AB InBev has bought online beer subscription service BeerBods, bringing it under its Beer Hawk retail and distribution brand. It has also snapped up a number of assets from collapsed indie retailer The Bottle Shop.
BeerBods revealed this week it had sold to AB InBev “to reach its full potential” and “help build the UK’s leading retailer of craft beer”. Its founder, Matt Lane, will be staying on and its team will remain in place.
“We’ll still be the ones picking the beers. We’ll still be the ones telling the stories behind them. We’ll still be making BeerBods (we’ll be keeping the brand) and our community, with the help of the Beer Hawk team, as good as it can possibly be,” said Lane.
Beer Hawk co-founder Mark Roberts said he was “delighted to welcome Matt and his team into the Beer Hawk family”.
“They are simply the best beer subscription service out there, and have exactly the same passion for beer and ethos as we do.”
Beer Hawk itself was bought by AB InBev in 2016.
The Bottle Shop, meanwhile, has seen some of its assets sold to AB InBev. It crumbled two months ago, brought down by ongoing financial issues spurred on by its ditching by a major supplier, understood to be Beavertown. A rescue deal with BrewDog, which could have prevented an administration, fell through.
AB InBev confirmed it had purchased selected assets from the administrators in “an independently run process, which sought to deliver the most value for each of the assets”, and hired Andrew Morgan, The Bottle Shop owner, to run Beer Hawk (B2B), a new wholesale arm of Beer Hawk.
It is understood hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of stock from The Bottle Shop’s creditors have transferred to AB InBev. Morgan said all proceeds from the stock sale would be redistributed to creditors by the administrators.
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