Back in July 2022 BusinessLive caught up with Michael Wiper, co-founder of the popular Bristol-based brewery, Wiper and True. Mr Wiper described how, after the "gruelling" two years of the pandemic, the company had come out on top and managed to open its second venue in a huge industrial unit in Old Market.
Less than a year on and Mr Wiper, alongside his team and co-founder Alexander True, already has big new plans for the company, which aims to “become the best brewery in the South West by 2027”. Mr Wiper praised his team for their excellent work and told BusinessLive what is next in store for the brewery; from two new venues, to hitting environmental targets and investing in non-alcoholic production.
The independent company, which now supplies its beer to more than 100 pubs in the city and retailers including Waitrose, was founded in 2012, initially making cider with surplus apples from the orchards of Somerset. Wiper and True recently celebrated its 10th birthday, which was pushed back for the opening of the Old Market site, and not only did the team hold a rave inside the brewery to celebrate alongside Bristol’s Bianchi's group and AlFresco Disco, but it created six collaboration beers.
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Mr Wiper, the company’s managing director said: “So it’s quite a nice thing about the industry, in that we tend to get together with other brewers and make things for fun. So we released six beers all at the same time for our birthday. We paired up with the leaders in their field to make the styles, we invited people from around the country to make the beer with us and then released them all in a box and on draught.”
The Old Market venue has enabled Wiper and True to increase its capacity and efficiency. Mr Wiper explained that the firm is “in talks at the moment with all major supermarkets” and is discussing deals with “big national pub groups,” meaning that we could be seeing Wiper and True a lot further afield than Bristol. However, he said: “Bristol and the South West are still our heartland and 55% of our beer stays in Bristol, that’s our biggest growth area.”
This will soon be reflected in the company’s “headline” plans. Mr Wiper told BusinessLive that they have “an ambitious incentive” to become the “best brewery in the South West by 2027.” He said that this will be measured with product, impact and people in mind. To get there the company has a five-year plan, which includes the opening of two venues in the next year.
Both new venues will be in the South West. “At least one will be in Bristol and we are going to be scoping out a few other options,” said Mr Wiper.
He continued: “It will be something in the city centre and we have got three top ideas about what we want to do but it’s kind of dependent on the building we find or the units we find. I won’t say too much about it but we are out looking for the right place. It won’t be just a standard bar, there will be a theme to it. The other venue will be in the South West.
“Over the next few years there will probably be about 30 to 40 new jobs created. The bulk of that would be new staff to run the venues; there will be a natural increase then in production and sales and marketing that comes with it.”
'We have an ambitious incentive to become the best brewery in the South West by 2027'
If this wasn’t exciting enough, the brewery will be releasing alcohol-free beer “at volume". Back in January, Wiper and True experimented with releasing an alcohol-free beer, which did “phenomenally well,” selling 12,000 cans in just three weeks, making it the fastest-selling launch the brewery has seen.
Mr Wiper said: “And we’ve just put the deposit down for a de-alcoholisation unit, which allows us to make alcohol-free beer at volume. We are going to be releasing an alcohol-free version of our leading products, it’s called Kaleidoscope; we are going to release that in this year and really push the sales of those two products.”
Research group IWSR found that drinkers in the UK bought £363m of alcohol-free and low-alcohol brews in 2021, up from £192m in 2016. This massive growth in the market according to Wiper and True is “a really exciting one”.
Mr Wiper said: “I think even three years ago the choices were awful and the standard was very bad. Now the benchmark has gone up so much and we are really proud of our first product.”
He explained how the company’s new de-alcoholisation unit will work, and continued: “There are different ways you can make alcohol-free beer but we’re choosing to basically make a normal beer and strip out the alcohol.
“The machine we’ve invested in has a reverse osmosis filter that only alcohol molecules can fit through. So you make a normal beer and that creates all the right flavours and everything you need for it to be a good tasting beer and then you just strip out the alcohol.”
He added: “I think that we will be one of the only breweries of our size in the UK to have a machine like this.”
It’s not only alcohol-free product that the brewery is making headway in but it is also investing in a carbon capture unit to reduce its environmental impact. With hopes to get this up and running by the end of the month, Mr Wiper explained how the unit will work.
He said: “Again we will be one of the first breweries in the UK to have this system. Where fermentation generates CO2, in almost all breweries around the world they let it just drift out into the atmosphere then buy CO2 back in bottles, which is very strange. We are putting a machine in, which basically captures the carbon dioxide generated and compresses it and stores it. We can use it so we never have to buy CO2 again.”
This, the co-founder and managing director explained, reduces the company’s carbon footprint by 35 tonnes a year. Coming just after the firm finished installing a “massive solar array” on its roof this month. Mr Wiper told BusinessLive that “it has been producing 95% of our electricity demand in the daytime. A huge change in reducing our impact on electricity production".
Wiper and True is currently working towards its B Corporation Certification; hoping to achieve this by 2024. The brewery started planning for the new equipment about a year and half ago when it put down the deposits for the machinery.
Mr Wiper added: “In the last year prices for CO2 have gone up sixfold and they keep running out, which is putting pressure on breweries to have a think about this kind of thing… So the guy that sells us the equipment, his sales ledger is massive now. It feels like a very sensible investment.”
In terms of investment, Wiper and True hopes to reach a target of £3.5m to fund its two new venues, environmental equipment and de-alcholisation unit. After reaching out to a network of previous investors and putting up a LinkedIn post, just three weeks ago, Mr Wiper announced that they have already secured £2m of this target.
'We have an amazing team and I’m really proud of everyone at the moment'
Mr Wiper credited this to the hard work his team has put in and the success of the Old Market venue.
He said: “We have an amazing team and I’m really proud of everyone at the moment.”
Since opening the Old Market site, Mr Wiper said that they have had a “very high” employee-retention rate.
He reiterated: “So we are really proud of that especially in the venue site, since hospitality has really struggled over the last few years. But we have this amazing team, which has stuck with us the whole way through and that has added a huge amount to our margin.
“As the venue we built has been so successful and busy, we are selling much more of our own beer onsite, so it has definitely contributed to high profitability. We have also taken on much higher overheads at this site so we need to get our volume up now and start winning bigger accounts to get to where we want to get to. But it’s been a massive improvement.”
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