Postcards from the Edge

The Keeping Local Alive campaign was sparked by an article of the same name addressing the mounting challenges faced by the beer industry in the week before the nationwide lockdown.

Since then, The Crafty Pint has run a series of articles from the frontline of the COVID-19 crisis in the local beer community under the Postcards from the Edge banner. A mix of inspirational innovations, personal tales and the challenges businesses and individuals are facing, it sits alongside the photo stories running on the #keepinglocalalive Facebook page and The Crafty Pint's Instagram as a document of this remarkable period in history – both for the local beer world and the world at large.

You can find all the stories below – and get in touch if you have a story you think should be there.

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The Big Issue: Coping With COVID-19 Part I

August 10, 2020 by Mick Wust

Many of us face mental health challenges at the best of times. With the COVID-19 pandemic severely impacting the beer and hospo industries, we look at the difficulties people are facing and the support they can seek.

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Postcards from the Edge No.24: Grain Re-Store-d

May 2, 2020 by Will Ziebell

After a short break to take stock, the Grain Store team leapt back into action last month as a takeaway and home delivery service. They've even reimagined their legendary beergustations for Novocastrians to enjoy at home.

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Postcards from the Edge No.29: Back To The Bar

May 16, 2020 by Jakkii Musgrave

This weekend has seen venues in some states open for small number of patrons. Jakkii Musgrave was back at Bloodhound Bar – the last venue she'd visited before the lockdown – for its first sitting.

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Postcards from the Edge No.35: Keeping Local Alive Alive

June 2, 2020 by Will Ziebell

The Keeping Local Alive campaign has been embraced by the beer community as businesses navigate unprecedented times. Some brewers have even put it on their cans, including Boatrocker with their new fundraising Local Lager.

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Postcards from the Edge No.54: So Long, Farewell...

September 30, 2020 by James Smith

Among the thousands of Aussies stranded overseas are Ben and Maria Kraus and their kids. A planned year long stay has been extended by flight cancellations, so Ben is now helping commission a new brewery in Innsbruck.

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Postcards from the Edge No.10: Can Together

April 2, 2020 by James Smith

The craft beer industry has always been one fired by the spirit of collaboration, something which has come to the fore during the COVID-19 crisis. We spoke to two brewers helping get their peers beers into punters' hands.

Take Care

These are difficult times for employees and business owners across the industry. Look after each other. 

For more information or support surrounding mental health issues, you can contact:

* Beyond Blue on 1300 22 46 36

* Lifeline on 13 11 14 

* Movember Conversations is a new, interactive tool from the Movember mental health team 

Thanks to Lallemand Brewing and Boatrocker for their assistance funding the campaign.

Beer people are good people. This is something you can count on. We've brought together a troupe of some of the best local beer professionals to help you. They're specialists in their fields and have volunteered their time to sit with you 1-1 to provide advice, guidance, ideas or just to be a friendly ear through these uncharted times. 

We'll be adding more over time. If you'd like to volunteer your services, get in touch.

HOW IT WORKS: The sessions are each made up of a half hour phone call. To book, click the book now button, select an available time and date that suits you, plug in your details and that's it! You can get reminders via text and/or email plus add it to you calendar. 

Specialist Sessions

Jo Doye - Finance Wiz

Jo Doye is the Director of award-winning bookkeeping & business advisory firm, Alluvia Financial and all round-finance whiz. She is a passion-based expert in her field who is dedicated to helping business owners discover their richness. This self-confessed beer nerd, perpetual traveller and sports-mad woman is a humble powerhouse committed to making finance understandable and fun for her clients.

Book a session

Alister Robbie - Video and Digital Media

Alister is a film maker based in Melbourne who, through his Video Production company The Post Project has specialised in creating content for the craft beer community. Over the last 10 years, The Post Project has created content with 50 or more breweries across Australia and New Zealand. Can often be found hiding amongst the barrels in some barrel aged beer project.

Book a session

Steve 'Hendo' Henderson - Brewery Operations & Consulting

Hendo is the founder of Rockstar Brewer; a brewery operations coaching and consulting firm. He teaches brewers how to grow their Brand Loyalty through Quality, Performance and Passion in brewing. His award winning career has included many stints at Prickly Moses, Southern Bay Brewing, and Stone and Wood, as well as running his own BrewCult label from 2013 to 2017. He has also confidentially advised a number of breweries on process improvement and recipe development.

Book a session

Tiffany Waldron - Marketing & Events

A Certified Cicerone® focused on making changes in the world of beer through education and sharing passions. Working in various roles throughout the industry with a focus on beer education and furthering beer culture beyond its standard boundaries through events and activations, industry beer knowledge and brand training with customers and consumers, and connecting the world with craft beer. She has more than a decade of experience in the Australian beer industry - ranging from owning a craft beer bar to event creation, building a beer education program and marketing for a global beer review site.

Book a session

Jessie Jungalwalla - Brand and design specialist

Jessie runs brand development agency 'Craft Instinct' which specialises in the craft beer industry. The craft beverage industry has unique needs, challenges and opportunities; Craft Instinct was specifically designed to service these. Jessie has a wealth of design and branding experience, knowledge of product, understanding of brewery/distillery business operations and a deep passion for craft beer & spirits.

Book a session

Mariella Mejia - Digital Marketing & E-commerce

A digital marketing tragic since way back, Mariella's worked across three continents in digital. Her true love is helping small businesses grow and to date she has a 7 x average return on investment for her clients. She's worked with, sold, promoted, drank and marketed wine, beer, spirits and even Kombucha (true story)

Book a session

Ron Jungalwalla - Business and Leadership Coach

Over the years Ron has been engaged on coaching assignments to numerous CEOs, MDs and GMs as well as a number of senior executive Teams. He has also designed and facilitated leadership and team development for a wide range of private and government sector organisations, spanning all fields of industry as well as “not for profits”, and across the Asia Pacific Region from India through to New Zealand, and in the USA.

Book a session

Is your business impacted and you're struggling to work out how to adapt to your new circumstances? Or perhaps you've managed to temporarily change your business model and have ideas to share with others.

Here's where we'll try to enable businesses and individuals help each other out through the COVID-19 crisis. If you've got any questions or can offer assistance to others in any way, drop us a line.

We've also created a Facebook group for anyone in the industry who's keen to share ideas and pose questions. 

Ideas

Looking to adapt but not sure how. Here we'll list examples of how businesses have made changes to their models.

Ladro & Ladro TAP

They've launched takeaways with both PICK-UP and DRIVE-UP options via their website to an online ordering platform, Hungry Hungry. It means they don't have to pay the 35 percent commission delivery services charge and it's far more hygienic because they sanitise rigorously and run the orders out to your car. 

The customer can choose PICK-UP or DRIVE-UP. If they enter DRIVE-UP, it'll ask for rego number and car colour. At Fitzroy staff can see you arrive and dispatch. In Prahran, you have to dial their number as they can't see cars arrive.

For more on their COVID-19 response, head here.

Kegs Into Cans

With venues and taprooms closed, there's a lot of beer in kegs that brewers would like to get into drinkers' hands. East Coast Canning have the ability to package from kegs, so they're going to the industry with the concept as a way of helping save some losses.

In addition, they're repurposing their vans as home delivery vehicles for customers free of charge once the machinery is up and running for the day and the vans are empty. Get in touch with Shane to find out more.

Setting Up Online Stores

Case Study 1: Molly Rose

In a few days, Nic Sandery from Molly Rose set up an online store to help him get his beer to drinkers. We asked him how he did it. 

What platform did you use?

I already have a Squarespace website so I use their e-commerce platform and stripe to do the money

Did you have to get a developer to help you or did you do it yourself?
I have a few mates who offer tips and help out every now and then with the website but I put the shop together myself 

How did you work out postage?

I figured the average postage would be $20 so I am charging $15 and coping a $5 hit but I am doing free delivery around the brewery though. 

I am using Aus Post as I have had bad experiences with couriers (they can aweseome too) and I don't want to lose stock.

Any other pointers other breweries may find helpful?

Wash your hands. Ask mates/cousins/locals for help if you can't do it or you get stuck. Everyone wants to help small business right now and it could save you hours.

Case Study 2: Otter's Promise

Melbourne bottleshop Otter's Promise quickly set up their own webstore using Shopify, a service that has new offers for businesses in response to COVID-19. 

Here's owner Dan Taranto on how he set his up:

We used Shopify. It’s super easy to use and we now use it for our website too; we only created the site on Thursday (March 19) and we’re nearly at $1,000 in sales (as of March 23).

We went flat rate shipping for $10 which cost us about $5 per order and an option for free delivery. Being new and small to it means you can’t get cheap shipping. 

We’ve actually delivered most of our orders ourselves so far. We haven’t really had that many deliveries. We’ve also made our store full of packs rather than single beers to make sure the sales we do get are decent. We only ship to Victoria too.

Supporting Venues

Stone & Wood and sibling business Square Keg have offered credit to venues holding full and unopened kegs of their beers.  Venues seeking more information or credit for their full unopened kegs are encouraged to contact orders@stoneandwood.com.au or (02) 6685 5173.

On the decision, Stone & Wood's boss Nick Boots said:  “Our trade partners and drinkers expect fresh beer, so although we’re unlikely to reuse any returned kegs, we hope by crediting returned kegs we’ll be able to deliver fresh Stone & Wood beers using these credits when the current restrictions are lifted.”

Sanitiser Sales Pivot

Some breweries have switched their focus to making hand sanitiser to bolster their production and provide relief for frontline healthcare workers. We've written about some of them as part of our Postcards From The Edge series.

The federal government has even relaxed the regulation of sanitiser, allowing the product to be made and sold without the approval of the Therapeutic Goods Administration provided recipes developed by the World Health Organisations are followed. 

If you're a business looking to create your own, WHO has a recipe available here.

Get Involved

There are various campaigns and petitions being launched in support of the wider hospo industry and staff. We'll look to collate them here:

• A national campaign – Keep Our Venues Alive – has been calling on support for the hospitality, culture and recreational sector.
• Hospo Voice have launched a campaign demanding a living wage for those who have lost their job and where workers can share their stories. 
• Another campaign is calling on delivery services such as Uber Eats, Deliveroo, Menulog and DoorDash to cut the fees they charge to businesses. You can sign that petition here.
• The people behind the Happiest Hour app are doing their bit #keepinglocalalive. Instead of telling you which venues have special deals, they're now providing listings of those offering takeaway and home deliveries. Check it out here.

Resources for affected businesses

Different levels of government and a number of banks have began announcing financial measures for businesses impacted by the current climate. We'll update this list as new ones come in. Feel free to send us updates missing from this list.

• Details of the Federal Government's economic response to COVID-19, including the JopKeeper payments and relief for financially distressed businesses, can be found here.
• The team at Worksmith have set up this excellent resource for hospitality businesses.
• The Independent Brewers Association has a list of resources for its members available here.
• Australian banks will defer loan repayments for small businesses affected by COVID-19 for six months. Read more here. 
• Victorian businesses affected by coronavirus can head here for guidelines and details of state government support and find out about changes to liquor licensing here. 
• Business support for NSW businesses is available here and liquor license changes are here.
• The City of Sydney has a wide range of support grants for small businesses.
• Queensland businesses can find out more about government support and dealing with coronavirus here with hospitality-specific support here. Takeaway alcohol sales have been expanded in the state too.
• Businesses in Western Australia can find business advice here and regulations around liquor sales here. 
• Financial support details from the South Australian government can be found here. 
• In ACT, licensees who hold an active on liquor licence can now apply for a Commercial Liquor Permit that will allow on Licensees to sell liquor in closed containers for consumption off the licensed premises. If you wish to apply, please send a request via email to ACLiquor@act.gov.au. The ACT government is also waiving payroll tax for six months, with details here.
• Details of Tasmania's support package for businesses are available here.

If you've got or seen anything you think we should be including here, drop us a line.

Want to show your support for the local beer community? We've created a series of assets free for anyone to use online or put in their venues an encouraging people to share photos on social media as they enjoy a local beer with the message #keepinglocalalive.

NB If you wish to incorporate the campaign message or assets in your own campaign or event, please get in touch so we can ensure consistency of message. Cheers!

The future of local beer – it's in your hands.

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BEER SWAG DAY ASSETS

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For the background to this campaign, check out this story.

Want to know more about the #keepinglocalalive campaign? Are you doing something we should know about? Does your business need adding to the Support Your Local page?

Then drop us a line!