HonestBrew: brings the world of craft beer into your home

For decades, we have endured a limited selection and quality of beer available to drink at home, unlike the abundant wine and coffee markets. HonestBrew is here to change this, bringing the world of craft beer into your home.

We work with some of the best craft breweries from around the world, delivering their beer to thousands of customer’s homes and workplaces all across the UK. The HonestBrew platform is designed to provide a service which gives our customers access to the expertise and variety that they would expect from a craft beer pub – wherever they are in the UK. We have beers from over 50 different breweries from the UK, Europe, USA and Australasia.

HonestBrew’s mission is to help people discover better beer.

TRACTION

Launched in January 2014, HonestBrew has grown to what we believe is now one of the UK’s leading online craft beer retailers:

• We ship tens of thousands of bottles across the UK, every month.
• We have over 9,000 users, and 1,000 active Honesty Box subscribers.
• We work with over 50 craft breweries from the UK, Europe, US and Australasia. We provide reoccurring revenue and a consistent route to market for these breweries.
• We have built a truly personalised experience with a loyal customer base.
• We’re a passionate team with experience in technology, operations, marketing, design and of course beer.
• We’ve won awards for entrepreneurship and business innovation (The Guardian, ShellLiveWire).
• We’ve beaten small brands like Walkers & Lidl with our innovative marketing campaigns (Food and Beverage Awards).
• The Telegraph, The Guardian, TimeOut, Evening Standard, Daily Express, GQ, FHM and BBC Good Food and many more publications have featured HonestBrew.
• We have run a number of campaigns with companies like O2 Priority, Gousto, Naked Wines, Pact Coffee, Cornerstone, ZipCar, Bloom & Wild and more. 

HOW IT WORKS

We have built an online service that makes craft beer accessible to more people. Everyone has different tastes in beer; some people love porters or stouts, others prefer hoppy American IPAs. Our flexible subscription service tailors craft beers to people’s individual tastes and delivers them to their door – we call it the Honesty Box service.

Each Honesty Box customer has their own unique profile and every box contains a different selection of beers matched to their individual taste; they pick their flavour preferences, box size and delivery frequency for each delivery. We know that our customers love the flexibility of our service and stay with us as they always get the beers they want, when they want them.

BACKGROUND

HonestBrew is built by a team of passionate craft beer lovers. We began as brewers running sessions teaching others how to brew. We quickly found people loved craft beer but:

• Found the huge variety overwhelming and hard to understand.
• Found it difficult to access with many beers not available locally.

We recognised a real opportunity to create an innovative service to connect the huge and growing craft beer community directly with craft beer producers.

FUNDING

HonestBrew was initially funded with the founder’s personal funds. In 2014, angel investors MTA (the backers behind Gousto) and Turning Point joined the business. These same angel investors are impressed with our growth as well as the future opportunity and are investing again in this Crowdcube raise.

We have grown on average 28% each month for 12 months prior to June 2015. this funding round will allow us to continue our growth plans into 2015 and beyond. We’ll continue to invest in marketing and acquisition, technology and operations to give our current and future customers the best craft beer delivery service in the world.