This month we caught up with the husband-and-wife duo behind one of the UK’s most interesting sustainable beer brands, Crumbs Brewing.
Local to Reigate for 17 years, Morgan and Elaine Arnell, originally came up with the concept for Crumbs in 2017, having both worked on the corporate side of the beer trade for many years.
Wanting to create something unique with a positive message at heart, they genuinely weren’t sure how well they could do in a very crowded beer market and certainly didn’t expect to find themselves in a position, six years later, with a successful crowd-funding campaign under their belt and a continued passion to continue innovating this local brand with a cause.
We caught up with the Crumbers, to find out how it all began and plans for the future.
What is Crumbs Brewing?
Crumbs Brewing is a sustainability driven beer-brand. We take the unsold bread from local artisan bakery, Chalk Hills and use it in the brewing process replacing the malt (normally used to brew) with bread. The important ingredient to us is the starch that breaks down the sugars.
There are three P’s central to our brand and our thinking around it:
1. Our Purpose - Fighting food waste whilst creating something delicious and doing something positive. We take one lovingly crafted artisan product and use it to create a new one.
2. Our Product - What we do differently is partner with artisan bakers, giving a unique local story to the bread we use. Not only that, it’s also a very important ingredient to the beer and each beers’ quality. Using a different type of leftover loaf for each beer means each variety reflects the delicious flavour of the bread used.
2. Our Place - One of our key motivations was to create a local story for our brand. We’ve been in Reigate for 17 years and wanted to do something with a local cause.
So, are your products named after the bread you brew with?
1. Sourdough Pale - Our pale ale is brewed using zesty Sourdough loaves. Late hops enhance the aroma but don’t overpower with bitterness.
2. Bloomin' Amber Lager - Our first beer and brewed using Surrey Bloomer loaves, it’s a Vienna style larger with a delicious malty finish.
3. Rye Ruby Ale - Brewed using the complex flavours of Rye bread, our recipe folds those flavours into a dark, warm rich ruby ale.
4. A Rye Coffee Porter - Using left-over rye and coffee grounds from the bakery café, our Coffee Porter has a strong but chocolatey sweet side.
5. Naan Laager - Last year we launched our last first beer beyond Chalk Hills, teaming up with a national Naan bread manufacturer to make the world’s first beer made from ‘wonky’ naans. Developed in collaboration with renowned chef and writer Hari Ghotra, we think this is the perfect ‘curry-house’ style lager and a great match for spicy food.
Where are your products stocked?
In the very early days, we followed Chalk Hills to the markets they attended and sold our beers in their bakery shops. We also developed relationships with local independent businesses like Priory Farm, Village Greens at Denbies and independent shops and delis.
In 2019, we started working with John Lewis and Waitrose, which helped us scale-up, providing national distribution supported by coverage in their magazine. We’ve temporarily paused this relationship whilst we develop our national independent network and a more sustainable packaging solution. In the meantime, we are still work actively with the Southern Co-op and organisations like the National Trust.
What’s next for Crumbs?
In 2017 we set the business up on a shoestring and ran it by re-investing any profit. This constrained growth considerably, but last year we successfully completed an equity-based crowd-funding project. This has provided us with an injection of budget to develop the brand and refine our strategy.
We want to copy the blueprint we’ve created through our partnership with Chalk Hills, building partnerships with artisan producers in other villages and towns around the country, continuing to develop products with a local cause and positive message at heart.
We’re also nearing the end of our B-Corp certification, an all-encompassing process when done properly, but something the larger retailers like Ocado and Waitrose will use as short-hand for brands doing good things. It will really help raise our profile and increase the support these retailers are willing to give us once stocked.
A brand refresh...
We’ve also just been through a huge rebranding exercise.
What we learnt being on-shelf in Waitrose was that we need a more premium brand identity, something that incorporates our purpose and key USPs, whilst delivering eye-catching shelf-appeal that works equally as hard in a bar or private lounge environment.
We were delighted to launch our new packaging at the Food and Drink Expo in Birmingham last week. Receiving a very positive response from our existing and potential new network of stockists. Keep your eyes peeled for the new designs being available to order soon!
How have your stockists responded to the rebrand?
We have some very exciting news - we’ve recently secured a partnership with the Mandarin Oriental hotel, where our new Naan Laager will make its five-star debut, in addition we’re waiting to hear back from Virgin’s VIP lounges who are also interested in our Naan variety.
Watch this space!
On a more local level…
We recently created the Surrey Drinks collaborative, teaming up with Batts Hill Gin, Hurt liqueur and The Vineking. Initially, we joined forces to share storage and distribution space, but it’s evolved into something more interesting with the opening of the Surrey Tasting Rooms on Church Street in Reigate. Open every Thursday & Friday 6pm-11pm.
In the early part of this year, we hosted events together, and since March we’ve reopened the Surrey Tasting Rooms (previously the Vineking Tasting Rooms), where guests are offered a choice of locally sourced sparkling wines, beers and Surrey themed cocktails.
It’s a fantastic grown-up space with a very informal atmosphere, and it’s been so successful we’ll be rolling it out all summer.
Elaine and Morgan, many thanks for the catch up and the deep dive into the Crumbs brand.
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