THE WINE MERCHANT. An independent magazine for independent retailers
Issue 137, July 2024
Dog of the month: Snoopy York Wines, Sheriff Hutton
Customers rally round to help indie reopen after raid Finley’s in Hoxton, left in a precarious position after a daylight burglary, raises £10,000 with a GoFundMe campaign
A
fter a burglary that completely
cleared out the shop at the end of
May, Hoxton independent Finley’s
has reopened thanks to financial support from customers and suppliers.
Sia Smith, who owns the north London
independent, was left despondent after
the daytime raid on the business. But with the help of a GoFundMe fundraiser she
was able to open the hybrid bar and shop’s doors once more on June 27.
“There won’t be all the stuff we used to
have, but there’ll definitely be wines to
serious things going on.
£20,000, with £12,000 of that accounted
doing because they knew exactly how to
“GoFundMe was really good. I think we hit
“No one has been caught yet. I think it’s a
network of thieves that know what they’re manipulate the shutters and things like
that. I think one of the hardest things is
the mentality of the public when they see
something like that. They think, ‘oh, I won’t
bother to call the police because they won’t do anything’.”
The value of goods taken was around
for by wine. “That doesn’t cover just
being closed for three weeks,” Smith adds.
the first target of £6,000 in about 19 hours, and now we’re just sitting under £10,000. “I just wanted to get a thank-you out to
everyone. Honestly, I couldn’t have done it without everyone I know. Offers have
poured in to help clean or replace things. It’s been a massive team effort.”
pour and fun nibbles. I’m really looking
forward to it,” said Smith, talking to The Wine Merchant ahead of the reopening. Despite having all the requisite
deterrents in place, including CCTV, a roller shutter and an alarm, thieves broke into
the Hoxton premises in broad daylight and were there long enough to take not only
all the wine, but items including the coffee
machine, Coravin, POS system and even the bin. Footage on Finley’s Instagram page shows the carnage they left behind.
Smith was in Australia at the time to
attend her father’s funeral, and was alerted to the robbery on her phone.
“That was the craziest part of it,” she
says. “It was like a chain of events that
made it all worse. I mean, how do you call the UK police from Australia?
“The police attended, super-fast, though,
considering that there are much more
Elaine Butler and Bobbi Jones are raring to go at Worcestershire’s newest independent wine shop, Paul’s of Pershore. Story on page 6.