The sounds of David Bowie belting out Let's Dance bounce off the walls of Swan Street as a man stands atop a white Ute in front of Coles, waving a giant red and white flag.
A few feet to his right, an elderly chap crouches to unlock his shopping trolley from a lamppost as a beaming, bearded man races over: "Do you want some toilet paper? Or hand sanitiser?"
Bemused, trolley now unlocked and stuffed with a giant toilet roll and a bottle of sanitiser, the old chap moves away as behind him a young woman in black face mask hands out cans of Moon Dog Beer Can (and more hand sanitiser) to passers-by.
Welcome to day one of the Cherry Tree Hotel's home delivery service.
Like thousands of businesses across the country, the team at the Cremorne pub have been forced to rethink everything as COVID-19 has spread, culminating in the closure of all pubs, hotels, bars and brewery venues across the country today.
As part of the #keepinglocalalive campaign in support of the local beer community, which launched at the weekend, we're collating the ways in which people are adapting to this new reality and aim to provide daily stories from the frontline to offer ideas, inspiration and, maybe, a little hope.
"People were a little taken aback," Toby Kingsley, Cherry Tree manager and aforementioned beaming, bearded man, says of their launch. "They were asking how much we wanted for it."
The hope is the pub will be able to retain all of their staff through the coming months too. And, if the evidence of today's jape is any guide, put smiles on plenty of people's faces along the way.
"We want to keep our head above water and people off the dole queue," he says. "And add a certain amount of levity as well.
"We also want people to stay at home – there's good reason to. If people are going to the shops, it adds to the exposure, so if we can drop food and drinks at their front door it's better."
Once they'd finished their performance on Swan Street, they returned to the pub to wait for orders to come in before embarking on their first "grog run". It's one that comes with more than just a delivery to your door and a welfare check, too: music blaring; staff dancing down the street; as Toby puts it: "It's us bringing a bit of the pub to them."
They're far from the only businesses offering home delivery whose staff hadn't even considered it as an option a week or two ago (although they might be the only one using a pool cue as a means of handing out toilet paper while respecting social distancing requirements). Venues and breweries are repurposing the staff they can afford to keep as delivery drivers and order packers. Others, like Ladro, have launched drive-up ordering where customers don't need to leave their vehicles to make a collection, and colourful pop-up drive-thrus are appearing underneath roller-doors all over the country.
If anything, it shows just how creative and nimble the industry is, especially when people are scrambling to survive in a world that's changing several times daily. And, in the case of The Cherry Tree, how people are coming together to help each other.
One of the many agencies based near the pub, Icon, jumped on board when they heard about their plans to move to online orders and home deliveries. Within days, they'd built their website for them – on the house, of course.
The pub has a couple of nurses within the team who had been leading training exercises for staff around how to operate amid the pandemic; others had helped fix up the Ute now doing deliveries; and after they created their first batch of hand sanitiser in-house (to the WHO approved recipe), Boatrocker jumped on board to create the next one for them.
Aware of what was coming, The Cherry Tree crew had been discussing contingency plans for a month before the shutdown, with deliveries just one part of it. They're working on a plan to stream their weekly trivia and DJ sets into people's homes, putting together a cooking show teaching people what they can do with limited resources, and considering adding to their delivery offering to include other essential grocery items.
"We've all got to pull together at the moment," Toby says. "It's everyone doing what they can to get through this situation. It's good to be part of something where we're in a unique position to do this.
"We've just got to think laterally. There's no easy answers and I'm learning on the fly every day."
Looking ahead to a return to normality – whatever that will be – he says: "If we can keep the pub going and we can all get through this, I'm going to the happiest I've ever been."
As part of the #keepinglocalalive campaign we hope to run a Postcards from the Edge story every day, highlighting the ways in which people are adapting to survive. If you've got a story you think is suitable – or have something to add to the campaign resources – drop us a line.
James Smith launched The Crafty Pint in 2010, two years after moving to Australia from the UK. He was taken to Mountain Goat within weeks of landing in Melbourne, joined their indoor cricket team, and is still navigating the rabbit hole that is craft beer to this day.
The beers that turned you on to good beer:
- Watching pints of McEwan's 80 Shilling settle when visiting family in Edinburgh.
- Pints of flat Bass from the jug at the Cap & Stocking in Kegworth.
- A first Paulaner Hefeweizen when working in Munich in 1998: “This smells of bananas!”
- Castle Rock Harvest Pale – how could a 3.8 percent ABV beer be so good? (It turns out it was an early example of the three Cs – Cascade, Centennial and Columbus – in an English bitter).
- Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA poured through hops at the Sunset Grill in Cambridge, MA, in the company of a man who turned out to be the Beer Nut (while we were both covering a double murder case at the time).
- Ordering a Mountain Goat Hightail on my first day as an Aussie resident as it was local and I’d never heard of it; “A dark Australian beer; well I never…”
- Murray’s Icon 2IPA at Beer DeLuxe Fed Square, recommended by a guy I’d not long known who's now the main man at Fixation, served by Mik Halse, now head of sales at Hawkers. How could an Australian beer smell as good as that?!?
You've got three beers to turn someone else on to good beer; what are they and why?
- Any really good, fresh and balanced West Coast style IPA. Punchy hop aromatics are the most obvious way to capture someone's attention and these IPAs, done well, present the key components in beer (if you're sticking to just water, malt, hops and yeast) in harmony yet with the volume turned up.
- Saison Dupont. Arguably a selfish choice here as I bloody love the broad saison style and dearly hope it will finally take hold in Australia one day. Given a choice, I'd probably crack one enlivened with Brettanomyces like Molly Rose Matilde for myself but, when it comes to turning on someone new, you've got to go with the classic.
- Rodenbach Caractère Rouge. Because if you don't enjoy or can't appreciate this beer, I'll never win you over. And because Filip, the fruit and wood specialist at Rodenbach that designed it, is a beautiful human.
The last beer you enjoyed:
Fixation IPA at The Incubator.
Three things that represent you:
- The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- Golden Plains
NB All articles written by James in the first eight years of the site appear as By Crafty Pint. Today, that's used for collaborative efforts by the wider team.
