This week we have an interesting chat with Bucket Boy Johanthan Hepner.

This conversation arose from an article on the beer blog SydneyBeer titled Buyer Beware: The Real Cost of Buying Beer From Overseas. In it, Johanathan raised the apparently growing trend of consumers looking to directly purchase beers from overseas and the impact that it was having on businesses such as Bucket Boys.

The Bucket Boys Johnathan Hepner and his business partner Clint Elvin are mainstays of the Sydney beer scene. They run a temple of good beer, that is dedicated to supplying beer lovers with a huge selection of local beers and hard to get imports. They are also passionate about beer education.

However, Johnathan’s call for the pointy end beer geek to stop skirting around specialist retailers in their search for the latest and rarest beers because of the potential impact on businesses such as his raised a number of interesting questions.

Bucket Boys goes to great lengths to have rare and imported beers in stock, sometimes sourced against the wishes of the brewers who made them. They play to the hype for the new and the rare that arguably gives rise to the problem that Johnathan is now warning against.

We ask if this is a case of sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind? How do you maintain a business based to some extent on the novelty and hype of the pointy end consumer as you scale up?

It’s a great chat with a very forthright beer lover. In addition to discussing the challenge posed by the pointy end, we also talk about Bucket Boys expansion plans, including a soon-to-be announced equity crowd-funding campaign that values the business at $10 million dollars.

Enjoy the conversation.

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