The Filling Station in St Ives’ Cambridgeshire, sells locally-brewed craft beers and was set up a year ago by former brewer Mathew Kelly, the Hunts Post reports.
Mr Kelly set up shop by finding a 40ft shipping container for sale and converting it to a shop. Subsequently, the surrounds have been transformed with the creation of a new beer garden with grassed areas, wood chipped sections, shrubs and benches.
Having already staged an Oktoberfest event, the shop will be celebrating its first year with a beer festival event on May 28th, with a DJ providing music and a local Fish and Chip shop supplying the food.
“People all get behind these initiatives, it’s brilliant to have such amazing support,” Mr Kelly remarked.
Speaking about the successful first year at the novel site, he said: “We know the area and its breweries, and keep up to date with the emerging ones. There are new ones all the time.”
The store demonstrates how a new shop can use a large used shipping container to get up and running quickly and make a success of a business. Just as using such a structure is novel, so too are the products within as new breweries and beers emerge, which may encourage other entrepreneurs to offer similar combinations.
Microbreweries are not the only users of the fermentation process who may benefit from the innovative use of a shipping container.
Last month, students from Coleg Cambria in North Wales unveiled a new mini-factory for biofuel, using used shipping containers as anaerobic digestors on dairy farms.
Funded by a £500,000 grant from the Welsh government, the new digestors will convert slurry into biofuel, removing greenhouse gases from the ecosystem and turning them into energy that can be used to power the farms and dairies.
