Hi, I’m Vikki, co-founder and the ‘V’ in Rave! I wanted to share the developments (and dramas) that have unfolded during the construction of our new Rave HQ.
Starting out in the UK
After Australia, RAVE started its journey here in the UK on 1st January 2011 in the back of an old converted shed in Avening. Within 7 months we’d moved to Unit 7 Love Lane, Cirencester where RAVE has been growing for the last 12 years.
When Covid hit back in 2020 we were faced with the challenge of maintaining social distancing protocols and a growing workforce as the demand for a decent brew whilst working from home grew, we ended up renting two other units within Love Lane - 6 months later we had to find more storage to house stock and our new 70kg roaster - so by 2022 we had a total of 6 buildings in various locations around Cirencester.
The start of the “new” building quest.
The criteria was pretty rigid to find the perfect build-ing for our expanding operation. Various commercial properties were viewed over the coming years, from a seafood manufacturing warehouse (that stank of fish) right through to a large converted garage (covered in oil). The search was relentless, meanwhile at RAVE the team grew bigger and the space smaller.
Fast forward to August 2022 - the perfect derelict building came up - South Gate. We exchanged and completed on 30th September, with keys in hand our building contractor Phil from Dryfesdale Construction Group and Peter the architect stepped up. This was the start of the new RAVE HQ.
The building hadn’t been occupied for nearly a quarter of a century - the roof leaked, it rained longer inside than out and the carpet tiles had taken on a different colour with all the mold. As for the graffiti, it wasn’t quite Banksy level but had its own quirky charm. Timescales were tight and the deadline for completion was the end of March 2023 when our lease on 2 of the units in Love Lane were coming up for renewal.
The daunting task started by stripping back everything - the roof, knocking down walls and toilets, unveiling what lay at the bare foundations. Mother nature wasn’t her kindest by December the snow came and temperatures dropped to -12, meaning work to the roof came to a halt.
A couple of days later the temperature increased, the snow melted and we were back to square one with rain being the main tenant again. The scenes were soul-destroying unfortunately, the underfloor heating slabs that had been laid started to dissolve and it carried on raining inside the building for another week. We re-scheduled all the contractors whilst we endlessly vacuumed up the rainwater.
Works carried on securing the building, replacing the glass & windows and after what seemed like weeks of waiting for the right weather the roof was replaced and the mammoth task of laying around 600 meters of piping and 4km of electrical cable started.
We had our fair share of stressful times – these ended up getting nicknamed “gates” - gas gate, drain gate, flood gate, theft gate, breaking gate, ladder gate – but having only been given 600 words to play with I’m sure you will get the gist of them by their name - and then there was the moving of the 70kg roaster...
To be continued...