Firstly, we want to thank everyone that has supported us through these difficult times. We have greatly enjoyed operating our biweekly delivery service and continuing to find new beers for you to enjoy. Whilst we could have simply shut down for the duration, we wanted to continue to support our loyal customers and provide great real ale for the people of East Grinstead and the outlying villages. It’s been great meeting you all and finding out where you live! It has also provided a great opportunity to get out during this period of lockdown, especially for Lisa who has been deskbound working from home!
As the country starts to come out of lockdown we are starting to think about how The Engine Room can begin to come back to normality. There is a rumour that pubs might start to re-open on 4th July but this will obviously depend on their ability to comply with social distancing, also we have yet to see any government guidlines for pubs.
As a first step, we are planning to re-introduce a takeaway service. The plan is to do this in the week that the shops re-open, currently scheduled for w/c 15th June. We are eternally grateful to all of you that have supported us over the past two months in using our delivery service and we are pleased that we have been able to offer both draft beers and ciders at just £3 a pint. This has covered our day-to-day running costs but won’t cover other overheads such as rent and staff, as we go forward. As we begin to return to “normality” we need to start to return to a normal business model and standard pricing, so prices for beers and ciders will return to their previous levels and reflect the price that we pay to the increasing number of breweries that are gradually returning to production. We will, however, return to the 10% discount that we previoulsy offered for takeout and this will also apply to deliveries, albeit with a £1 delivery charge.
We hope that you understand our reasons for doing this and will continue to support us going forward. Currently, the likelihood of us re-opening in the near future is looking slim, but we are considering our options. As pubs re-open it is unlikely that there will anymore support from the Government so we will have to generate revenue where we can.
We look forward to seeing you all in the coming weeks, either on our delivery round, at our takeaway bar or, who knows, inside!
Take care, stay alert, keep drinking!
