A Fife distillery has got into the festive sprit early by opening a pop-up Christmas shop in St Andrews.
Gin brand Eden Mill is opening five festive pop up stores across Scotland, which will create 25 jobs.
The Market Street store, which opened today, is in the old Burns sweet shop, which closed in January.
The Eden Mill shops will stock the brand’s festive range including luxury Christmas hampers, Candy Cane Gin, ready-to-drink Christmas cocktails as well as gin and whisky.
Co-founder Tony Kelly said that despite Covid-19 traditional retail shops would still play a key role for Christmas shopping.
He said: “Despite social distancing, we believe shopping on the high street still has a vital role to play in this year’s Christmas trade, which is why we are expanding the number of festive pop-ups from the three we had last year to five in 2020.
“Nothing compares to the experience of seeing and sampling the gifts before you make that all-important Christmas purchase and for us at Eden Mill we love sharing our story and passion for our craft with customers in person.
“Last year we saw great success across our stores with four times the volume of sales versus Christmas 2018.
“We’re particularly excited to be opening a store in St Andrews, the home of Eden Mill, where our brand is so well known and so many people have enjoyed staycations this year from across the UK.”
Eden Mill’s head of retail Steven Arnott said the Fife branch would offer much more than gifts for sale – with customers also given a history of the Guardbridge distillery inside.
“Once in store, we have sanitisation stations, safe tasting points and every step of the journey will engage the customer in our Eden Mill story as the floor vinyl stickers marking where to stand one metre apart tell more about our journey from a small family distiller, to our sustainable hopes and plans for the future,” he said.
Eden Mill has saw its online sales grow by around 600% during lockdown.
But it is keeping a special bottle of gin available only to people who visit one of its pop up shops.
Inspired by the tastes of the Mediterranean, Botano Gin will be available to buy exclusively to instore customers.
Originally created for the chief distiller’s grandparent’s diamond wedding anniversary, and inspired by their holidays to the Greek islands, the gin previously launched for a limited run in 2016 and the new version has since returned by popular demand.
All the pop-up shops will be open seven days a week. They are located in:
St Andrews, Market Street, open now
Livingston Designer Outlet, open now
Glasgow Princes Square, opens early October
Glasgow Silverburn, opens mid-October
Aberdeen, Union Square, opens early November
