Podcast: Sébastien Caucheteur talks about Beergium, a craft beer bar he and Fanny Delhaye launched in Uccle.
Beergium in Uccle has all the trappings a nerd needs: 25 taps, an electronic board scrolling Untappd ratings of the beers it lists, the next beers coming up when a tap is drained, and an international menu that’s hard to beat – and of course prices to match that ambition.
No wonder. Beergium, the bar, has a mainline to an online shop and warehouse launched by Sébastien Caucheteur and Fanny Delhaye seven years ago. They are now face-to-face with customers in this new venture, launched on 22 July.
Beergium, the warehouse, is in Le Roeulx, Belgium. They have come a long way from distributing from a cellar in his mother’s house.
“We distribute worldwide,” says Caucheteur. “We specialise in foreign beers. We import and then export to other European countries. People come to us because they want the best.”
They started with traditional Belgian beers and grew little by little as the webshop took off until they took the plunge and invested in a 600 sq. m. warehouse. The online shop has a mailing list of 9,000 individuals and currently offers some 1,000 types of beers.
He has four employees for the online shop and one at the new bar. Caucheteur says business is still risky. He worked for 10 years for a transport logistics company and quit 3 1/2 years ago to run the business full time, about the same time as they opened the warehouse.
“We took a big risk,” he says. “We have enough activity to fill our time but not enough money yet,” he says. “Business is hard in Belgium but we are still here. We are still alive.”
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