DeskBeers are bringing their beer delivery service to Liverpool, the second city for the venture after London, making beer runs and livening up Friday afternoon for Liverpool companies.
After starting up in London at the end of 2013, DeskBeers has come to Liverpool as the first location in its plans to expand across the country, offering craft beer delivery services.
When they started making London deliveries, the DeskBeers team soon discovered that they were getting regular Friday afternoon order placements of two dozen or more deliveries, taking orders for local craft beers directly to the offices of colleagues for end-of-the-week wind-downs.
Tim Morgan, co-founder of DeskBeers, said:
“I used to work for a design and software agency and we couldn’t get good beer locally, or someone had to go down to the shop, so we decided to start craft beer deliveries for hi-tech and software companies in East London.
“More and more people signed up and now we have national banks and law firms.”
One of DeskBeers’ early adopters, Robin Lycka, originally signed up in August and now both DeskBeers deliveries and staff themselves have become a regular feature in his office:
“One of our team members stumbled upon DeskBeers through a blog and jokingly suggested that we should get beers delivered to our office
“I created a subscription without telling anyone and the first Friday was, of course, received with standing ovations.
“How can you not look forward to that 4pm bell chiming for beer o’clock and the excitement of not knowing what kind of delicious craft beers we’ll be introduced to this time?”
Eddie Bell, of London’s Lyst, also praises the service:
“It gives the team something to look forward to every Friday.
“It brings us together and lets us unwind and socialise.”
DeskBeers decided to expand outside of London after realising that the growing demand for DeskBeers wasn’t just limited to the capital:
“We would get people on Twitter saying, ‘when are you coming to Liverpool?’– we need a demand to serve.”
To sound out the concept, Liverpool saw it’s first delivery to seven firms courtesy of third-party courier service APC, allegedly a very similar fit to DeskBeers’ London client base and generally working in the technology and software sectors.
Tim Morgan says that the venture is “very much of its time”, with workplace attitudes to casual drinking shifting:
“I think it is becoming more common for colleagues to want to have a beer together.
“We also find that customers have had something in place anyway to enjoy a beer together, but now they are getting a better service.”
Currently, DeskBeers is shipping London craft beers to Liverpool from its East London base, but the company envision future opportunities for successful regional microbreweries, giving customers a chance to try local craft beers that they may not have tried:
“We we want the beer people drink in their offices to have been brewed within a five mile radius of wherever they are.
“A member of our team is already looking at local players.”
DeskBeers team is currently five-strong but this will increase as the company develops similar Friday afternoon runs in other UK cities.
Words: Peter Cribley