Brewgooder – Brewing beer to empower the lives of others.
Founded in 2016 after co-founder Alan Mahon caught a parasite from an unclean water source in Nepal, Brewgooder are on a mission to brew a fairer world for all, one beer at a time. Since day one, they’ve been committed to ensuring every can and pint of beer enjoyed supports people and community projects undertaken by the Brewgooder Foundation, spanning areas such as clean water and sanitation. They have already funded over 160 projects worldwide through impact partners that include Charity Water.
We speak to co-founder James Hughes about Brewgooder’s evolution as a business, how far naïveté and pure determination can take you, the impact that their beer and drinkers have had on areas such as clean water access, and how Brewgooder are trying to forge an inclusive and diverse beer industry.
1. You’ve been working to empower the lives of others one beer at a time, could you tell us more about what inspired you to start Brewgooder?
We founded Brewgooder in 2016 following an experience my co-founder Alan had whilst travelling in Nepal in 2012. He became unwell from drinking unsafe water that turned out to be a parasite. While he was able to travel home and be sorted out by the NHS in a matter of weeks, it ignited a flame within him relating to inequality more than anything; and the fact that through nothing other than chance he would be OK, but there are people the same as him in terms of age and ambition, born into circumstances that make it far harder for them to build a better life for themselves and family.
This initially led Alan to International Development, before moving into social enterprise, working with a local company here in Scotland called Social Bite that aims to tackle homelessness. I met Alan around year three of that Social Bite journey and we bonded over a beer and the idea of building a brand that did more than just sell things. Beer being the vehicle for making the impact captured our imagination because beer is more often than not a brilliant unifier of people - bringing everyone together for common purpose, and we loved the idea of channelling all of those occasions toward building a fairer more equal world for people. Through Alan’s experience in Nepal we already knew the importance of clean water access on that journey to level the playing field, so we started there, funding projects around the world with every can and pint sold.
2. Could you tell us a little bit about how your business model works?
Our business model has actually gone on a bit of an evolution. We started off this journey with a 100% profits model, we felt going into this that if we were going to commit to making impact we wanted to go all in and anything less felt half baked and non committal – probably down to the naivety of us running a business at that stage!
In the earliest days, that model worked well. We rode an initial wave of being something completely new in the market and didn’t really feel a need for investing in the brand or anywhere other than the delivery of our impact. But after our first couple of years investing quite literally every single penny that we made into impact as opposed to investing in the business and growth, we naturally started to plateau and something had to give. We never wanted to be in a position where we would be struggling to justify spend of ‘profit’ on growth versus spend on impact, so we decided to alter the model so that we can strike a balance in terms of commercial objectives for the limited company and impact objectives for the Brewgooder Foundation, and find a way in which we achieve both / they complement one another other without sacrifice.
Ultimately if the business doesn't work then the foundation work doesn’t get done. It's been a huge learning curve, but we built this business to do the most good possible and so we think the evolved model gets us in a place to do that, as counter intuitive as it felt making that change.
3. How did your impact partnership with charity water come about?
We've worked with three impact partners within the water space up till now. We kicked off with the One Foundation, which was a great Malawi centric organisation that helped us fund a lot of work. We worked with another organisation, The Climate Justice Fund, which is part of Strathclyde University here in Glasgow, and they did some really clever stuff looking at the data behind water points. They embedded technology that showed us how much certain pumps were being used by communities, and when they were faulty to arrange repair etc.
The Charity Water relationship came about from two things really: firstly a desire to expand beyond Malawi, or certainly one country. We recognise access to clean water is a global issue and at the time, Charity Water were working in a nice, wide spread of continents. 2. Charity Water could work with us on a model that allowed us to understand how much water was being provided by our drinkers almost to the can / pint of beer! At the moment we refer to it as a 1 to 100 mechanism for water, and that's a calculation that they've provided based on an installation point going in over a 5 year period, how much that would be used, and then working backwards to say: the cost of the water point versus how much contribution each of our cans make means that we can say every beer or every litre of beer, more or less contributes about 100 times that in water provided.
“It’s a really powerful thing for our drinkers to imagine that they are effectively unlocking hundreds and millions of litres of clean water over time.”
4. What’s it like seeing the impact you’re having on communities globally first-hand?
Overall, just quite surreal. It’s been a couple years now because of the pandemic - I think the last time we went over to Malawi was 2018 to visit some of those projects. Yes, our brand and drinkers have ultimately contributed towards this thing that's amazing, but then I think probably even more surreal than that is just the fact that this is still a problem, it's still needed in 2022, so you have communities and people quite literally, celebrating something as basic as water – it hit me a lot harder upon arriving there than I thought it would. It was almost verging on an uncomfortable feeling that they were showing appreciation for that, it didn't feel right. I did absolutely enjoy my experience there, but this dynamic shouldn’t exist.
5. You recently underwent a re-brand inspired by the waves of change made by your drinkers, can you talk us through the process and what attracted you to the new look?
We've noted that top to bottom we're very different from everyone else in this space, not just in terms of our purpose but also our model - we don’t even own our own brewery! But initially we fell into the trap of looking like everyone else to ‘fit in’. There's a lot of connotations that come from beer branding given its historic and traditional looks that have evolved but also haven’t - everything is very sharp, very masculine, capital letters, black. We've gone a totally different route for the reason that we want to counter all those elements - we want people to think fun, accessible, friendly and positive.
We also saw the role of the Brewgooder Foundation evolving beyond clean water, and our previous branding was very specific to Malawi and very, very specific to clean water quite literally our flagship was named Clean Water Lager, to a much more stripped back, clean, minimal, breath of fresh air look.
6. We would love to hear a little more about your brewing scholarship and where and how you're hoping to make a difference.
The brewing scholarship is at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh, and is specifically for students coming from underrepresented groups. It was very much triggered back in 2020 by the horrendous circumstances with George Floyd. We took a moment internally to consider what our steps and actions were to becoming a more anti-racist company and being proactive on that purpose of creating a more equal world but on our doorstep. Having spent a bit of time in the industry we had also observed that the beer industry is one that could be more inclusive, and a key reason for that lack of inclusivity is the fact that there's just not enough diversity within the space.
There aren’t enough opportunities for people of ethnic minorities to see people that look, quite literally, like them in the industry.
“We felt if we could go to the very root of that, looking to encourage and provide more opportunities for people to study and get excited about working within the beer space, then that could be a really credible first step which we’re hoping to evolve as we grow.”
7. You recently founded "Work in Progress", a growing collective of brewers around the world striving to create a more inclusive beer industry - why is this so important, in what ways is the beer industry currently falling short?
To be honest, this was all in and around the same sort of time, thinking about what change we could make as a small company. The 'Work in Progress’ collective was really our way of saying: we're not perfect, we're not going to be perfect overnight. We would much rather go on a transparent journey of logging our progress, and effectively sharing that with our drinkers, wider partners and community.
We never really anticipated the level of opt-in from other brands, adopting a similar sort of strategy themselves, which was great to see.
“For us, it gives us a transparent and accountable way of going on a journey toward becoming a more inclusive brand both internally and externally.”
8. Your mission is ‘Brewed on Purpose’. Can you tell us why that's so important to you and why?
I think it speaks to why we exist. We founded this brand on a purpose, to use beer as a means to build a better, fairer world. That's really why we entered the industry. Other beer brands have different reasons for being, e.g. to be the best beer in the industry. Alan and I aren't brewers ourselves, we've got a good understanding of the brewing process by now! but we’re still by no means experts. We entered the market fundamentally as drinkers that wanted to point our brand and our beer in a direction that delivered on a purpose to do good in the world. How that will evolve overtime, we don't know, but for now it's all we really know and we'll continue to wear that on our sleeve.
9. Brewgooder your only business venture, or do you have any other social initiatives or business ventures you're working on?
It is our only business venture, for now. There are always talks around potentially extending the Brewgooder brand or coming up with other brands within different categories, certainly within drinks. We don't feel Brewgooder is confined to beer exclusively forever.
10. You’re helping to support a lot of people, how can people help support you and the good work you’re doing?
Buying the beer definitely helps, but ultimately you should want to drink beer too! If you just want to help then supporting causes directly is the most impactful way to go. We want to be a brand that makes it easy for consumers to make a difference and allows them another way to ‘vote’ to create a better world through the brands they choose in the shop versus others that maybe are less inclined to make any effort to be better for either people or planet. We’re also not going to be for everyone, and we don’t intend to be, but for the people that see how businesses can act as a potential middle ground between charity and pure capitalism, and become a really sustainable means of delivering impact year on year, then please shout about us.
“We want to be a brand that makes it easy for consumers to make a difference and allows them another way to ‘vote’ to create a better world through the brands they choose in the shop.”
11. And finally, what advice do you have for others striving for sustainability in their industries?
Just stick to what you believe in. I think if we had pitched the concept of Brewgooder to any investor, assuming we'd needed money to get this off the ground in any significant way, most people would have turned us away. It was through sheer drive and tenacity, particularly on Alan's front given his initial personal experience, that we really didn't take no or many barriers as an excuse to stop and give up, and I think that will continue.
As much as it's probably easier than ever to set up a business, the consequence of that is there's so many more businesses! So it becomes harder to stand out and differentiate yourself. Don’t get distracted by what others are doing, have the blinkers on and if you‘re motivated to achieve something, then you’ll get there.
Subscribe to receive more stories like this, delivered directly to your inbox.
Or share this story on your favourite social channel: