Touring the country is a major part of the Black Storm calendar. Festivals are part of our way of taking the beer to the people and getting feedback directly from the most important people in our business – you, our beer consumers. At the start of the year 2020 looked epic, with around 30 dates in the calendar, we were gearing up for the best year yet. Then in March Covid hit, and one by one the dates disappeared from the diary.
Fast forward to late July and things started looking up, we were invited to join our trader friends at Hampton Court Food Market in August, where we took part in the first socially distanced outdoor event to be held in Central London in 2020, we had a fantastic bank holiday weekend event.
When we got home, we had lengthy conversations with one of the event organisers and it looked like “where there’s a will there’s a way” and with excitement we penciled in new dates and venues for what was to be the biggest live music tour in 2020, a short and sweet tour with Tom Kerridge and Friends in the adapted version of Pub in the Park, we were ecstatic to be part of the Drive in Garden Party. So as usual we created a unique version of our IPA to celebrate the tour and come September we set off to Henley, St Albans and Tunbridge Wells, and what fantastic weekends we had, working with a small group of other traders from our trader family, such as Weston Biltong, Dipple, Tipple & Co, Long Tail Mixers, Ask Mummy & Daddy Sweets, Northern Brownies, Brownies Rock, Warwickshire Gin Company to name a few, we created our own shopping villages on the festival sites. Myself and the team had an amazing time, not only chatting beers with just under 20,000 people but we also got to enjoy live music from some legends such as: Gabrielle, Rick Astley, Kaiser Chiefs, Scouting for Girls, Squeeze, Craig Charles, Soul 11 Soul, Groove Armada, Judge Jules, Basement Jaxx and Toploader.
Although this tour was short it was certainly sweet, unfortunately Covid caused the Cancellation of our final weekend with the Pub in the Park Team, at the planned “Picnic in the Park” in Marlow – alas until 2021. Covid also continues to dampen the Christmas festival scene, with Living North cancelling their two Christmas Fayres, but more about the festive season in another blog. What is for sure is that 2020 will be the year of the cancellation and definitely that won’t be forgotten but onwards to 2021, where we already have eight dates with the Pub in the Park Team in the Diary, Two with the CarFest Team, ten Dates with the Great British Food Festival Team and Two dates with Durham County Council at Bishop Auckland and Seaham Food Festivals so we had 2020 down as an epic year 2021 is going to be insane!