Independent brewery Ainsty Ales will be launching a new online shop, offering next-day delivery across the country following a recent grant funding win from innovative business support programme, Digital Enterprise. With support from the Make It York business team, the brewery successfully applied for the Digital Enterprise Digital Growth Voucher to develop their website and create a new route to market for their products.
The new online shop which is currently in development will be available on the ainstyales.co.uk website – stocking cans of the popular Ainsty Ales beers for delivery across the UK. York-based agency United by Design will be supporting the brewery with their e-commerce site launch which aims to go live next month.
With the impact of lockdown impacting sales through traditional markets, in addition to the new online shop, over the last three months the brewery have also worked on a number of new initiatives to diversify what they can offer customers. This included new fortnightly free deliveries and a weekly ‘drive-thru’ shop for the local community
“Lockdown has been a tough time for us, as with many businesses, however we’ve tried to use the opportunity to look at ways that we can diversify and find new ways of engaging with our customers. From initiatives such as our community shop and drive-thru, to offering free home delivery – we’ve used this time to look at how we can adapt our ways of working and help our customers – and have found these to be incredibly successful and popular with the local community.
‘The Digital Enterprise Grant which we’ve been successful in applying for, has now given us the opportunity to focus on creating an e-commerce platform to sell our products online – giving us the chance to reach new audiences and offer next-day delivery across the country. It is going to make such a difference to our company to have this online sales platform. Whilst our key focus will still be on continuing to sell to pubs and restaurants as lockdown restrictions ease, we are excited about the new opportunity this gives us to promote Ainsty Ales up and down the country.
“The support from Simon Middleton, Business Growth Manager at Make It York has been truly invaluable over the years and since the coronavirus outbreak hit he has really helped with highlighting funding opportunities and guiding us through the application process for this grant. I’d encourage any businesses like ours who are looking for support to grow their business to get in touch with Simon and the team there to talk through potential options.
A huge thank you also to our customers in the local community who have really supported Ainsty Ales to grow and especially over the last few months during this difficult time.”
Andy Herrington
Founder of Ainsty Ales
The Ainsty Ales taproom has also reopened this week with new health and safety measures in place for customers and staff including a new one-way system and outdoor seating area.
A new ‘Growler Club’ will also be launching at the end of July, offering discounted four pint fills for customers to take home and enjoy. For more information visit http://www.ainstyales.co.uk
