I know a lot of people on here love their ale so thought you might be interested in my new business?

A friend and I are starting an online real ale business where you'll be able to buy real ale direct from small independent breweries. We've got over 130 breweries from up and down the country interested in joining the site which will go live in September.

Not sure if i'm supposed to advertise stuff on the forum but as an introductory offer we're trying to attract subscribers to our "52 week beer club" where you'll receive a different bottle of micro brewery ale for every week of the year (13 bottles delivered every quarter) for just £69.99 including delivery. This price is only available for the first 500 subscribers, after that the price will go up. If anyones interested in joining the club we've set up a micro-site to register subscribers and take details and payments before we lauch the main site in september at mybrewerytap.com

Cheers

do friends get a discount………………. 😉

That is discounted mate! we need the money to help advertise the main site 🙂

This sounds quite good! I might have to subscribe 🙂

website is a bit iffy on firefox…

Who's the guy quaffing the beer on your website home page?
He looks like he's drowning his sorrows with gassy lager due to marital woes or something similar 😉

Make sure you get some Harveys sent out in your boxes. Cheers!

Good luck with your venture and I'm sure the chaps at STW will let you off this once even more so if you pay them in kind. Looking at the deal now as seems a good offer and also like to help people who have the balls to try such things.

Site seems fine for me on Firefox.

Any chance on a list of the breweries unless I'm missing something?

on FF for me I have to scroll right to see the whole page.
Seems to be too big.

how big is that site? tell your designers not everyone runs a 42" plasma widesceen @ 16million by 14 million pixels!

and don't so popups like that, hate them

Ah that be it works ok on mine.

Get some Stonehenge Ales and Hopback on there! You know you want to!

Looks like a great idea, and a very tempting offer to start with! Can you tell us some of the breweries you've signed up so far? I'm trust they'll all be good but I'd be reassured if I could see a few familiar names before ponying up.

Great idea, and a much better fit for STW than that (frankly quite dodgy) Naked Wines site that is incessantly plugged.

My only reservation would be signing up for a subscription deal from a brand new business. How can you reassure us that you'll still be in business by Q3?

Would also be nice to see some brewery names and blurb.

Hello, thanks for the positive feedback, I agree about the size of the site, i'll get him to sort it tomorrow.

I can only give you a provisional list of the initial breweries who got back to us expressing an interest. We have service agreements/contracts out at all of these breweries which are being sent back daily. I can't guarentee all the breweries on the list will sign up, but we're getting only positive feedback so far.

After the site launches and we can show breweries the benefits we're very hopeful it'll build to be a decent comprehensive spread of small commercial UK breweries.

Ill scan some of the promotional flyers tomorrow and put them on this thread so you can see more detail.

Cheers

Interested breweries

BALLARD’S BREWERY LTD
BEER COUNTER LTD
BOWMAN ALES LTD
HEPWORTH & CO BREWERS LTD
HOPDAEMON BREWERY CO LTD
IRVING & CO BREWERS LTD
MEANTIME BREWING COMPANY
RAMSGATE BREWERY LTD
RECTORY ALES LTD
SAMBROOK’S BREWERY LTD
WELTONS LTD
WHITE BREWING COMPANY
BOX STEAM BREWERY
BRANSCOMBE VALE BREWERY LTD
COTLEIGH BREWERY LTD
COUNTRY LIFE BREWERY
DORSET BREWING COMPANY LTD
EXETER BREWERY LTD
FORGE BREWERY
GLASTONBURY ALES
JOLLYBOAT BREWERY (BIDEFORD) LTD
KELTEK BREWERY
PENPONT BREWERY
STONEHENGE ALES LTD
WADWORTH & CO LTD
BRENTWOOD BREWING CO LTD
BUFFY’S BREWERY LTD
RED SQUIRREL BREWERY
SAWBRIDGEWORTH BREWERY
SPECTRUM BREWERY
TRING BREWERY CO LTD
WBC ( NORFOLK ) LTD
BELVOIR BREWERY LTD
BURTON BRIDGE BREWERY
CHURCH END BREWERY LTD
COTSWOLD BREWING CO LTD
HIGHGATE BREWERY LTD
HOWARD TOWN BREWERY LTD
MILESTONE BREWING CO
SLAUGHTERHOUSE BREWERY LTD
SPIRE BREWERY
TOLLGATE BREWERY
WINDSOR CASTLE BREWERY LTD
BATTLEDOWN BREWERY LLP
BEWDLEY BREWERY LTD
BLUE BEAR BREWERY LTD
BRECONSHIRE BREWERY
CONWY BREWERY LTD
GREAT ORME BREWERY LTD
JACOBI BREWING OF CAIO
MAYFIELDS BREWERY
NAILSWORTH BREWERY
PENLON COTTAGE BREWERY
SEVERN VALE BREWING CO
ACORN BREWERY OF BARNSLEY LTD
ALLENDALE BREWING CO LTD
ANGLO DUTCH BREWERY
BREW COMPANY LTD
BRIDESTONES BREWING COMPANY
CUMBRIAN LEGENDARY ALES
DERWENT BREWERY
DURHAM BREWERY LTD
HESKET NEWMARKET BREWERY
HORNBEAM BREWERY
IDLE BREWERY
KELHAM ISLAND BREWERY
KESWICK BREWING CO
LYTHAM BREWERY LTD
LEYDEN BREWERY
NAYLOR’S BREWERY
NORTHERN BREWING LTD
OLD BEAR BREWERY
RUDGATE BREWERY LTD
STATIONHOUSE BREWERY
WHITEHAVEN BREWING CO LTD
WOODLANDS BREWING CO
HEBRIDEAN BREWING
HOUSTON BREWING CO
SULWATH BREWERS LTD
TRAQUAIR HOUSE BREWERY
TRYST BREWERY
THE DARK STAR BREWING COMPANY
ATLANTIC BREWERY
GREENFIELD REAL ALE BREWERY
HAMMERPOT BREWRY LTD
TRADITIONAL SCOTTISH ALES LTD

mmm PenLon beer, my local and very good 🙂

good luck with the venture, any chance of monthly payments for those who can't get £70 together for beer in one hit?

I've subscribed – when is it all likely to start ?

Sorry just curious as £70 is a good sum of money to part with. So you have a list of Breweries there but not of ones that have signed up just interested. Any guarantee on my investment that'll I'll receive 52 bottles of independent Real Ale or will I just get 12 one quarter and then maybe some more some other time or will I just get 52 bottles of crap?

sounds good. Is it a one-off £70 whack, or £17.50 per quarter?

lister – i'll have a look into monthly payments, but you will be able to buy mixed cases of 12 from the site soon after we launch in september, but they will be around £30 including delivery.

scaredypants: thanks thats great, we'll ship 52WBC Subscribers 13 bottles in September/December/March/June

Drac: we have contracts back from 8 of those breweries (they'll only got them sent a week ago) and assurances from 25+ that they're sending the contracts back, the rest are being pushed daily to sign up, im afraid I can't give you any more assurance than my word, you might prefer to wait until the site launches in september before committing to anything? I can't guarentee you'll like every beer you get obviously.

nbt: Its a one off whack i'm afraid, as i mentioned above we're trying to generate some marketing revenue to help us launch the site successully.

even a well known calderdale based mountainbike builder gives discount to friends………………… 😥

Tony – spread the word/get some folk signed up and I'll see what I can do!

Sorry – in response to chakaping: The new business "mybrewerytap.com" is trading under my friend and partner in this's business "Linq Consulting Ltd" which is an IT retail consultancy which has been running since 2004 and has accounts logged as normal with companies house. Im also employed in a successful family business and we do have a small amount of backing to get the business up and running.

Cheers

Tony – spread the word/get some folk signed up and I'll see what I can do!

(FWIW, I signed up at least in part because Ton seems like a good bloke & I've a feeling he might be a decent judge of character)

Cheers Richy yeah sure you can't guarantee I won't like them all that's how it goes. Just was curious of what was going on as it's £70, I'm going to give it some thought and have a look back.

No worries Drac, I'd think we'll try and advertise the site on here/in the magazine once we're up and running so you'll get plenty of reminders!

As promised a couple of promotional flyers we've done outlining what the main site will do when its launched and the 52wbc offer

[img]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3428/3737856705_75bb7467c7_o.jpg[/img]

cheers

Email sent…

The largest number of real ale breweries on one site, is a big claim.

The largest number of real ale breweries on one site, is a big claim.

It is, but we're pretty sure it will be accurate. The site in effect acts as an agent for the breweries so we're not governed by how much stock we can afford/carry. We can potentially sign up an indefinite amount of breweries.

A couple more questions (god, I've been watching too much Dragons Den).

1. Are all the bottles 500ml? Not those fun size ones you sometimes get in selection packs?

2. Who picks the beers? You or the breweries? How do you aim to ensure you don't get the stuff they can't sell?

The bottles will be 500ml size.

We will pick the beers to be a good selection. The vast majority of the breweries who've expressed an interest are small concerns with limited brewing capacity who brew and bottle pretty much to order. They are brewing stuff that sells in order to stay profitable so we'd hope they don't use the site as a dumping ground. If you receive sub standard beer (in some way off, or of unacceptable quality, rather than just not to your taste) we'd take it up with the brewery concerned on a case by case basis, and its likely that replacements would be shipped (this is in the terms & conditions that the breweries are agreeing to).

Another question…

Why does a brand called My Brewery Tap have hops for the logo? Surely it should have a Tap.

😉

A brewery tap isn't actually a tap though is it, its a metaphorical "tap" ie, an outlet for a breweries product. 🙂

I was assuming he meant 'tap' as in tap and spile – the things used for breaking open a cask…

But if not, then fair enough 🙂

Surely a viral email with a 10% discount or the like would be a decent starting point and would cost bugger all to engineer. Facebook and other social networking sites are also available. Marketing doesn't always need to cost too much cash 🙂

HAve you thought about adding Polypins and minipins?

18 pints or 36 pints delivered next day to your door.

If you can hook up breweries who produce under or near the small beer cut off they can sell them for £1.75 / pint delivered , and you take an admin cut . So you take an email'd order , forward it to the brewer , who dispatches it direct to punter.

There is no one in the UK who can offer a worldwide export service for bottled ales, for the majority of UK micr brewers. So if for example i was a Russian importer who wanted a mixed pallet of 75 cases of Uk specialities I would not know where to go .

If you want some inside knowledge feel free to ask

will it be bottle conditioned beer richy?

toby1 – good ideas, all stuff we want to do

singletrackmind – you've more or less just explained the main business model! That's how it works, the breweries have their own free child site and have control over their products, pricing, stock. We run the parent showcase, mixed cases, subscriptions, marketing, payment and delivery in exchage for a % of everything sold. Are you in the trade?

Chunkypaul – it'll depend on the different breweries I think there'll be a mixture of bright and bottle conditioned.

Just thought i'd bump this thread for people who didn't see it first time round and give you a bit of an update.

The site is about 2 weeks away from launch. We have loads of positive interest from breweries but it's proved slightly harder than we thought to get them to send contracts back/send details of products, as many of them are flat out brewing/coping with summer demand.

It looks like we'll have somewhere between 20 and 50 breweries products on the site from launch which will quickly grow once breweries can see the site and the benefits to them.

The £69.99 introductory offer price for 52 bottles is still available so if anyone wants to sign up they can do at the temporary microsite here.. mybrewerytap.com

cheers