Continuing our series on independent producers and how they are surviving the pandemic.
Surrey-based Crumbs Brewing uses leftover bread from a nearby artisan baker to make a range of small batch lagers and ales. It’s just one of the many independent producers responding to the shock of lockdown.
But Chief Crumber Morgan Arnell says, after the initial slight panic, they’ve found the situation quite invigorating.
‘We were reasonably lucky that our business has never relied heavily on the pub trade. Most of our volume is in bottles via independent retailers, farm shops, festivals and online. The significant growth in the demand direct from consumers either online or via local doorstep deliveries has kept us pretty busy and forced us to think differently about what we can achieve.’
But they had to adapt pretty quickly to the changing cicumstances.
‘We immediately tweaked our online shop. Expanding the local area to which we do free deliveries and finding a new courier partner to reduce some of our costs and pass this on to consumers to make our offer even more attractive. We also increased the money we put behind online advertising to really push the direct sales side of our business. That was really important as a whole summer’s worth of festivals got cancelled overnight.’
‘Luckily, we’ve been able to keep our brewing going and there has still been a decent supply of left over bread from Chalk Hills as they’ve adapted and explored new models for their business too.’
And that’s very important for Crumbs – that they work closely with other local companies to produce something top quality and sustainable. Each beer is made with a different type of loaf, that way the style of the beer reflects the character of the delicious bread that makes it. So they’re fighting food waste and making tasty, unique beers at the same time.
Giving back to their local community is also an essential part of the way Crumbs do business.
‘Like a lot of firms, we wanted to show some support and bring a little happiness to the front line workers keeping us safe. So we created the “Buy a beer for a local hero” campaign #beer4heroes.’
‘We asked our customers to spend £5 to buy 4 cans of beer, we then matched that to make it 8 cans and delivered them to a local hero (either nominated by the buyer or that we found ourselves). Hundreds of our lovely customers got involved which means we have delivered over 1,000 beers to local heroes. This includes the NHS teams at East Surrey Hospital, the Ambulance team at Redhill, the entire council refuse collection teams in Earlswood, several food banks and other charity volunteers as well as quite a few posties.’
Fancy trying a Crumbs?
We have a discount code for anyone who wants to place an order. Head over to the Crumbs Brewing shop and use the code RANDPCOMP10 for a 10% discount.
Please drink responsibly.
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