Beer Cartel is shifting its business to be 100% online following its decision to move to a new warehouse location.

While the transition aims support business growth and requires the retailer to close its Artarmon store, Beer Cartel is not ruling out possibility of future stores.

Beer Cartel Co-Founder Richard Kelsey said that the requirement of the new site and licensing restrictions meant having a bricks and mortar store was not possible.

“Our move to the new site just up the road in St. Leonards has been done to realise the efficiencies from bringing our two business units, Beer Cartel and Brewquets, back into one warehouse,” he said.

“During the past three years driven by Covid we’ve seen significant online growth and as a result had to move the Brewquets business into a separate warehouse to keep up with demand. With our lease at our current Reserve Rd (Beer Cartel) site coming to an end we have found a new warehouse which will support the business for the next five to 10 years.”

As part of the shift, it draws to the end having a store tied to Beer Cartel’s warehouse.

“We’d like to say a big thanks to all the customers that have come to support the store from when it first opened
in 2011 to now,” Kelsey said.

“When we first started online sales of alcohol in Australia were small. It was the support of those that came to the store that helped keep us moving forward during the early years.”

While Beer Cartel was based on Sydney’s North Shore, he said they saw people come from as far away as the Blue Mountains and Central Coast.

“There’s been lots of familiar faces and relationships that we’re definitely going to miss, but we’re not going away, we’ll
be look at bringing more of the offline side of the business online,” he noted.

While it is the end of Beer Cartel having a store front connected to the warehouse, Kelsey said it wasn’t the end of their bricks and mortar aspirations.

“We’ll be looking at options for this going forward and see if there are any opportunities to open a store, including partnering with others in the industry,” he said.

The last day of operation of Beer Cartel’s store at its Reserve Rd site will be New Year’s Eve after which it will then be 100% online at http://www.beercartel.com.au.

“We know how much people do enjoy having a good beer while ringing in the new year. We’ve had many great experiences of this ourselves so thought it would be the perfect last day for the store,” said Kelsey.

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