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Peckham Cellars closes online business
Wine bar and shop Peckham Cellars has announced that it will be closing the online side of its business, citing “inflationary pressures”.
Founded in 2019, Peckham Cellars on Queen’s Road branched out into a sister site in Camberwell, Little Cellars, opened on Church Street in September 2023. As an email from the bar revealed yesterday (29 January) that the company would no longer be shipping wines, and that there would be a ‘closing sale’ – however, it reaffirmed that the bricks and mortar locations would continue to trade.
Asked about the challenges of running an online wine business today, co-founder, sommelier and buyer Ben McVeigh-Whitaker told the drinks business that the “curt and simple answer” would be “sales”.
“Mostly though, we couldn’t see a path to growth that didn’t involve big investment in ad and marketing spend – our forays into that side of things just didn’t work, and honestly, it’s not a world we understand so didn’t want to go down that route,” he continued. “We set up online as a response to Covid – it was never in the plan, so this might just be the natural end of it. But there’s also been a lot of things popping up since we started – other set-ups who clearly understand this world better than we do, more investment perhaps, more tech-savvy, the new breed of sites that seem to list everything and hold no stock.”
Looming on the horizon is also the forthcoming change to the UK’s alcohol duty system, announced at the Autumn Budget and due to come into effect this Saturday (1 February). However, McVeigh-Whitaker said that this was “not specifically” responsible for Peckham Cellars’ decision.
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“But,” he added, “taken together with the other measures in the budget, rate relief, the European harvest – I don’t see inflationary pressures easing. My own view is that over the last few years a whole segment of the market has been lost to independent retail. Three years ago there were a whole range of wines we were proud to list under £20 – and you could get world-class, terroir-driven wines, easily under £25. That’s just not the case any more, and when people are looking at paying £25 for something that was £15 in recent memory – I think they switch off and look elsewhere.”
Although Peckham Cellars has ceased online wine sales, McVeigh-Whitaker reassured that the retail side at both bars would be maintained.
“It works well when people try the wines by-the-glass in the bars, fall in love with something new, and leave with a bottle,” he said. “On the whole though, I think people are still willing to buy online, but are usually looking for something specific and seek it out – perhaps without much loyalty as to the retailer they are sourcing from.”
McVeigh-Whitaker also noted that there was a “personal element” to the decision to close online sales and refocus on running Peckham Cellars and Little Cellars.
“We are going to spend more time in the restaurants, which after all is why we set up the business in the first place – working in the bar is way more fun than anonymously packing boxes and dealing with couriers. Plus, our Camberwell site is still just 18 months old – we’ve got some exciting changes coming in the kitchen there in the spring, so a little bit of focus getting that properly embedded this year,” he concluded.
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