Mindful Drinking & Moderation in Midlife: Low No Drinker Podcast

#102. "No One Wanted to Work with Me" - Athletic Brewing's Bill Shufelt

• Denise Hamilton-Mace • Episode 102

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Bill Shufelt, co-founder of Athletic Brewing, joins me to share the remarkable journey behind America's leading non-alcoholic beer brand.

From his personal decision to stop drinking 13 years ago to building a business that's now outselling major breweries, Bill's story is one of identifying a genuine market gap and relentlessly pursuing quality.

We explore Athletic's brewing philosophy, their expansion into the UK market (including that exciting Arsenal partnership), and why Bill believes non-alcoholic drinks could eventually claim 50% of the adult beverage market.

With insights on everything from draft beer challenges to their impressive charitable giving programme, this conversation reveals why Athletic Brewing has become such a force in reshaping how we think about beer.

5:58 No one wanted to work with me
10:16 When did we change the way we drink
15:31 The Athletic Brewing range UK/USA
23:26 Cocktail beers
26:05 Draught beer challenges
31:03 Big brands & big sport
33:17 Arsenal partnership
37:43 Two for the trails
44:08 The BBQ-Q
45:50 Bill's industry predictions

TRY ATHLETIC BREWING  //  @ATHLETICBREWING

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Speaker 1:

Hi, hi Lono Nation, and welcome to this week's conversation on the Lono Drinker podcast, bringing you closer to the people, the places and the brands leading the Lono and light alcohol revolution. I'm going to keep this introduction today relatively short because I don't feel that you'll need me to say much about this gentleman. For nearly nine years, bill Shufelt has been reimagining beer for the modern adult as the co-founder of Athletic Brewing. Athletic Brewing is the undisputed leading non-alcoholic beer in the US, outselling independent and big alcohol companies alike, all while innovating and iterating to produce an outstanding, multi-award winning beer range without the alcohol, but without compromise either. And they're not doing too badly over here in the UK either. I've got so many questions that I could ask Bill. There's so many topics that we could cover, so I won't waste too much time. I'm going to say hello, bill, welcome you to the podcast. Thank you for joining me. How are you doing today?

Speaker 2:

Hi, great Thank you, excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I'm very happy to have you. It is as I said to you before we press record. I could hardly have a podcast about low, low and light alcohol drinks without speaking to somebody from one of the pioneering brands in this space. What you guys have achieved is outstanding, but I'm sure you've heard many people say that before. But thank you for what you've done for the category um. I'd love to start, as I do with all of my guests, with the adventure that led you to where you are now, so you start where you're comfortable. Um, why did you make a beer?

Speaker 2:

thank you well, thank you so much for the kind words. It's, I mean, it's just such an exciting ecosystem that athletic is a part of here and we're having so much fun and the community is so amazing and I I really just feel so fortunate to have made this career change and absolutely love what I'm doing. I wish there were more hours in the day. So thank you for the kind words. Um, yeah, I, I guess like going back a little. Um, so I guess I stopped drinking about 13 years ago. At this point almost, um, and I it wasn't anything I meant to do, it was, um, you know, I probably should have stopped earlier.

Speaker 2:

Alcohol was generally a ceiling on a lot of things in my life I cared about. It. Took me a long time to realize that, but it's um, you know, in terms of like, uh, like, as I envisioned my future. I was turning 30, about to get married, and just thinking through my whole life, my career, my relationships, my family, what I wanted to be like as a parent, my long-term health, my fitness goals, my sleep and I realized that alcohol was kind of a ceiling on, like, every one of these parts of my life that I really cared about. And um, obviously I drank too much and had too much fun, as I used to think of it. Um and like. Stopping alcohol is great for those reasons also, and when I stopped drinking I realized that it was. It was like the biggest life hack I'd ever uncovered. It was the biggest simplifier in my life and I was having more fun than ever with my friends and family, and I was always present and so, and then I'd wake up ready to go the next day, and so it, and it turned into like my weekends all of a sudden, like I liked weekend mornings just as much as like any other part of weekends in the week, and so it had been this great decision for me.

Speaker 2:

But then here I was. I was in working in finance as the job I thought I'd want to do the rest of my life. It was a very like social industry job, much like the beer world is. I had probably 100 to 150 work dinners a year, so I was out, you know three, three days a week at a minimum, usually whether it was a dinner or drinks or an analyst dinner or something. And all of a sudden I didn't have an offering in my hand. There was nothing on the menu. There was no other side of the menu at most places.

Speaker 2:

When you know, everyone knows the feeling and the story of what the category was like 10 years ago where you'd be at a restaurant with colleagues, a table full of 10 people, and it would become your turn, everyone else would have ordered something they're really excited about, a cool brand, a new tequila, what do you have for cocktails? And I'd ask, what do you have for non-alcoholic drinks? And it'd be like everyone in the whole place stops and looks at you, and so that was really the moment that was like such a pain point over and over again. Plus, I'm just generally a foodie. I love good food. I've loved beer.

Speaker 2:

I went to college in Vermont where at that time there was an explosion of regional craft breweries and super high quality beer and I fell in love with great beer there and that love of beer carried with me into New York City in my career, and so I'd had this like favorite part of my life, kind of ripped out, this very big pain point in both my personal enjoyment, my culinary experiences, and like work and social experiences, my culinary experiences and like work and social experiences, and that all added up to well I. I guess I should also say like I never, ever intended to be an entrepreneur. Like I, I thought I was at the job I wanted to be at. I didn't have any other ideas. This wasn't like number 55 in a long list of ideas that I got to and finally, like athletic brewing, worked. It was the first time I'd really ever considered an idea ever.

Speaker 2:

Um, but that pain point is what I wanted to fix. And as I started to talk to first my wife and got great encouragement there, and then friends and family and colleagues, I was surprised at how well received it was. I thought people would think I was absolutely crazy, and my friends and family were actually really encouraging. And so, before I knew it, I did a few years of ideating and planning on the idea, reading brewing textbooks. I knew absolutely nothing about the brewing industry, the beer industry, distribution, had never brewed a batch of beer in my life before, and so I was just an enthusiast coming from the outside and uh.

Speaker 2:

So when yeah, when I quit my job, it was definitely a big moment for me, going from a job I thought I'd be at for the rest of my life to now working in the beer industry and I found myself in a world that no one was interested in talking about non-alcoholic beer.

Speaker 2:

There were like little green shoots around the world of other people thinking on the category as well, approaching it in different ways, and there was definitely excitement starting to build up in really limited doses, but no one in the US beer industry wanted to talk about non-alcoholic beer.

Speaker 2:

But no one in the US beer industry wanted to talk about non-alcoholic beer. It was a real slog to try to convince anyone to work alongside me. I had no brewing knowledge except what I'd read in textbooks, and so I found an amazing co-founder in John Walker, who's really our master brewer and runs all operations and has built all our breweries, and so we teamed up. Uh, from about three to four months after I quit my job and have been building side by side with athletic ever since, but that was, that was kind of like the genesis and I got out the door of my old job and the industry really just needed to be built from. There's a lot of baggage from prohibition and stigmas around non-alcoholic beer and we just kind of got to work brick by brick, changing one thing at a time.

Speaker 1:

So it's been really fun since then that is, that's quite a journey, and you've you took a huge leap of faith really. Then didn't you just sort of something clicked in you and went this, this is the way forward. But you had no way of knowing if what you were doing, because there was no playbook for you to follow along. So you kind of had to I guess, for want of a better phrase make it all up as you go along.

Speaker 2:

For sure. We definitely didn't know anything about anything, and that might have been like for the best because it was so hard. On pretty much every angle of our business there was a big boulder in the middle of the path that we had to figure out how to start moving it. And so we we took a very intensive way to building our business. We decided to build breweries so that we could control all our own quality, um, and so we had to raise uh funds before we even got to brew from friends and family, and then one layer beyond that for our angel investor round. But then reinventing the marketing of non-alcoholic beer, reinventing the quality, then going out and trying to find retailers and distribution a step behind that. And then, once we had that, we had to find customers to come to the shelf and it was all like one step at a time.

Speaker 2:

But behind all that it actually never felt that tough because in the people I actually was talking to on the consumer side, when I got face-to-face with people actually in the community at first, that was like my wife and my friends and family who were really receptive and encouraging on the idea and said, no matter how much people drank, they did say, oh, I would drink that during, like everyone had their occasion or their time or actually were like really interested in cutting back a lot on their consumption.

Speaker 2:

And they just never said it before. And I also found then when I was in business planning, I ran a lot of surveys, just like Google surveys, which I don't think exists anymore but I would do surveys and get thousands of replies and at the time non-alcoholic beer and low alcohol drinks were basically 0% of the adult beverage industry. But in any, any survey, no matter how I asked, it was between like 45 and 60 percent of people would say, oh, I would drink non-alcoholic beer somewhat frequently, frequently, regularly. And I was shocked at how many people were just like lurking there waiting for this world to change and it hadn't changed at all to meet them yet yeah, I.

Speaker 1:

I think that's something that I've recognized as well is that a lot more people are interested in this than give voice to it. So it's about finding those people. But I'm interested because obviously you know, you say, when you first started out, the industry was not receptive to it, despite the fact that obviously you were a novice. So there was that as as an aside, but in terms of people sort of say, oh yeah, this is a something we want to invest in, this is a, this is a product that we can see going somewhere, this is what the industry needs. There weren't a lot of beer producers out there jumping, uh to join the bandwagon. When do you think it changed for, for for you, for for America, uh, for an as an industry? When do you think it changed to being something that I'm not sure about this, to something where people are going right, this is the way forward.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's I. I would honestly say to this point, it's um, I. I love being out in the world and talking to people and we've built the brands. A lot of the way in which we've built Athletic is like sharing a beer face-to-face with people, and so whenever we're out in the world, like sharing free samples and, for example, I was in Central Park in New York last week there was a 5K with about 10,000 runners and like New York is right in our backyard and I thought everyone would know about us at this point. You know we're about seven years in the business and so but I was very surprised how many people had never heard of athletic brewing.

Speaker 2:

I hadn't really ever thought of a non-alcoholic drink and very often, once either a friend or a colleague or something tries it, those people were immediately permissioned to try it almost, and were really enthusiastic to hear about it and learn about it, but it was like they'd never thought about it. So I do get reminded as I step outside the industry how few people have actually tried non-alcoholic drinks or considered them even yet. I think those trends are going up very fast. I've seen stats that in the UK 75% of adults are actively trying to reduce their alcohol intake and live a healthier and more wellness-oriented lifestyle. And usually those numbers are between 55 and 75 percent when I see them, and so it depends on the data.

Speaker 2:

But, um, it is really exciting where, yeah, the industry conferences now everyone knows what you're talking about and we, um, it is tough to pinpoint an exact moment in time, but I think a year or two ago was when we really crossed to bars and restaurants, actually being really excited to have non-alcoholic drinks on their menu, um, and realizing that it's a great way to help people get people in on weeknights especially. But in any group of five people there's a few who are looking for non-alcoholic drinks. And I think when the on trade really realized that they could make their menus more exciting and welcoming and get a lot more people inside to then feel welcome was when we crossed that. So the on-trade has been growing really fast the last few years. I think the UK on-trade grew something like 43% and no more drinks last year.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, like you say, it depends on which numbers you look at, but the stats are huge.

Speaker 1:

Whichever way you look at it, the numbers for people who are moderating or actively reducing their drinking, who are looking for low and low and light beverages, who are trying to find different ways to drink, is definitely moving, most definitely moving upwards, and I think that's that's a great thing. I think it's interesting that you say, um, that actually once you step outside of the low and low industry, you can sometimes feel a bit surprised that more people don't know about these drinks. And you're right. I think there is that element of sort of alcohol-free tinted spectacles for those of us who are, who are inside it. But I suppose that's the curse of knowledge for any industry. You think that everybody knows the things that you know. But that's why I love having conversations like this and having the podcast, so that we can help people to discover these things and know that actually, in this day and age now, it is perfectly cool to be in that group of five people and be the one person that says I don't want to have alcohol tonight, for whatever reason Give.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and we're working hard on the marketing support so that people feel really permission to make that choice and confident in it If done right. That often is like the more aspirational choice too. It's like being proud of that choice, loving colleagues at the work dinner and tequila 10 years ago and like very often someone would have discovered a drink like uh and like known the provenance of the drink or the story or something, had been so psyched to share that with everyone. And that's the kind of like marketing support we're really trying to give people with. Athletic is like a really well-rounded story that went like so at a starting point the quality of the beer has to be amazing and enjoyable and the best part of people's day and a great meal pairing when they crack the can.

Speaker 1:

but the marketing behind that also, I think is so important to permission that choice and like make people proud of it when they share it socially as well absolutely well, let's talk about the, the quality of these beers and the beers in the range, then, because, as we mentioned before excuse me, I'm in the UK at the moment. You're in the US, but athletic can be found everywhere. So I'd love to start with a bit of info about what what drinks are in the range. And then, obviously, I know that you have different SKUs available in different parts of the world, and so it'd be great to understand a little bit more about how that decision process goes, into knowing what you're going to put where and and why. Um, for those watching on youtube, you can see behind me, I've been very blessed to have a lovely selection uh, the three main ones that you have in the UK, plus a couple of sneaky ones because I know people. So tell me about the athletic range.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So our lead beers we try to, as shelf space grows or becomes more available, we try to lead with our best-selling, most highly awarded beers that are people's undisputed favorites, and that's our run wild ipa in the blue can, which is a very classic, really approachable ipa. It's not, it's not super hoppy, it's not hazy, it'll pair with basically any meal and so that's like our it's, it's almost like our anytime ipa. That is like really sessionable and pairs with everything and has been our most highly awarded, most popular beer from the start. Our Upside Down Pale in the yellow can is like a really delicate golden ale. I would say it's slightly hopped, really crisp, clean, low calories, as most non-alcoholic beers are, but it's 45 calories and it's like a really guilt-free, like pale, golden, golden and um I I would say that is the beer most likely to be featured on really high-end menus. It pairs really well with like and any kind of cuisine really, but like delicate cuisine also like fish, pasta things. So um, I I think that beer alone is on something like 50 michelin star menus in the us. Um, so it's uh, but it's the favorite beer of a lot of people in our range. And then we've got our lager, of course, and so it's a fully flavored lager, but in a really light nutritional form, because alcohol does make up a lot of the calories in most lagers and when you take that out you can have a fully flavored lager in a can for 25 calories or so. So that's our third most popular and it's growing really fast in the UK as it's the biggest category of beer in the UK. And then we have a wide range of beers outside that. So two that are available with limited availability in the UK are All Out Stout and then our Free Wave Hazy IPA. We've done some drops of kegs so far of that beer in the uk for different periods and we are trying to make all these beers more widely available. Also it's uh, um, and hopefully making beer more locally at some point in the uk as well.

Speaker 2:

Um, but um in. We do uh in the us. Right now in canada we release about 30 to 50 beers a year in really limited doses on our website, athleticbrewingcom, and those move through very fast. They tend to be really popular in limited releases and I guess the reason we can do that so easily is because we do own and operate all our own breweries. I mentioned before.

Speaker 2:

We took a very expensive quality path and decision which most companies don't take In building our breweries. Every beer we make is made by our team full-time, and we have probably about 16 dedicated quality professionals in the US who relentlessly test the quality of every beer we make and are constantly improving and we're so dedicated to the quality of it. But we have systems everywhere, from three-barrel systems to seven-barrel brew houses, to 20 to 50 to 100 to 300 barrel brew houses across our four breweries that we've built um, and so we have a lot of flexibility in what we can make, what we can test, and our brewers love the like creative expression of getting a recipe idea and getting to make it on a really small scale and then share it with our community, get feedback on what they think. But inspiration can come from anywhere. It can come from anywhere on the team, anywhere in our community, and so we've made an enormous range of fun beers um.

Speaker 2:

I I've got, for example, I've got right on the desk yesterday.

Speaker 2:

Yes, it was about 92 degrees here yesterday. Um, I'm not exactly sure on the celsius conversion, sorry, but it's uh, yeah, it was, it was a really hot afternoon. I've got our downwinder goes, which is um it it's a goes made with sea salt, coriander and lime leaf, but it's like that, perfect, like sour and tart bite on a hot day and that's what I was craving yesterday and so but we do have a beer for every occasion and, as I said, we do hope to make beer more locally in the uk in the future too. Um, we, yeah, we make all our draft beer in the us and ship over right now, but it would be great to make it locally in the future in the UK as well, and that would also help us get more variety Right now. So we did used to offer our limited releases in the UK. There are a lot of changes with regulations and laws and website laws and stuff, and so we pulled that for a while, but we do hope to bring that back to the UK sometime soon.

Speaker 1:

Well, that would be amazing. I have for the magazine lona drinker magazine. I have a resident beer reviewer who's been with me for the last two years. He's a a guild of master beer writer, uh, and he, um he often he's reviewed some 2000 alcohol-free beers. He only focuses on alcohol-free beers, uh, and he loves your, your range, but he always says he loves the, the ones that are available in the us, and he wishes that more of them were available in the uk. Um, so he'll be very happy to hear about that, and that's a shout out to martin dixon, uh, who's absolutely fabulous there oh great yeah, and also I.

Speaker 1:

I saw that you've again. I know these won't be available in the UK, but for my US listeners you've released a series of cocktail beers. Is that correct? Tell me about those, because they sound fascinating.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I would say it's kind of the way our e-commerce platform works is sometimes almost accidental. Things get great popularity in our community is sometimes almost accidental. Things get great popularity in our community and our brewers and our quality teams love testing new things and new flavors. And you know we're going into the end of last year and we do get the feedback a lot, for people would like flavored offerings or different things for different occasions. Or you know, if we have a tent set up at a race, there's obviously tons of beer lovers who come for the beer. But then very often they have a friend that's like oh, I'm not really a beer drinker, do you have anything else? And like we always wish we had that anything else right next to it for them.

Speaker 2:

And so it ended up like we're just messing around with different things. And our team was trying these recipes and before we knew it it was like, oh, this Paloma recipe is really good, and trying these small three-barrel batch systems and three-barrel batch brews of them. And so we released Paloma, the Moscow Mule, in January right in the start of the year, during dry January, where everyone's trying out different things in the category and they were unbelievably popular, like beyond our expectations, so we've now made four different recipes of those and I've released them a few times and had some fun with them, so it's been pretty fun, released them a few times and had some fun with them, so it's been pretty fun. But it's yeah, it's really just like we find really totally unexpected surprises are very popular on our e-commerce platform and then eventually, those tend to make their way out to the world. That's what happened with our.

Speaker 2:

We have a lemon Radler called Right Pursuit, but we released that for the first time a few years ago in the summer and we were shocked at how popular it was, and now that's a full-time, year-round release. Um, I I will say, no matter how many offerings we release in any given year, though, uh, people always come back, and the bulk of their beer tends to be the three on the shelf behind you, and so that is why we start with those at like. We make sure those first are at tesco and m&s and like where people are looking for our beer the most, because, like, we definitely want people to start there with our most popular and most highly awarded beers fantastic and you mentioned earlier on uh draft, so I know that that athletic brewing can be found on draft.

Speaker 1:

I know a lot of people that I speak to are really wanting more alcohol free beer on draft People I've spoken to on the podcast. I was speaking to one lady and she used the phrase you can only get a pint in a pub. Because it's that feeling, isn't it? It's that holding that pint glass, that cold crisp pour, um, what's it been like trying to get athletic brewing onto to draft? Because it's a challenge in and of itself. Isn't it separate from producing the cans?

Speaker 2:

for sure. Um, so, going way back to like the beginning of like what I missed the most when I stopped drinking, like just that feeling of like, what I missed the most when I stopped drinking, like just that feeling of like getting a great beer on draft and like being with your friends and your family, um is such a part of society's ritual and um, so I, we, we actually like, because we have our own facilities we we've been doing drafts since 2018 in some form or fashion. Very often that was just me putting kegs in the back of a van and dropping them off at New York City bars. We had some great, very influential New York City craft beer bars that recognized our beer right from the start and asked if they could get it on draft, and I love driving kegs down and dropping them off at those places, and so we've had very limited draft availability since we launched. We did have, at our very first brewery, a tap room up front, and so we had like eight beers on draft from like the day we launched, basically in that tap room, and it was a really fun place of discovery for people. Really fun place of discovery for people. But as we go out to the world through distribution and retail. It's really hard to convince basically every part of that system that non alcoholic beer on draft is a good idea because uh and like no judgments on the industry they don't have experience selling a big volume of non-alcoholic beer. And it really takes the faith of putting a good non-alcoholic beer on draft and then seeing how well it's received and then people are bought in and sometimes go out to two or three beers on draft after that.

Speaker 2:

I'd say the UK is way ahead. I think about 85% of UK pubs have one non-alcoholic offering and many have one on draft now. But it is very tough as a small company like Athletic Brewing to win that one draft handle, also because there are very large incumbents in the UK brewing industry. But we've kind of done our thing and we're very scrappy. We like to talk to people face-to-face, we like to share samples and share our beers and we've been building the community for years and we've been winning draft handles by draft handles and then all of a sudden M&B took us into some of their estates and then a lot of independents have started to take us in after it's started to sell well in the trial period and so we are sending quite a bit of draft now over to the UK I think about 1,000 kegs a month and really starting to get going.

Speaker 2:

But I have some pictures from our UK teammates of beautiful draft handles now with the wraparound branding and that gives me such pride and gets me so excited that someone can walk into a pub and easily be able to identify that this pub has great non-alcoholic beer.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it is a challenge and I think that for most people listening they don't necessarily understand that what's involved in trying to get alcohol free, beer on draft. It's not just a case of, you know, calling up a local distributor and getting one of your big brand names down. You know it's a venue has to make the choice to stop selling something else which might be part of a contract that they have somewhere else, contract that they have somewhere else. They have to wait until that ends. Then they have to make sure they've got the right facilities in place because obviously, alcohol free draft, uh, beer on draft isn't going to last the way that alcohol fall does, because it doesn't have the preservative of alcohol to keep it safe for so long. Uh, you've got to make sure you've got the right footfall and and that the customers actually know it's there and the staff are trained. There's just so much involved in it. So I always like to take moments like this to say to people who are listening that if you want alcohol free draft in your pub, you've got to tell the pub. You've got to tell them, um, because they need to know that people are going to buy it and that's what stops them from doing it is they don't think people are going to buy it. But, um, you're right, it is growing over here.

Speaker 1:

You know there's both a big alcohol brand and an independent beer brand that both have a thousand taps across pubs in the UK selling AF beer, and a few years ago that was almost unthinkable really. So it's amazing to see this progress is being made, being made. I think part of that is the fact that alcohol-free is being so well seen. It's so visible now in a lot of the things that mean a lot to our cultures and our society, particularly sports. You've got brands sponsoring things like the rugby with AF, guinness and Formula One, and I think basketball in the States there was Bud Zero did basketball, I believe you yourself Athletic Brewing the clue's in the name Athletic. You've got a passion for the sports side of things. I'd love to just take a bit of time to dive into where that connection came from for you. And of course, I couldn't be in the UK and not ask you about the partnership that you have going with a very special sports team over here. So can you tell us about that as well, please?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. Yeah, it's sports is definitely near and dear to my heart. I figured like fashion myself as like a very recreational athlete, but I love sports. I love running, trail running, generally just being out there and being in the community. So you mentioned a bunch of big brands with big sponsorships and I think that's great. I think what Guinness, what Heineken, what Anheuser-Busch are doing in the category is great and they're putting real marketing that's positive marketing behind their brands and helping grow the category, as well as a number of independents doing great, unique things as well.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. So if anyone ever asked me, would I prefer to do those brands make me nervous? Would I prefer to have them or not have them? I love having them in the category and I love having Heineken sponsor F1 and being in the F1 movie and stuff like that. And yeah, with Athletic, we've always thought so basically right when we launched our beers in the middle of 2018, we've had huge incumbent beer suppliers pretty much every year launch big products, big name beers, into our category since then and I've always thought of it. As you know, we can't compete on like the NBA finals, tv advertising or Super Bowl ads or things like that A little bit pricey right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but where they probably can't think or like wrap their head around competing with us is up and down the street, local events. Like I mentioned, a 5k I was at in Central Park last week. We're the sponsor of a half marathon two towns over a couple weekends ago and we have enthusiastic athletic teammates doing stuff just like I'm doing all over the country, all over the world, in the countries we do business with, and for a big corporation to wrap their head around showing up locally and bringing enthusiasm is a really tough leap for them also, and so we've kind of found our way to compete back. We did end up with a very notable UK sponsorship last year that we're really enthusiastic about. I've actually got my Arsenal jersey on the back of my chair here.

Speaker 2:

Wow, look at that Me and my son both throw on our jerseys and watch all the games. It's so easy now. It used to be when I was living in New York, because the games weren't on TV, they weren't available on streaming. You used to have to be in the pub ready for kickoff at the moment, and now I can watch it in my home office with my son on a Saturday.

Speaker 2:

Anyway, got off track, but we had gotten a lot of inbounds from different Premier League team fans and especially Arsenal fans, to our customer service, to myself individually, asking if we would ever consider stocking a stadium like Emirates. Oh, fantastic, I really thought it would be way out of our reach. You know, we're not a big multinational company, not a big multinational company. And it turned out like Arsenal just has a great team and we hit it off with their team and we, over the first year, built a great partnership and they've shared that.

Speaker 2:

Non-alcoholic beer sales in their stadium were up very significantly last year in the first year of the partnership, and so it's been like a really true partnership, authentic, and we're so excited to provide great beers to fans and obviously fans of other teams too, like our, beers are widely available in tesco, so it's um, trying to just invest in the things our community cares about, also through marketing dollars, and show up in their life. So but that it's. Uh, it's been really fun as a premier league fan in the us to get to start to get involved in that world over there yeah, I can see you've got such a big smile on your face.

Speaker 1:

you're clearly very excited by it. Um, I think it's absolutely wonderful and I love to hear that. I didn't realize, uh, what you said before about the fact that people have been reaching out to you and say, look, we'd love for you to be part of this team. That we love because, as you'll know, as a fan, the passion that we Brits have for our football teams is second to none. You know, people really, really take these things personally, and football has always had a reputation around alcohol that's been very, very negative. You know, over here, things like the football hooliganism is always partnered and paralleled with alcohol intake is showing that this way of drinking, this way of lifestyle whether it is just for this match or whether it is for a weekend or a month or whatever is reaching people in all sorts of places, for all sorts of occasions, and even your most stoic, staunch football fan is actually like do you know what? I'll have a pint of alcohol free, watch the game, go home and have a nice afternoon with the family, and I think that's absolutely fantastic.

Speaker 2:

Exactly that, and that enthusiasm is so global too. It's um we. We saw that right from the start at like tailgating in the U? S at the stadiums, and like people just love sport so universally, and beer is such an integral part of that moment. But this also lets you, as you said, like really enjoy those special moments with friends and family. Alcohol doesn't get in the way. Like we have no judgments on people who still want to drink alcohol at all those events too. It's now just like beer is for everyone now.

Speaker 1:

So it is. It is. I love you've. Clearly, you know, your sense of community and what you're doing really, really shines through. Uh, I'd love to give you a moment to talk about. You mentioned trails. I know that you have a charity, that you are very impassioned about that, that that the athletic room worked very closely with. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so, uh, right from the start. Um, my co-founder, john, and I we had a long time in business planning for Athletic. We were homebrewing on Gatorade jugs. Basically, if you could envision, gatorade jugs are basically almost like small trash cans but like jugs of water and stuff. But we had this brewing system that was three consecutive Gatorade jugs and we were homebrewing in an empty warehouse for nine months trying to perfect our method, and it was hundreds of batches. So we were standing around this homebrew set talking for like nine hours a day and at this point we barely knew each other.

Speaker 2:

John had just moved across the country to work on Athletic with me. John had just moved across the country to work on athletic with me and you know we would change the temperature in one tank by one degree on a day and then go through the whole process again, and then we'd change it by one more degree and go through the whole process again. So long and short, we had a lot of time on our hands and we were talking about like what is important, about like work. Life is so much of our life. It's like 30, 40% of our waking hours. It's probably 70% of emotional or mental energy in many weeks. And so we're like what do we want the rest of our work, life and career to be? What do we want the culture of our company to be? And that's inside and outside our walls and we decided at that point that we wanted to hard code into our company, giving back, and not just be a company that scrapes every dollar it can out of the world, but a company that reinvests in all the businesses we do business in and we love the outdoors.

Speaker 2:

And the thought was we established this hard-coded. We call it Two for the Trails, but it's basically what we call our outdoors program, which is our goal is to enhance outdoor access for generations to come. And it's up to $2 million annually in donations and we have a committee of people internally at Athletic who evaluate hundreds of applications that come in every year and we make those donations in every area we do business. So we try to allocate it proportional to revenue and so in any given year it ends up being about 200 donations to different outdoor organizations and it could be from really small projects like trail cleanups to we've helped big organizations build almost entire East Coast trail systems up and down the Northeast of the US. It could be urban playgrounds for kids. It could be really backwoods and trail systems.

Speaker 2:

We've worked with the Southwest Coast Trails Association in the UK and a number of other outdoor organizations. But it's really fun. We have this great map on our website, but if you zoom out and a number of other outdoor organizations but it's really fun if we have this great map on our website but if you zoom out, the amount of dots now, like every year, about 200 organizations and $2 million, like we. This year we'll be passing eight million dollars in donations for our two, for the trails, and it really compounds the impact of that program. So we're really passionate about that part of our company where we reinvest in the communities we do business in.

Speaker 1:

That's wonderful. That's wonderful, it's great. I think you know, people can do well for themselves by choosing to drink less for any reason, for any length of time. By choosing to drink less for any reason for any length of time, at the same time, they can be doing well for their communities and for our planet by contributing to such good causes. So, you know, hats off to you for being so conscious of the fact that you are now in a position to be able to actually take but give back and share what you're doing so.

Speaker 1:

I think that's fantastic.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and so much easier to just do it from day one and have it hard-coded in. It's like, I think, a lot of companies, once they get to a certain size, they're like, okay, what do we do for charity now? And at Athletic we've had a lot of these things baked in from day one, where every one of our teammates, when they join Athletic, become an equity owner in the company through our Two for the Team program and we've got our Two for the Trails, which is our big outdoor charitable grant.

Speaker 1:

And so we have a number of these things hard-coded into our company and culture from day one. I think a lot of people listening are going to be waiting with bated breath to hear about when you're possibly going to be opening up some facilities over here in the UK and would jump at the opportunity to work with you. I actually get a lot of people contacting me saying I'm looking for work in the industry. Who can I speak to? Oh, awesome.

Speaker 1:

Very cool it sounds like Athletic Brew would be a wonderful company to bring to UK shores in terms of building facilities here. So hats off to you for all the great work you're doing.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so doing um, there are so many more questions I could ask you. There's lots more, but I'm conscious of of your time. Um, first and foremost, before we run out, let's tell people you mentioned a couple of uh retail places earlier on um, if people want to go and find out more about you uh, more about the brand, and to purchase some cans, both here in the UK and in the US or anywhere else, where's the best place for them to go and find you?

Speaker 2:

So on our website we have a store finder which will help pull up the closest place to where anyone is. We do hope to relaunch e-commerce soon in the UK as well. And then Tesco and M&S. Tesco has a wider range of offerings than any UK retailer right now, and then M&S has our Run Wild IPA our most popular as well. So those would be both great spots if nearby to find them. Otherwise, the store finder on our website is super easy.

Speaker 1:

Okay, fantastic. And in the States I guess it's just any shop you walk into there's just athletic brewing falling out the doors.

Speaker 2:

It is much easier in the us, so the store finder will probably pick up a retailer very close, but it's in a much wider range in the us, for sure okay, fantastic.

Speaker 1:

I'll make sure that that's all in the show notes for people so that they can go and and pick up a can. And also I'd say here in the uk is that if you do have any trouble finding it, there's always um, I know you're stocked in some of the online uh retailers, e-commerce retailers over here as well, so there's links to that yeah, fabulous, fabulous.

Speaker 1:

Um, it's time for me to let you go, but before I do, it's for my final question, which I ask everybody who comes on the show bill. Uh, it is, as you said, hot, sunny weather at the moment, so I'm guessing it's barbecue season. I'm sure, uh, you and your friends are all set up ready to to enjoy the hot weather. Um, so imagine, this weekend you're off to a barbecue and you're taking some drinks along with you to enjoy. Now, of course, of course, it's going to be several cases of athletic brewing of all kinds, but other than your own brand. What else would you like to enjoy on a hot, sunny barbecue day in the low no, or like uh, arena?

Speaker 2:

yeah, I. So I um, as I shared before I, I always have a pantry full of things in the category. Um, you know, I obviously I'll have. If it's a hot sunny day, probably a lot of athletic lager Always run wild. With me too, run wild is like 70% of the beer I drink. So one of my favorite drinks I've been drinking a lot in the category lately is called Pathfinder. It's a non-alcoholic spirit that I really enjoy. It's very unique. I think Ritual has a really nice range as well. So, yeah, there's an increasing range of Negronis, some different non-alcoholic cocktails I've been really enjoying as well. So it's amazing to see. I guess when we started, you know, I had that pain point moment where there was nothing exciting in the category, and now it's starting to be. When you open a menu, the other side of the menu is just as exciting and their brands you're just as excited about. So I've really enjoyed seeing the whole category through beer, wine, spirits, cocktails all start to develop. It's really fun.

Speaker 1:

Where do you think I know I said I'd let you go, but I'm not going to when do you think the category is headed then? So you know, you guys have seen some some phenomenal growth. You've said you've noticed some differences between what's available or the I suppose, the approach in the uk versus the us. What are you seeing in the industry and where do you think it's going?

Speaker 2:

I'm gonna lose all credibility now because I'm I'm still the most delusional person in the industry.

Speaker 1:

But um no, that's me, you're okay yeah.

Speaker 2:

so when we started um we, I looked at the uh, most penetrated markets in spain and germany where non-alcoholic beer had gotten to about 12 percent of beer sales and now it's headed towards 15 in those markets and I thought perhaps the us and uk can get there one day. Um, well, now in lot of retailers it is starting to get close to that. In the US and UK there are many retailers now where non-alcoholic beer is over 10% of beer sales and we have seen non-alcoholic beer pass 20% of beer sales in some retailers and I have always said publicly I think it can go to 10% to 20% of beer sales. Said publicly I think it can go to 10 to 20% of beer sales. But I do think all those categories I just mentioned beer, wine and spirits on a long enough time scale it makes sense logically to me that they would all be 50% non-alcoholic because the occasion base and the population bases are so big and I do think this part of the categories could be the driver of adult beverage for a long time to come.

Speaker 1:

I don't think that's unreasonable. I think that it might take a while to get there in terms of those numbers. But when you look at the upcoming generation, the Gen Z that everyone talks so much about although I always say they're not the only people who are changing the way that they drink but in terms of buying power, as they come into their buying power and becoming the most influential generation for consumerism, and when you look at grocery and you look at hospitality, because the way that their drinking is changing so much, it stands to reason that the consumption levels are going to be impacted in such a strong way that we're going to see these numbers rising. Will we ever sort of match the Germans and the Spanish and such? I'm not sure, because for them it's an ingrained way of life. You know, think about the amount of breweries there are in Germany, and every single one of them makes an alcohol-free beer. So people don't realise actually they're the biggest producers of AF beer in the world because every tiny town is producing some, aren't they?

Speaker 2:

yeah, but now, um, in, in the US and UK, almost every large brewer has a non-alcoholic analog of their flagship beers. Um, so I, I think, um, you, I think we see every age group really excited about these drinks, as you said. But I think it is harder for older industry participants and people to like really imagine that, oh, non-alcoholic drinks are just as great and make sense as alcoholic drinks. But now there's a generation of people turning 21 who don't know the history of non-alcoholic beer and don't know that there's supposed to be a stigma around it, don't know that it's not a huge part of drinks, and I think that'll be a totally destigmatized choice to grab it. There'll be great offerings there have always been great offerings available to this generation and I think that's going to change the world really fast.

Speaker 1:

Well, watch this space, guys, because this is an exciting time, isn't it? It's such an exciting industry to be involved in and there's so much coming up and, as you mentioned before, there's now a drink for every occasion, for every reason, for every person, and I'm really really grateful that brands like yours are part of that repertoire. So I don't need to tell you to keep up the good work, because obviously I know that you will, but thank you so much for what you do and thank you for joining me today, Bill.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much, Denise, and thank you for what you do as well spreading the word about the category and teaching people. So thank you so much.

Speaker 1:

You.

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Denise Hamilton-Mace

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