I had the pleasure of creating The BottleShop which started with two shelves of beer in Canterbury, Kent in 2010. Back then, London had just seen its two first ‘craft beer’ bars open with The Euston Tap and Craft Beer Company. I’d filmed the 13 breweries that were part of the newly formed London Brewers Alliance and knew the world needed more than the beers available from pubs and supermarkets.

You can see the film by clicking HERE:

The BottleShop went on to open in Bermondsey, Margate and Newcastle. We imported the most amazing beer from around the world and pushed the boundaries of what beer could be to our customers. Refrigerated distribution was a big part of our lives and we crowdfunded over £300k to convert our warehouse into a 3 degree chilled paradise for our beer.

Sadly, we lost two major suppliers in Beavertown and Mikkeller who were both with us from the start and never recovered from the hole it left in the business. 2019 saw BrewDog and ABI enter a bidding war for The BottleShop and ABI won. They turned The BottleShop into Beer Hawk FRESH and I had a great time running the business within the ZX Ventures side of ABI until Lockdowns killed the on-trade and everything got shut down.

Since then, I’ve worked for Master of Malt as their Beer Specialist, been the Commercial Director for E1 Brewing Company and am now doing a few jobs including being the Sales & Marketing Director for the Eustis Brewery Project in Florida and Black Forest Beers (who import Rothaus) in the UK.

2022 also saw me branch-out into some TV work as I realised that my experience as someone who had been part of the craft beer wave, scaled a business to £4m turnover and sold it to the world’s largest brewery gave me some credibility. Ideal World signed me up and I’ve been selling coffee machines, Virgin Wines, Hard Rock Cocktails and other bits on-air.

I also happen to be a part time Supercar instructor for Everyman and tied them together with Ideal World to sell packages on-air. We did a couple of days filming at the Top Gear track for some on-air promos which was great fun and they came out pretty well: