It’s a big week for Chris & I and A Bar Above! This week marks a huge milestone in our podcast (150 episodes!) but more importantly we’re announcing that our very own store is open for business!
Watch the Episode:
Prefer to watch? Check out the full episode below!
TL;DR: The shop is open for business!
Head on over to Shop.ABarAbove.com for some great bar tools! (OK, a tad biased here… )
Don’t forget to use code SOFTOPENING for 15% off until May 8!
A bit of a Recap:
Waaaay back when we started this blog in 2013, I swore we would never (ever ever) sell physical products. But over the years we kept getting readers emailing and asking for our product recommendations, and we just didn’t like the tools on the market. Either they were low quality, a poor design, too expensive, or just cost way too much to ship.
After years of this, in 2016 I ate my words and we created our very own custom brand of bar tools – starting with our #1 top requested tool: the trusty Boston Shaker. We launched them on Amazon since we didn’t have any warehouses or staff of our own to pack and ship the tools.
A shipment from late 2016. Yep, that’s our messy kitchen and the baby on the right!
Well, THAT escalated quickly.
I was so nervous about this project failing miserably that I didn’t dare use the “A Bar Above” name, and we created the brand called Top Shelf Bar Supply. But I was totally wrong! The brand took off and soon we added cocktail picks and (at the time) the only complete bar set that actually included a fine strainer.
From there, the brand took on a life of its own! We continued adding new products, customizing them to solve all of Chris’ annoyances from behind the bar.
- A bar mat that’s virtually indestructible and flat AF.
- A muddler that’s long enough that you don’t bang your knuckles on the side of your shaker or pint glass
- A fine strainer with a super beefy weld at the handle so you can whack it against your shaker all day long, that handle won’t break off.
All this time we continued to sell on Amazon (and only Amazon) because we were still running this business out of our garage.
Another shipment from 2016, this time in our garage!
Growing Pains & Growing Up
As our shipments grew, we had to ramp up quickly and soon were shipping full containers at a time. Let me tell you: a shipping container is a LOT bigger on the inside than the outside. Especially when you have to unload it yourself!
The Shop is Open for Business!
As of today, our web store is officially open for business. We’ll continue selling on Amazon, but having our own store lets us:
- Offer discounts and promotions on our own terms
- Ship internationally (I <3 you guys!)
- Offer our very own partner program for bars & restaurants who need lots of tools and don’t need pretty boxes
Speaking of discounts….
Celebrate Episode #150 with 15% off!
Head on over to Shop.ABarAbove.com and use code SOFTOPENING for 15% off until May 8!
Simplifying the Brand
Something else you’ll notice over the next few months is that we’ll be phasing out the brand “Top Shelf Bar Supply” and rebranding all of our tools as “A Bar Above”. Since we only have one Instagram, YouTube Channel and Facebook page, it was getting confusing maintaining two separate brands!
We hope this will help simplify the brand and get everyone under one roof (so to speak.)
But Seriously, Folks…
We can’t thank you enough for all of your support. So many of you have left your reviews on Amazon and supportive comments on Instagram and YouTube. We read every one and we DO take your comments to heart!
Send us your feedback! Do you have our tools? Got ideas for how we could make them better? Got something you need but we just don’t sell yet? Let me know!
Email me directly at hello – at – abarabove.com, or you can always reach me here as well.
See you in the shop!
