1. About the brand
Breer: Craft Beer made of upcycling bread
WHAT:
Breer is a food upcycling startup that collects unsold, uneaten and surplus bread, and uses it to brew local craft beer.
WHY:
The founders celebrated the end of their exam and found out beer and bread actually came from the same raw ingredients – wheat and barley.
From there they started linking the two by thinking of collecting surplus bread and transforming them to beer.
HOW:
They partner with bakeries and retail chains to collect leftover bread with the help of “Breer-runners” from local high schools, then delivered to their storage facilities.
They then commission local breweries to dry the bread, crush into croutons, seep them in water and mash, drain and boil them before adding in hops and going through a fermentation process to brew their beers.
These loaves of bread contain grains like wheat, barley and rye – which can be used to replace at least 1/3 of the malted barley and yeast typically used in traditional beer-making.
WHAT’S GOING ON NOW:
They are currently distributed in over 100 Hong Kong restaurants. They also work with big corporations to create a “chained economy” – collecting waste food from their bakeries and distributing beers back to their restaurants.
They also sell on online platforms and wish to develop other upcycling beer product lines.
2. About the founders
Anushka Purohit, Naman Tekriwal, Deevansh Gupta and Suyash Mohan
Co-founder, HKUST graduates, part-time business in Breer
Does Good, Taste Better
Provide tasty and sustainable drinking for everyone
3. Challenges and opportunity
A steep learning curve at start
Challenge
The quality of the beer was inconsistent at start, hence they liaised with various brewers and each brewer had their own judgements and view over the process.
They also lack practical brewing experience, therefore the progress was slow at the beginning.
Solution
They acquired new fundings to hire more experienced brewing advisors to finally deduce a satisfying formula, including using a certain bread to create a certain taste of beer.
5. The Future
More product lines, expand business overseas
They will start crowdfunding.
They will invest in other upcycling formulas, such as via coffee powder, coffee beans and fruit skins and explore converting them beyond just beers.
They will export overseas once Hong Kong’s business is consolidated.
4. Brand Development Timeline
2019
Idea won in a startup competition and was funded
Started product development
2020
Breer founded and started business as pop-up booth
2021
Third runner up in JUMPSTARTER IdeaPOP!
2022
Distributed in over 150 restaurants in half a year
Started online retail