Popular Cleethorpes venue celebrates nine years in business with new indoor bar

A popular Cleethorpes venue is celebrating its ninth anniversary with the installation of a brand new indoor bar - after serving swarms of loyal customers from a small bar in the beer garden for the last nine years.

Situated in Cambridge Street, Message In A Bottle opened in 2015 initially as a craft beer shop, and has gone from strength to strength in the years since. To celebrate nine years in business, the pub has recently opened its very first indoor bar to make serving its hundreds of customers on a given day easier.

Co-owner and bar manager Ryan has put the success of the pub over the years down to the "incredible support" from local people.

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Speaking to Grimsby Live about Message In A Bottle's journey, he said: "When we first opened, craft beer was becoming a thing in bigger cities but hadn't really arrived in Cleethorpes yet.

"We opened as a shop, not a bar, initially, to champion local breweries and local ale and craft beer from further away, because nobody else was doing it and it seemed a shame not to have a place where people could buy Lincolnshire ale and trendier, wacky and wonderful craft beer from around the UK.

"Since then craft beer is 'in', which is fantastic. More people are seeking out good quality beer and moving away from the massive household name breweries. It's incredible to see the place full on a weekend of people drinking good beer and engaging with it and being excited about it.

"We're due to celebrate nine years here and we get incredibly busy. We're only a small space, we have inside seating and an outside beer garden, but this year we've had to get ready for summer and have a bigger bar built which people seem to be really excited about.

"For many years we've been serving outside in the beer garden which other people affectionately called 'the cage'. There were two of us working behind a very small bar which is tricky any day of the week, but during summer, it was becoming unmanageable.

"The more popular we got the more challenges we had trying to comfortably serve everybody. We decided we needed a bigger bar which would allow us to comfortably serve more people, to meet the demands for Message In A Bottle and allow us to stock even more beer, cider and local spirits."

Constructed by Clee Electrical and Property Services, the trendy new bar is made up of local reclaimed and upcycled industrial material, including pallet wood, corrugated metal and scaffolding boards.

The co-owner has credited the pub's loyal customers for getting them through the coronavirus lockdowns and navigating the cost of living crisis.

He said: "Covid was a tricky time for everybody, but the support that we had from people around the area was incredible. We opened an online shop so instead of selling and serving beer here, we were delivering beer, local gins and Cleethorpes rum, and we were busy doing that seven days a week.

"It was good fun - challenging and very different - but it showed that people, despite being in lockdown, were still wanting to support us.

"We're incredibly grateful for the support we get. We have a really loyal following, and without them we wouldn't still be here. We're very grateful."