The award recognises the passion of owner Geoff Huens and his staff in growing craft beer in Sydney. Mr Huens said he was extremely pleased with the award and wanted to continue to extend the craft beer range to meet the ever increasing consumer demand. Mr Huens said the award was a reflection of the growth of the business, “When we purchased our bottleshop in January 2011 we had less than 50 beers. Since then we’ve managed to build our range to hit just under 300 beers before judging, and in the last few weeks tipped the number of variants stocked to over 300”. Mr Huens said he is not sure what the maximum amount of beers the store could stock is but that there was always room for more “who knows maybe 400, maybe 500, time will tell”.
The award will be displayed within the bottleshop alongside a number of other awards the business has been a recipient of in the last 24 months. This includes being listed in the Top 50 new businesses in the 2012 StartupSmart Awards, an accolade open to the most innovative and promising Australian businesses aged four years and younger, as well as a finalist in the 2012 Australian Small Business Champion Awards.
Not ready to sit on its laurels Mr Huens said Beer Cartel will continue to innovate, with plans underway for changing the store layout as well as growing the number of beers stocked on its website www.beercartel.com.au.
