Our Story
The name 'QWERTY Beer Box' came about because of our focus on online beer gifting (just look down at your keyboard and you'll understand why...) and pays homage to the "QWIRKY'ness" of the awesome independent brands & people we get to work with everyday!
We promise we didn't just lazily go with the first thing that came to our mind when looking down at our computer keyboard after a few beers...
2020 - Getting started
Having met playing 5-a-side football and going to the pub 2 years prior, we embark on the QWERTY startup adventure when the country is deep in lockdown. With pubs being shut, Quinn cycles our 'Best of the Cotswolds' hamper over to friends and family in the area. We also build our website, launch our ‘Best of Devon’ hamper and secure valuable support from the University of Exeter student startup team. We then looked to share some of our beer knowledge by hosting numerous online craft beer tasting sessions for various corporates and charities. It was a steep learning curve!
2021 - Building our network of partner breweries
We decided to place a big emphasis on visiting all of the breweries we were looking to work with. This made for some epic adventures and we started to curate more hampers, expanding our regional South West focus to also work with Welsh and London breweries. Since day 1 we've been a strong believer in building strong relationships with our suppliers and this remains to this day! FUN FACT: Over the years we've been lucky enough to work with over 80 independent breweries and sampled a whole lot of tasty beer (talk about hard work - but someone has to do it right? ;-) ).
We win ‘Judge’s Favourite’ at the Santander X Startup Incubator Event at Wembley
With both of us joining the business full time, we really start to focus on the gifting aspect of our business and how we can provide unique and memorable craft beer experiences for the lucky gift recipients and an effortless and reliable service for customers. We curate 4 more hampers (try & fail to launch hampers in other categories - the gin category is harder than it looks okay!) & pack a whole lot more gift boxes.
2022 - We go all in!
We love being able to put smiles on the faces of thousands of beer lovers up and down the country and we decide to double down on QWERTY Beer Box and both start working full time. The extra hours help us to launch 3 more hampers and a lot more laughs!
WARNING: We work hard, but rest assured we also play hard 😜
From quarterly socials with friends (Bowling, Rounders, Octoberfest...) to weekly tennis and 5-a-side footy games, there's never a dull moment at QWERTY. We look to bring this energy and love of our job to work everyday and we think it's one of the reasons people resonate with the QWERTY brand.
2023 - Winning BBC Good Food's 'Best Beer Gift'
As well as the coveted BBC prize, we are also featured in GQ, Olive Magazine and The Independent. We're chuffed that people seem to like our hampers as much as we do and at the end of the year we launch our first ever craft beer advent calendar which sells out in 3 weeks! ⚡
2024 - Moving to the 'Big Smoke'
We make a few tweaks to our brand and move operations fully to London. With renewed enthusiasm, we set about our new goal: reinventing the beer gift market!
