Celebrating the rise of one of London’s leading beverage destinations
Over the past 18 months Leather Lane has quietly become one of London’s leading beverage destinations. The area has long been well served with whisky specialists The Scotch Malt Whisky Society (SMWS) and the wine-loving restaurateurs of the Bleeding Heart Restaurants; however, the arrival of Department of Coffee and Social Affairs and The Craft Beer Co. now means that some of London’s best places to sample whisky, wine, beer and coffee are all a stone’s throw away from each other.
A Taste of Leather Lane
I’ve long been amazed that our Leather Lane had little or no knowledge of the SMWS (which is tucked away in Bleeding Heart Yard), let alone The Craft Beer Co. (which is on Leather Lane), despite being quality beverage consumers.
It’s taken much of the past year and quite a few rounds of coffee, whisky, beer and wine, to assemble the owners and managers of these four establishments. However, once together we quickly discovered a common passion for quality, independent producers of fine beverages and a combined set of tasting palates that would make most drinks juries shake.
The idea driving the tasting day was two-fold. Firstly, we wanted to give each of our customers a ready introduction to the other beverage business in borough. Secondly, we wanted to best the diversity of flavour that each of our drinks can possess.
Since it is difficult for the average person to grapple with the specific flavours of a sample, we each turned on a wide variety of our respective drinks to raise the curiosity of our customers.
It worked. Over the past weeks it’s been great to see more and more our existing and new customers throw themselves into range of Feature Coffees that Department of Coffee and Social Affairs has each week. The tasting day has helped provide momentum for our customer base to make a step change from providing immediate, emotive reactions to considering their coffee in a more meaningful way.
The day also taught us a lot about what our customers want and expect. In particularly we learnt to better meet people where they are at rather than dominate them with our knowledge and vocab. We’ll be continuing to work to raise the flavour awareness of existing and new customers in all our shops, and there’s a clear appetite for further taste events in the lane. In the meantime, I suggest you make a day of it and design your own moving feast:
The Scotch Malt Whisky Society
Bleeding Heart Restaurants
The Craft Beer Co.
Department of Coffee and Social Affairs
Images thanks to Lance Shot.
