Peterborough’s only bottle shop is celebrating its first birthday in the city with exciting plans to launch a food offer and stage events postponed due to the pandemic.
Opened last April by beer experts Eddie and Gina Baines, Bottle and Board on Wentworth Street brought a new concept to Peterborough selling a range of craft and international brews. The new business started out just as the Covid crisis was mounting, but they’ve adapted and survived and are now ready to bring their dreams to fruition.
Bottle and Board originally intended to offer a food element to compliment their diverse range of beers, providing expert advice on which beers to team with your meal. This part of the business had to be held off with the shop opening going ahead but purely as take-out only, along with a pre order ‘call and collect’ style system. Then in July they were able to start serving on sales for customers who wanted to have a beer while they browsed the beer menu for something to take home.
Now as they celebrate their first anniversary, Eddie told ESP they’re looking forward to picking up their plans – “The shop is still very much a work in progress. In the next few months we will be installing a bank of beer engines for cask beers and launching our food offer. We still have all the plans and ideas for events we made prior to opening and so our intention is to put those into action. We have been in discussions with some of our suppliers about an event in late August.”
Although they did manage to hold a scaled down Oktoberfest a year of events intended for 2020 had to be shelved, but as restrictions ease they’re now finally looking to bring us the full Bottle and Board experience – and if you love sampling something different the diverse range on offer should have something for everyone.
“We have been lucky enough to be able to keep various elements of Bottle and Board open throughout the year,” said Gina, “but we spent an inordinate amount of time last year reacting to the pandemic’s seemingly, ever changing restrictions and updates, rather than focusing on what we do best, and carrying out the second fit out of the shop.
“Peterborough has some great beer based venues in the city centre. Bottle and Board hopes to be able to compliment businesses like The Bumble Inn, The Ostrich, The Stoneworks and Charters without replicating exactly what these unique venues have to offer.
“So far we have had a very positive reaction to what we are doing. A number of people have stated that a bottle shop is something that Peterborough has been missing, which is very encouraging.”
Eddie and Gina are both very knowledgeable about beer, but they are also quite the foodies and another unique aspect of Bottle and Board is their ability to guide you towards just the right beer to compliment your dining – just like you would with wine. Eddie was a brewer and Gina has been a beer judge for the IBC with over twenty-five years’ experience between them in the restaurant and hospitality industry so you’re in safe hands on your beer adventure.
“During the 17 years that we managed Utobeer at London`s Borough Market we dealt with thousands of people from all over the world,” said Eddie. “Many of these people liked to match beer with the food they were preparing and we would help them create beer and food menus.
“Equally some of our customers never gave it a second thought, and simply enjoyed a good beer for what it is! We believe that it is an interesting facet of beer culture and we are more than happy (and able) to talk about this with the increasing number of people that share our view.”
We can’t wait to enjoy the full Bottle and Board experience. For a perfect pint of something unusual pop in to see Eddie and Gina in Wentworth Street or visit their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Bottle-and-Board-337651283092791
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