Indy Retailer Tales - Bernies
Joe Bird
In this small blog series we’re attempting to throw some much needed positive light out toward some of the best indy beer venues we’ve had the pleasure of working with over the last few tough months. Those are few but select and some of the finest around. In their support for us we’re enduring and in our support for them - well, hopefully more of you lot get through their doors. It’s a two way street in this small indy business world and there are some very fine people doing some incredibly fine things out there. Check them out as you can. Without further a do, this week we’ll cast the beam over some oldies who’ve opened a special little store called Bernie’s…
Pumpkins, squash, …reflect the change of the season.
It’s getting cold out pals and it’s late on in the day that we find ourselves outside Bernie’s Grocery store. Pumpkins, squash, and ghosts on windows reflect the change of the season. There’s a reminder to embrace the change. Seasonal produce, at the very least, is afoot.
I’m out with Darcey again - who I assume is happier to be behind the lens for a few hours rather than scouting around in the back office of our webshop - looking at stark analytics - always considering what can be done to creep them up somehow. Send your ideas on a postcard to…
We’re here to escape the dwindling stats for a second and see how our beer meets drinker. These trips are proving cathartic. Yet again this is the case and it sends us up a few floors in the lockdown elevator. One that can feel like it rarely gets out of basement level as of late - Tier 3 appearing to be where they keep the bins and riff-raff. The lift was actually traveling downward all the while in an inverted world where North is down and South on the up. Current fortune it would seem depends on which way your facing. I wonder if this is where the expression ‘shafted’ came from.
I can’t say it’s the first time I’ve been to Bernie’s and I know my wallet is not best pleased I’m back - it’s sensing trouble on the horizon. On entry, there’s black coffee and a Bakewell that we have to try. Beth’s been baking again. This is extremely good news. I’m already back on the line and I full well know it - the immediacy with which you find yourself being reeled in is quite something and thoughts of - just take my money - are prickling again. And we’ve only just floated in from the upstream high street Heatons.
Excuse my French, but since when did grocery stores become so effin dangerous?
Bernie’s has been open a few months or four now. It’s discrete, off the main strip, a lovely little red brick - right in with the leafy residentials, which is fitting as this is just a simple little corner shop affair at the end of your road - for your everyday basics and provisions. Isn’t it? Well, yeah it is.
And it ain’t…
..There is a lot of top-class gear here and each comes with a tale of provenance..
It’s also a glimmering lure to the gastronome (awful word) fishies (more fun) such as myself - shelves offering invitations of shimmering silverwares in clear waters. It’s hard not to get drawn in. It’s hard not to chow down on the hook. There is a lot of top-class gear here and each comes with a tale of provenance and a host happy to spin a fly reel of yarn. Products are like a tractor beam. The shelves a procession of excellence. If you’re into anchovies and I am - that’s where it starts. Suddenly Grandad Bernie strikes with a quick flick of the wrist and you’ve taken the bait.
I am the mackerel.
Not sure where i’m going with this fish analogy.
Bernie’s first impression is that of a minimalist affair but thats all a feint - this air of cool-chic sparsity is the trick because once you hit the shelves it’s anything but. It’s hip, neat and tidy but there’s so much to be frivolous with and the old one-two combo stalks you on your way to the till. You don’t leave here with one item. Or, I don’t anyhow.
You see. Every. Single. Time. I spend more than I sanctioned for.
Afore the entrance this time, I give myself official approval to spend a tenner. It doesn’t work - and that’s just it - right there is the pull of the place. Succinct sourcing and the story to be found behind the goods in Bernie’s is consistently given, with wares from everyday fare to aesthetically, sublimely pleasing trinkets and seductive lifestyle teases, happily symbiotic in the same space. Every item with heritage, there’s often a small producer behind each glass bottle, dainty jar, pleasantly field-muddy-root or wrapped parcel of cheese - and often we forget that - the story of what we eat and drink - and its journey to where it lies - but not here. People grafting are put front and centre of these morsels. These are only items on shelves after all. It takes a host to give animation to the inanimate.
In most places you’ve got seconds to associate the art to the artist - somehow, quickly - through printed label, a squiggle of design, occasionally just a price tag - and is the full hot take really getting through to you? It all comes down to those bare moments of a fleeting gaze across the goods. Except in here, it doesn’t all come down to this. The enthusiasm for the work of others in the fields, at the mashtun, by the oak casks and smokehouse, are offered up with happily proffered repartee and with a tone that is genuine at that. At Bernie’s they want to tell you where its from, who made it, why it’s so freakin delicious. I think it’s a quality only a small indy business can consistently deliver, from someone who buys for themselves first - simply because they want to try it. The shop is their journey of discovery and you’re in for the ride. Bernie’s is a conduit between producer and customer in one sense, its the means to eat and drink well for the owners in another. There’s no better path to truth and satisfied stomach than that.
..William France, pulling the strings and talking the tale of each item he finds. ..
The puppeteer at work here is William France, pulling the strings and talking the tale of each item he finds. He’s both curator and raconteur and he’s very good at it - and so you’d expect if you know his CV.
This is a guy we’ve known for many, many years and Manchester’s beer scene knows him all too well.
We first met Will at Port St Beer House, a place where so many who now fly flags for the modern Manchester beer scene presumably met. Unbeknownst to me that day, he was the OG manager and spearhead of Manchester’s first, I’d fairly confidently say, all-out modern craft beer bar. In the back yard, we had a beer and he had a beer. We were within chat-worthy proximity and that’s generally how these things begin in our game.
Jon and I would have been with Andrew from Wild Beer Co that day and I dare say we may have had a few T-shirts on signaling toward the other beer nerds. We brought some of the first Wild beers in to pass about and it was at a time where a big fresh buzz around the scene was rumbling and we would have just been starting out on our journey with Glassworks and Blackjack. I’d assume this was around 2012ish. That day got quite out of hand as I recall.
From here I might forget a few things - my timeline scatty - but roughly, I recall Will brewing for the sorely missed and excellent Summer Wine, a brewery conjuring beers well before their time. We worked together at The Beagle. We also worked together at the very first Indy Man Beer Con’s where Will was an integral part of it’s first outing - Indy Man arguably becoming one of the best, if not the best Craft Beer Festival in the country from those inaugural days, with Will very much a key player in its inception. From there I would think he went all in as one of only a handful of initial folk in the team behind the now world renowned Cloudwater - part of a Northern Fantasy League team as far as brewery recruitment goes. Highlights from there include working with Kirkstall and Vertical, representing globe spread breweries such as Veltins and other international gems such as Fire Stone Walker, Dry and Bitter and Mikeller. A big move took him to front for Stone as their ambassador in the North and rounding off a career directly working within beer, beginning at Common and the Odd bars, he ended with the glory that was - Hawkshead Brewery.
Having accepted redundancy at a time, that shortly after appears to have been… the right time, let’s say, Will was thrust into the furlough stricken world of grim employment prospect - those early months of 2020 - it was here that Bernie’s was imagined. In a time not to be despaired of, although i’m sure it would be easily done, he’s taken the daring step to make Bernie’s a reality.
Here we are now eating cake.
A career in beer tends to bring you close to food and for Will, it has all quite naturally lead to this. Countless hosted beer dinners and hobnobbing in restaurants will feed pretty well. That was one perk of the job! But there is another hero at Bernie’s that needs further note here - as oft there is - quietly going about their business with the spatula, his partner Beth is some kind of Pastry queen.
Hark at some of the baked goods in there!
In a previous life Beth was a big pastry player in the kitchens of Manchester favourites Pollen Bakery and dazzled with former Altrincham and Mackie Mayor bakers Wolfhouse. I don’t quite know how her shortcrust game is almost flaked like filo but it is. I suggest you find that one out for yourselves.
Given the glut of produce here, this is a perfect space for her to operate with the baking trays. With vegetables, cheeses, wines and beers abundant, Bernie’s allows Beth the chance to turn humble ingredients into pastry cased or sponge textured magnificence - to work with the seasons and make most of outstanding ingredients with a simple walk through the shop - returning to the kitchen with anything ripe for the taking. It’s this partnership that make Bernie’s a truly formidable force.
Pile those credentials up with bread from The Triangle Bakery, coffee from Blossom Roasters, who incidentally provide the blend we steep into our Stroopwafel Stout - throw in Sexy Pies from The Ottomen (They have to be one of the finest Streetfood acts in Manchester!?) some Natty wine and some really nice high elbow, straight bat reds and whites, obviously - outstanding seasonal produce, cured meats, smokehouse treats, bright purple beets… etcetera etcetera etcetera. And even then we haven’t got into the smart lifestyle gear.
For me what is best about Bernie’s is - firstly, that its still growing in strength. I think it’s only just begun. Each week with a little bit of take squirrelled away, a new section goes in, a coffee machine, an outside space gains some tables for a brew, the selection grows. Secondly, is what I believe Bernie’s may come to represent. It has some classy gear, sure - but actually, in between the luxury bits and bobs there is accessibility - as there is meant to be. That’s why we are so happy to have our beer here. It’s not a speciality beer shop, its a grocery store that has some super accessible beer. You can go here and pick up the basics, it’s just that i’ve just not managed it yet. That’s the art of this place - it’s still a standard little grocery store.
What I hope Bernie’s comes to represent is something quite pivotal. I have this inkling that it might, with any luck, be that Bernie’s is a first in a new push to take back the - perhaps not highstreets - but something actually far closer to home. Where independently run grocery stores start reappearing, rather than closing their doors and I’d love to think it could be normal to have a Bernie’s on your corner. A little spot where you can actually buy some smart bread and some local eggs. It could become standard again to have a bit of choice about what we buy and this not seen as some high brow gaff for certain types - just something normal, accessible, like your Tesco locals and what have you. Does it replace the supermarket? No, perhaps it doesn’t and by the way, this piece isn’t outright intended as some supermarket bashing platform by any means. My question is - why can’t we have both? In those residential areas, the burbs and the back streets - can this work? For us - 100% it can.
All i’m sayin’ is : I would absolutely love a Bernie’s by me. I’d love the option! A nice bottle of wine tonight? Yeah. Why can’t I have that? Beer and some veg for tea knowing it’s from a local brewer, a local farm? Why can’t I have that? In time, Bernie’s might represent that becoming a bit more normal.
Do I still dive into Coop and get 2 litre Lucozade and frozen fish fingers - crap bread - the only vehicle for bacon/fish finger sandwiches? Course I do! But I could see a Bernie’s on estates all over Greater Manchester - absolutely. For I would LOVE to have a Bernie’s near me and dare I say it, it would do more than just fine. If the response in the Heatons is anything to go by it will do better than that.
For now, get yourself to Bernies Mk I.
Blackjack beers will be ever present and ever fridge cool and ready to take home at Bernies - check the top two shelves of the fridge for our rotating wares.
By the time of posting, this is may have unfortunately been demolished but Beth has been using our Stroopwafel in their latest chocolate cakes and I can tell you… it’s something else.
To check them out, their opening hours are:
Wednesday - 10 - 5
Thursday - 10 - 5
Friday - 10 - 5
Saturday - 10 - 5
and you can find them at:
3 Hawthorn Grove,
Heaton Moor,
Stockport
SK4 4HZ
