. Certainly most of the supermarkets are now realising they need to add some craft beer to their line-up. Morrisons have certainly upped their game and are pushing to have better beers. We are part of that push.

Nothing can ever stay the same. We started with three beers in Morrisons, Azimuth, obviously, as our staple, Infra Red, which is a bit of a darling for us, and Code Black, which if I were honest is a bit extreme in the favour profile for most people.

Code Black didn't make the sales needed to justify the shelf space. It's a fairly hard costing issue. Shelf space costs the retailer money. Turnover per shelf metre is a key indicator of performance. Not surprisingly Code Black got the chop quite early. A shame, but hardly surprising given a microsecond of thought.

A year into supplying Morrisons and they are keeping things very live, as are we. It's fun to produce something new and it really excites me to get that new thing out there to the great craft beer fans. Last year we launched Intergalactic Space Hopper at Craft Beer Rising in Glasgow. It was well received and we supported it in our own way with a very daft video, where I make quite certain that no one is going to accuse me of not putting my own reputation on the line for the purposes of getting us noticed.


Intergalactic Space Hopper from Hardknott Brewery on Vimeo.

Looking at the total craft beer range the beer buyer decided that Infra Red perhaps hasn't done quite as well as they would like and we should try some thing else in it's place. He noticed Intergalactic Space Hopper had been making a few waves and asked if we'd like to consider supplying that instead of Infra Red. To be fair, I guess Morrisons probably listed it despite my crazy video antics, or for that matter any other imagery that might have originated from the Hardknott PR clunky machinery. Whichever, we're just pleased we can once again get much more of our great craft beer out to very many more people.

Apparently it is going live today, although twitter tells me it's been on the shelves for a few days already in some stores. Out goes Infra Red, in with Intergalactic Space Hopper, and early indications are that it is doing well.

Looking at Twitter I'm seeing some people finding Hardknott in Morrisons and declaring them the best supermarket for craft beer. I don't know if this is fair, or entirely due to Hardknott, but I'm going to claim it anyway, as outrageous and potentially inaccurate declarations are by and far the most successful ways of getting one's name better respected.

So, get sown to Morriosns and buy some stunning craft beer from Hardknott.

Enjoy.