Our Story
From a Yorkshire monastery to the Dorset coast
Fetch The Drinks started, in a roundabout way, with a monastery.
Sean, our founder, spent sixteen years in the military before an unlikely next chapter, running business development at a monastery in North Yorkshire, attached to a boarding school. The monastery had its own orchard, and made a small amount of cider, mostly sold through local farm shops and served when the monastery hosted guests. Sean saw something in it worth building on, and over the following years grew that side of the business properly, expanding Ampleforth Abbey's cider production and, after a good deal of research abroad, launching a proper monastic beer too, a style hugely popular in Belgium, and virtually unheard of here. The beer even took him to Belgium for a Jamie Oliver television programme, and Ampleforth Abbey Beer went on to real success in its own right.
After years in North Yorkshire, Sean came home, back to Bournemouth, where he'd grown up and where he'd met his wife, Lilibet. Fetch The Drinks began from there, initially helping distribute Ampleforth's own cider and beer further south, before growing into the wider craft cider and beer wholesaler we are today, supplying pubs, bars, restaurants, pub chains, and festivals right across the country.
A genuinely family business
Sean and Lilibet have four children, and between them, the family's fingerprints are all over Fetch The Drinks.
Alex, the eldest, studied business management in Newcastle before working at the Kia Oval for Surrey County Cricket Club, then came down to Bournemouth to work alongside his dad, drawn by the coast and the New Forest as much as the business itself. When COVID put much of the trade, festivals, pubs, bars, on hold, Alex spent six years teaching business studies, before returning to Fetch The Drinks in 2026, now leading sales and marketing, building new customer relationships, and working to bring the range beyond cider alone. Alex also launched Nonnie, our own alcohol-free beer, its first release, Day Breaker, inspired by his youngest sibling Dominic's own health, and a genuine, family-driven push to make sure everyone, drinking or not, feels properly included.
Annabel, the second eldest, has lived in America and Germany alongside her husband Will, serving in the army, and still helps run our social media and website from wherever she's currently based.
Jonty and Dominic, the two youngest, both work in motorsport, Jonty in Formula E, Dominic at McLaren in Formula 1, fast-paced careers a world away from a Dorset warehouse, though both still turn up to help with deliveries whenever they're home.
And Sean himself, alongside running Fetch The Drinks, now runs his own bar, Run Ashore, in Bournemouth, with Alex, with an eye on expanding that too.
We're not a faceless wholesaler. We're a genuinely small, family-run business, and every product we sell, we've chosen because we'd happily drink it ourselves. That's the whole point, really, good drinks, from people who actually care, delivered by people who actually know you.