BrewBroker expands into USA!
Brewbroker’s origins
BrewBroker is the brewing industry’s first peer-to-peer online marketplace. It enables brewers large or small to buy and sell brewing services. The company was founded in London in 2016 by Toby Chantrell, Daniel Rowntree and Ben Morgan-Smith with investment from private investors and an investment consortium. Discovering that 45-55% of brewery capacity is not accessed, they saw a real gap in the market. This prompted them to create a marketplace for utilising this extra capacity through contract brewing.
Contract Brewing
With a marketing background working with several breweries, Daniel also helped develop the successful Craft Beer Rising beer festival. Therefore, he is well acquainted with the world beer scene. “The global beer phenomenon can’t continue growing at such a pace“, Daniel explains. “Every brewery will need to contract brew at some stage in their journey and there are some brands who only do contract brewing. New breweries often scale up for future growth, so they have this excess capacity which they might not even grow into. The alternative is to brew for others. Brewbroker offers the ability to monetise this extra capacity for breweries of all sizes.”
Relevance for all brewery models
Daniel is keen to emphasise BrewBroker’s relevance for all types of brewery business. “We have customers who have existing contract brewing relationships and want to benchmark what else is out there. Some people are looking at it for the first time, as they didn’t know this was potentially an option. Also, while many new businesses plan to scale up, others consider scaling down their brewery and outsourcing all or part of it. Existing retailers may look at getting their own beer and there are consumers who will want to enter the marketplace as well.”
Opportunities in the USA
Well established in the UK, BrewBroker currently works with over 400 traders in Britain and continental Europe. Now the company is rolling out its platform across the Atlantic, kicking off its launch at this month’s Craft Brewers Conference in Denver, Colorado. As a result, BrewBroker will become one of the first businesses to provide solutions to the USA and UK brewing markets on such a large scale. “We have 2500 breweries in the UK, while in the USA, there are 6500 and a further 2500 still in planning“, Daniel explains. “Some reports in the States show that only 60% of breweries are in growth. So if 40% aren’t growing, this probably indicates that 40% have capacity which BrewBroker can tap into. The big opportunity is cracking the States, so we’re going to the Convention to gather information and launch our concept over there.”
International vision
Ben Morgan-Smith comments further on the company’s exciting new project: “From its inception, BrewBroker has always aimed to make our platform international. We are keen to further support our global buyers and suppliers with functionality designed around their needs. BrewBroker will be recruiting brand ambassadors over the next few weeks, who will be boots on the ground as we expand into the American marketplace. These new team members will raise awareness and will facilitate industry sessions that allow people to share their brewing knowledge across all points in the supply chain.”
Brexit effects
The ability for UK brewers to export their products to the European Continent or for European brewers to move liquid into the UK carries extra risks due to Brexit uncertainty. Therefore, having a contract brewer in the country of choice could be a particularly wise move for some businesses at this time. BrewBroker already has several tenders in Europe and so is ideally placed to increase opportunities to help breweries within the UK and abroad mitigate the effects of Brexit.
Author – Robin Goldsmith
