Great response to Brewery Tap’s new ‘click and collect’ food service

A Tullamore business that has decided not to take the challenge of the coronavirus lying down is delighted at the way customers have responded to its new ‘click and collect’ food service.

Long a popular eatery, The Brewery Tap has been able to devise a menu that makes available most of its signature dishes, while offering a few innovations as well.

“We wanted to provide a way through which our customers could continue to have the really good gourmet food they would have in our pub – but by having it at home,” explains proprietor Paul Bell, who has been running The Brewery Tap with his wife Cathy-Anne for the last nineteen years.

“We have designed a really nice menu,” says Paul, adding that

The gastropub had been very busy since the end of June when the first lockdown ended.

“We actually gained a lot of new customers, so we decided, when we had the opportunity of going down the route of doing a takeaway offering, to pick the most popular dishes that we would have been serving in-house, and make them available for takeaway," says Paul.

“We are also offering a selection of our most popular beers; cocktails and wines.

“The service is purely on a collection basis, so customers can ring up our landline number – 057 9321131 – and order that way.

“Also, if customers go to any of our social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter – they can get the full details, and connect to our online ordering system.

“Generally, the food is ready within 15-20 minutes of you placing your order, whether it’s over the phone or online.

“We are currently doing it on a Friday and Saturday from 5pm to 9pm and on a Sunday from 1 pm to 7pm, and Sunday is geared at the sort of ‘Sunday roast’ market.

“We have a very good team of chefs and we have a very good reputation,” says Paul, saying that a lot of effort went into ensuring that the food would “travel”, and that it would taste as good in the customer’s home as in the pub."

One extra dimension to the service is especially important to the Bells: “It gave us the opportunity to take some staff back on a temporary basis,” says Paul.

For Offalians, this is a weekend of some significance thanks to local golfer Shane Lowry’s participation in the Masters, and to mark the occasion there is a range of specials on The Brewery Tap menu.