I’m really proud of what we have in Crewe as a town. The town centre may be a source of ridicule, anger, frustration and depression but not long after Jacqui and I moved here we had confirmation of why Crewe is one of the best towns in the country. It’s about the people.
That confirmation was the Beechmere fire in 2019. The amount raised over a weekend for folks who’d lost everything proved to me straight away what a brilliant community we have in the town. The pandemic, for sure, has changed behaviours in terms of going out and the financial crisis that followed has made the going out many of us took for granted ridiculously expensive. If you want proof of this just look at the number of deliveroo and just eat drivers on the road on a Friday and a Saturday compared to pubs that are relatively empty on what ought to be their busiest days of the week.
It’s hard to see at the moment but there are some shoots of recovery; we’re starting to see small businesses starting up in the town. I’ve been shouting about The Holy Bun more or less since it opened but, more recently Hong’s, Mighty Burger Club, Big Mugs and Kerala Peppery have all opened in the town. On their own they can’t do much but, collectively, they all contribute a bit of “Indie Vibe” that we all love.
Three years ago we started the Crewe Beer Crawl; six independent bars featuring more than 100 taps of independent craft beer and artisan cider. We’ve not done perhaps as much as we could have done with it and, sadly, one of the bars, Craft Beer Oasis, has fallen by the wayside but Crewe remains a good town to drink beer in. Don’t believe me? Just ask Dale and Holly Harvey of the Great British Pub Crawl.
If you add the bars to the food outlets and the newly opened music venue, The Arena, you can see there are indeed all the aspects required for a decent night out in our town but, sadly, many of our residents only seem to be concerned about when the new Burger King is opening. Which brings me back to the question at the top of this page.
Independents don’t have the economies of scale or the marketing budgets of the multi-nationals which might be one of the reasons why there was a queue 20 cars deep at the BK drive through last week and why relatively fewer are walking up Victoria Street and Market Street. So we have to stick together.
With that in mind we are announcing a partnership deal with Mighty Burger Club in Victoria Street. A few of you might know they sell our beer on draught and some of our customers pop in there on a Saturday afternoon for carby sustenance before arriving at Tom’s for one of our many events.
We thought we would like to encourage that a bit further so, if you go to MBC first, bring your receipt with you and we’ll give you 10% off your drinks bill. It’s only valid on the day so you will need to visit both venues on the same day. Keep an eye on socials (or our emails if you don’t do social media) and let’s do our bit to encourage everyone to keep it local and keep it independent.
All photographs courtesy of Laura Hadland
