Friday is often a day to buy beer for the weekend, and we are trademarked as the “Official Sponsors of the Weekend”. Our vision sees us as a brewery that will sell PBAs nationwide, and within a couple of years export to the large bottle ale markets such as the USA. We aspire to be the UK’s next “Brewdog” style of business and we see our company expanding over the years towards “Friday” branded city based bars with novel “beer tank” dispensing systems selling our Premium Ales.
In 4 years we have built a brand that sells bottled ales to over 50 outlets including prestige hotels, restaurants and wine shops, plus many other outlet types found across the West Midlands region. We were also selected to become sold in Harrods’ Wine shop in Knightsbridge since June 2014.
We have sold own-branded ales to the “5 star bar” at the Land & Sky Glamping site at Glastonbury Festival as well as to a range of local companies. This list of “customer-branded ales” produced by us has also included the provision of a special batch of PBA for the RAF Battle of Britain commemoration dinner at RAF Cosford which was attended by Spitfire pilots from WW2.
Sales during our three years of trading increased by 100% from year 1 to 2 and this year are up by another 35%. Our sales and production expansion beyond this requires larger brewing equipment, more staff and the economies of scale through the ability to purchase raw materials and packaging in bulk. This will improve our margins and lead towards phase 2 of our expansion plan which is based around a new brewery site.
We are in discussions with Asda and hope to be selling to several leading supermarkets in 2016.
We believe we have created an exciting and unique brand that has, in its short life, received a flood of compliments for its branding, beer quality and flavours. One example of many of the Facebook comments: –
“Your Black Hill Stout is brewed in Heaven. Are you able to pipe it directly to my house” an extract from a message posted by Marcie.
Background
The Friday Beer Co was founded by three research scientists in 2011. With an eye for detail and the ability to work systematically and analytically we produced ales of a premium quality within six months. The sales campaign began and turnover grew rapidly. Our training in brewing and varied commercial backgrounds was the basis for this new adventure. But our experience in running a department within a £bn turnover analytical business was one of our great strengths.
We developed our branding and our recipes with the aim of standing out from the crowd. The results to date have demonstrated that this is working and this investment will enable us to continue growing the brand.
Funding
The Friday Beer Co took shape based on our 100% belief in what we had created and the redundancy cash of the three founders of the brand.
The company now needs to take a step up towards national sales and beyond and for this we need investment to build on our initial seed funding. With new equipment, more staff, larger raw material and packaging purchases we hope this exciting opportunity can fly. We are passionate about our brand and we want to take our investors with us on this journey.