Dead Centre Brewery – virtual shopping centre

As businesses remain shuttered owing to Covid-19 restrictions, hundreds of producers and store owners have moved their offerings online, many for the first time.

Help is available to make the switch, which can be a daunting move.

Dead Centre Brewing is a craft microbrewery and eatery on the banks of the River Shannon in Athlone.

Having been awarded the title of Most Innovative Pub in the North East Region at the Irish Pub Awards last November, it was looking forward to a successful 2020 until, like thousands of other businesses across the country, it was faced with sudden closure as the Covid-19 pandemic took hold.

“Craft breweries are feeling the pinch of Covid-19 really strongly,” Liam Tutty, founder of Dead Centre Brewing said.

“The pubs, their main route to market, are now closed and as people are being encouraged to stay at home, buying at off licences is less of an option.”

Living up to its billing as an innovator, Dead Centre didn’t waste time in coming up with a way to sell its produce.

Liam Tutty joined forces with a group of fellow brewers and established an online store, beercloud.ie.

Now consumers can go onto the platform, order their favourite craft brews and have it delivered to their homes within a day or two. The hub has opened to other small brewers with names such as Black Donkey, St Mel’s, Wide Street, 12 Acres and Ballykilcavcan coming on board and new names are being added all the time.

Craft brewing is a small market here accounting for just 2% of the beer market in Ireland, but, as Liam Tutty explains, it accounts for about 70% of employment in the beer industry.

“It’s important to us to do everything we can to safeguard those jobs and to keep those breweries afloat.”

It’s just one example of an industry that’s turning to the online market place, not just to sell goods, but to keep their brand relevant and active as the economy enters an uncertain period.

While beercloud is a niche example, many other companies are coming together under different guises as the shift to online commerce accelerates at a rate perhaps never seen before, certainly for small enterprises.

Virtual shopping centre

One port of call for many is the Doorstep Market, effectively an online shopping centre where small Irish businesses with no previous e-commerce presence have congregated in recent days to get their goods onto the virtual shop floor while traditional bricks and mortar outlets are shuttered.

The idea was conceived by Grace Tallon, Director of Newpark Music Centre, and Joe O’Connor, an official with the union, Forsa. The site was constructed over the past two weeks with the assistance of a group of volunteers who put together the bones of the operation. It now boasts over 150 outlets selling everything from goat’s milk yoghurt to pet treats.

“It’s a free e-commerce platform where Irish businesses can get online and start trading quickly and easily,” Grace Tallon explained.

“Businesses can also use the site to collaborate on offers and deliveries. And people can go there to support local and buy Irish.”