This week, equity crowdfunding portal Crowdcube caught up with UBrew‘s co-founders Matt Denham and Wilf Horsfall to discuss its previous funding success on its platform.
Back in January 2015, UBrew took to Crowdcube to raise £75,000 so that it may expand its operations. During its funding round, the company secured £110,730 from 125 investors.
While chatting about securing the funds through Crowdcube, the duo shared:
“Post-funding we pretty much launched our first location in Bermondsey straight away, and were able to do so in the full media spotlight with an incredible press blitz that included all of UBREW’s top targets (Time Out, Evening Standard and BBC London). This meant we filled our 150 membership slots within the first 3 months, and gave us a waiting list of several hundred more people. We’ve subsequently been shortlisted for the Guardian Small Business Awards in the Marketing and PR category for our guerrilla marketing techniques. We invited journalists to brew their own customised beer, as well as a targeting a steady stream of bloggers, and providing content on social media that went beyond self-promotion.”
They went on to note:
“These crucial funds helped us to start purchasing the equipment and fit out our first location in the middle of the Bermondsey Beer Mile (near London Bridge). We have hardly had time to look back since! We didn’t even factor our taproom into the original business model, and it was the sales of our brewing courses that enabled us to buy some breathing space. Promoting these is what enabled us to buy the wood and equipment we needed for building UBREW1, before the Crowdcube money came through.”
Denham and Horsfall then explained some of the challenges they have recently faced:
“Now just a year on we’ve recently invested in a newly refurbished taproom, with lovely furnishings and ten brand spanking new taps, through which only the best craft beer is allowed to flow. Our build work was good up to a point, but we took the opportunity to not only ensure our brewery was warm enough for winter, but also to seek a new retail standard fit out.”
In regards to any future plans for UBrew, Matt and Wilf added:
“Just last week we installed our bigger brewing equipment, which will enable 15 new breweries to launch onto the craft beer market, as they have already signed up to the pre-sold commercial membership scheme. Around half of these were members of our smaller equipment or avid homebrewers, so we are now helping to produce a craft beer incubator or accelerator scheme. It will also mean that we can brew our exciting range of beers at scale. We’re also very close to announcing another site in London, a further one in another part of the UK, as well as building our following in a key European city.”
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