An expanding Scottish craft beer company has announced plans to open its first venue south of the border, having opened new premises in Manchester’s trendy Northern Quarter.
The Fierce Beer Co. has signed a 20 + year lease on the new bar at Thomas Street, which has already attracted plenty of interest. The owners immediately employed the former tenant’s furloughed bar staff and recruited a further three employees to meet demand.
Situated over two floors and featuring an ‘epic’ outdoor seating area, Fierce Beer Manchester serves the brewery’s own and small-batch beers across 15 taps, beer flights and its own range of craft spirits.
The venue also offers food and, as such, is very much open for business despite the current Tier 3 COVID-19 restrictions in place in Manchester.
Fierce Beer began in 2015 as a homebrew business based in the Aberdeen kitchen of its founders before opening the city’s first microbrewery just 12 months later. In 2018, the craft beer specialists opened its first bar in Scotland’s capital city of Edinburgh.
The growing company is run by ‘recipe masterminds’ managing director Dave Grant and operations director Dave McHardy, who admits being inspired by the rapid rise of fellow Scottish craft beer specialists BrewDog.
Having enjoyed success in Scotland, Fierce Beer is venturing south of the border with its first venue in Manchester, with more bars in the pipeline for key English cities like Newcastle, Leeds and York.
The company’s first property deal in England was supported by legal advice from the real estate team at commercial law firm Muckle LLP.
“We’re delighted with our new Northern Quarter bar. Feedback from customers has been fantastic so far and we’re really excited about the future. Having two bars North of the border, it has always been our intention to expand our operations into England.
While these are challenging times for the hospitality industry, we are looking to the future and hope to continue our expansion. We are already looking for the right premises in Newcastle, as well as other key cities such as Leeds and York.
The culture of craft beer is all about appreciating the diverse range of flavours on offer. It’s about quality over quantity and we’ve had no issues implementing the various safety measures required for COVID-19. We have already invested a lot across our three venues to ensure they are COVID-19 safe, including outdoor seating, flexi-glass screens, clear signage and all the necessary PPE for staff.
It’s an exciting time for Fierce Beer and we’ve come a long way from our early days when the BrewDog team shared their advice and experience with us. It was such a huge help to get our craft beer business off the ground and we’re very proud of the growth we’ve achieved, with ambitious plans for the future.”
(Dave Grant, managing director of Fierce Beer)
Capable of brewing 700,000 litres of beer and exporting to 15 countries worldwide, Fierce Beer also runs an online shop, selling everything from pilsners, hop bombs, fruit beers, barrel-aged stouts, sours and mixed fermentation brews.
As well as craft beers, the company brews its own gin, rum and Scottish Agave (Mexcal). Fierce Beer products are also stocked by leading retailers and supermarkets such as Tesco and Sainsbury, primarily in Scotland although the company hopes to expand into more retailers nationwide as it grows its national footprint.
To find out more about Fierce Brew click here. To find out more about Muckle LLP click here.
