When lockdown began, bottle shop owner Rich Salthouse felt ‘sheer fear’. So how did it work out for him and his business?

The big losers from Britain’s extended lockdown have been the nation’s pubs; those shops who’ve been able to deliver to people’s homes, by contrast, are the winners. Supermarkets, delicatessens, wine merchants and off-licenses/bottle shops - these companies, so popular understanding has it, have done well. 

Rich Salthouse, 35, has some insight on this subject, as the co-owner of Salthouse Bottles, a bottle shop, and Joyce, a bar, both situated in Brockley, south London. While Joyce (which opened last year) has been shut throughout, Salthouse Bottles has been busier than ever during lockdown.

The latter, which opened in September 2016, can be found on Coulgate Street, SE4, in a site previously occupied by a French delicatessen. It’s a small space, with floor-to-ceiling windows, a pair of fridges and a wall of bottles. In normal times, anyone walking from Brockley station to catch a bus on Brockley Road is likely to pass the shop. For the past two months, though, all sales have been online. How has it gone?  

“The shop’s turnover is up 75 percent overall,” Salthouse says. “Online sales are now slowing down, though; last week was only 20 per cent up on normal. Mid-April to late May was really consistent, sales-wise. I think people were treating [making an order from Salthouse Bottles] as their post-work pub, or post-work treat. When I think about how much money isn't going into restaurants in Central London... that blows my mind.

“I think it was a combination of [people] having more money in their pocket, and a little bit of a 'sod it, I may as well treat myself’ attitude. And I just don't think anyone really knew what to do with themselves. So they bought things.”

Bottle Shops may not be as significant as pubs in the beer economy, but they’ve become increasingly important for smaller brewers over the past five years. Places like Salthouse Bottles are common in most of Britain’s big cities and towns, and the people who run them - such as Hop, Burns & Black’s Jen Ferguson and Glenn Williams, or Hop Hideout’s Jules Gray - are well-known, and well-respected, in the independent beer world. 

Salthouse, who worked in pubs before 2016, first got wind of what was coming from a friend who works at Imperial College in mid-February. That meant that the business - which hadn’t delivered until now - was well prepared by March 23, when the Prime Minister announced lockdown. The weekend before, shop manager Amber Young built a webshop, with a limited range of products that has grown since. 

The whole model changed. Salthouse Bottles used to open until 9pm in the evening, attracting commuters wandering past. Now the five staff - including Salthouse - work a largely 9-5 routine. Orders are packed in the morning, while Young deals with customer queries, admin and the delivery route for that afternoon. 

Cut-off for same-day orders is noon; Salthouse has recently taken on a driver, who begins at 3pm and typically takes 3 hours to complete deliveries. There’s also a shop counter in front of Joyce, where customers can pick-up pre-orders or a small selection of other drinks and groceries. 

This change may prove to be permanent. Salthouse Bottles has begun to sell more non-alcoholic products since going online: there has always been bread (Sourdough loaves from the Little Bread Pedlar in Bermondsey) but there’s also pastries, salad, coffee & tea now. 

“At one point [at the start of lockdown] we were selling 100-plus loaves of bread a week, as opposed to 70 in a normal week,” Salthouse says. “That’s dropped off: as of last week, we were still ordering 100 plus and not selling them. It dropped off quite quickly. 

“We were getting a lot of orders from people who couldn’t get hold of something - be it bread, or flour, or whatever. So they'd place an order with us and they'd probably get an add-on, say a bottle of wine or a case of lager. It helped us that customers could get essentials from here.” In May, he says, 37 per cent of the shop’s customers were first-timers.

It’s interesting that a shop set up to cater almost exclusively for beer drinkers has moved so firmly in a more general direction. Wine plays a big role now; by £ value, it’s a bigger seller than beer (although, of course, wine tends to be a lot more expensive than beer). During lockdown, bread, as Salthouse says, was the best-seller by £; eggs were second. In terms of beer, Villages, based in nearby Deptford, has sold best, followed by Augustiner.

The shop reopened, with no announcement, last week, for two customers at a time. A tasting station has been removed, there’s sanitiser at the door, and a protective screen around the counter. What’s on the shelves has changed, too. 

“There’s a lot of shelf space given over to food and groceries: we’ve stripped out the beers that weren't turning over fast enough,” Salthouse says. He pays £1250, net of tax, rent per month for the site. “We're definitely going to stick with that and be a bit more of a general store. We're going to add the word Supplies to Salthouse Bottles, just to show that things have shifted. 

“And part of that is the deliveries, too. I think people have realised that it's nice to have stuff delivered from businesses local to you. We've had a good number of customers in Ladywell, and Nunhead, on the edges of New Cross [neighbourhoods that border Brockley]. They’re often people who I recognize [from the shop] when I deliver to them, and now they're ordering every week or two weeks.” 

His main concern is Joyce. So far they’ve been able to cover their rent, but a discussion with the landlords is likely at some stage. “The approach we've taken is to be 'good tenants',” he says. “We're trying to not ask for anything until when we get desperate, or we know more. It's still possible there could be a VAT reduction when things are reopened. It's possible that there might be this rent relief that Jonathan Downey [CEO of London Union] has been talking about. I doubt it, but you never know.

“The grant that we got [from the government] covered a quarter's rent and a few other costs, but those three months have passed already. The next rent payment is going to be a problem. We might have to talk to the landlords.

“When lockdown started, I felt sheer fear, truthfully - but I think I was much more worried about Joyce than I was about the shop. How the fuck are bars going to work? And I still don't know, but I now feel a bit more at ease with waiting and seeing.”