THE DISTILLERY

So we now have some product but no licence to sell it... It clearly represents a problem. We'd inadvertently set ourselves a timeline of when we needed the licence by which created a huge amount of pressure. We started the licence process which seemed overwhelmingly long and complicated, and at the same time started looking for warehouses.

We started with lofty expectations but clearly found that much was out of our price range and we were sorting by "low to high" on realestate.com in no time. We landed on a spot in Bayswater, it was small, pretty run down but would do.  We didn't want to secure the space yet though as it was all dependent on the licence and was it going to be suitable? We took too long, subsequently lost the opportunity, and were back at square one.

We started learning more and more about what we were going to need to satisfy the licence requirements and became more confident that we'd be able to make it work. Albeit still very blind to the whole situation.  We then had a fortuitous phone call from the real estate agent advising that the warehouse next door to the original one we lost was up for lease. It was close to the exact same layout and we pounced on it. What we didn't know though was that the current tenant hadn't left and were about to be kicked out for not paying months worth of rent. This filled us with some anxiety as we were unsure if this guy was going to come back and trash the place to spite us/the agent, we were a little concerned... 

This luckily never happened but it did take numerous attempts and weeks to clear the place out so that we could move in. Numerous hiccups lead to the agent having to hire their own removalist service to clean out the space and move it all to the tip. It was a car wreckers storage space so as you can imagine there was a lot of shit in there.  Once this was done we started cleaning the place up and sorting out equipment. We painted the walls more or less just to make it look cool and then had a food inspector come through, this really opened our eyes as to the task we now had on our hands.

There was a lot of work required to be done! We painted the walls as mentioned, sealed the floor, plumbed in sinks & hot water, replaced all of the lighting, put a whole new roof on (prior to the lighting...), installed a security system, replaced the locks, replaced the door and it's security barriers, replaced the switch board, installed 3 phase power, then winter came and we found that we had significant holes in the roof which we also had to fix prior to our new ceiling caving in, the list goes on.

We had to fit out the whole place, source plans for the building, they didn't exist so we called in building surveyors, get council approval for all the works we've done, ensure they were happy with the electrical and plumbing installations, work out a work flow, set up food safe areas, figure out where smoke-o was going to be and most importantly set up the beer fridge. It's been a huge task which keeps on evolving and changing day-to-day but we've got it pretty well locked down now.

We called on so many family friends and favours which it wouldn't have been possible without. We one day want to open it up to the public so we can share all our hard work plus also the drinks. It's a humble warehouse that isn't as pretty as the big guys but it's ours, we've put a lot of late nights and weekends into it and we're very proud if it. It's a home away from home but most of all enables us to pursue our dream of bringing a world class drinking experience to you, and at a good price.

We look forward to having you down there soon!