AB InBev, the global brewer, is set to open a brewpub in London’s Shoreditch, MCA has learnt.
The company has acquired The Drunken Monkey site in Shoreditch High Street through its Pioneer Brewing Company arm, which oversees its Goose Island bars and Beer Hawk concepts.
It is thought that the company has lined up the site to open under its Goose Island brewhouse format, which it launched at the end of 2016 in Sao Paolo, Seoul and Shanghai.
It recently rebranded its debut UK Goose Island bar after adapting the format to suit British tastes.
Ken Stout, president of Goose Island International told MCA that having established the format the group was keen to add further UK sites and predicted there would “definitely be more to come”.
Goose Island opened its first site in the UK in the former Be At One Balham site under the name Vintage Ale House at the end of 2016 but has now rebranded it to Goose Island Tap House, which Stout said represented a “pivot” of the concept.
Pioneer is also exploring options to launch Beer Hawk, the online beer retailer it acquired in 2016, through two bricks and mortar formats – as bottle shops and as pubs & bottles hops.
It is currently looking at locations across London and the South East for the A1 and A4 formats. For the pub format the company is looking for 1,500 to 2,500sq ft sites either through traditional pubs or new builds or in railway arches.
Founded in 2012, Beer Hawk has grown to become one of the largest dedicated online craft beer retailers in the UK, with a range of over 800 beers from artisan breweries all over the world.
MCA revealed last June that Pioneer Brewing Company, the craft and speciality beers division of AB InBev, had applied to open the beer shop in the City of London, in Gravel Lane.
Whilst that site is yet to come to fruition, the company subsequently applied to open a Beer Hawk site in Stamford Street, SE1.
Jake Bernstone at Stonebrook London and Oli Cohen at Belchak Corin & Co acted on the Drunken Monkey deal.
