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This Week’s Number
24M
Slices of bread wasted each day in the UK
Toast Ale: Brewing a Better Future
Toast Ale is a UK brewery that makes beer from surplus bread, the fresh heel ends and unsold loaves that would otherwise be thrown away. They replace 25% of the malted barley with bread, donate 100% of profits to charity, and open-sourced their recipe so anyone can copy them. They were the first UK brewery to become a certified B Corp.
A single sandwich factory throws away 13,000 slices of fresh bread a day.
Tristram Stuart, who spent years as a food waste campaigner, knew of this issue. Then in 2015, he visited the Brussels Beer Project in Belgium and tried a beer called Babylon, brewed with bread.
The thought was simple: the UK wastes 24 million slices a day. We also drink a lot of beer. Surely we can put the two together.
Toast Ale launched in 2016. The model: source surplus bread from sandwich factories, use it to replace 25% of the malted barley, donate 100% of profits to charity.
The impact goes beyond food waste. By replacing barley with bread, every batch reduces demand on farmland, water, and energy. It's a food waste solution and a sustainable farming solution in one.
But they didn't stop there, they open-sourced the recipe. Any brewery can copy them and they want them to. If every UK brewery used just 10% surplus bread, we could halve the bread wasted daily.
Most companies are built to grow forever. Toast is built to solve a problem and disappear.
In 2018, Toast became the first UK brewery to certify as a B Corp—and has since recertified with the highest score of any UK brewery. That same year, Stuart gave away his shares to the Purpose Foundation, legally preventing Toast from ever being sold or paying dividends.
A PICTURE WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS
GO DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
❶ Toast Ale's Impact Report: Full transparency on bread saved, carbon avoided, and where the money goes
❷ Tristram Stuart's TED Talk: The global food waste scandal
❸ Toast's Open-Source Homebrew Recipe: Make your own bread beer at home
"If you want to change the world, you have to throw a better party than those destroying it."
Thanks for reading. If this landed, forward it to someone building something that matters.
See you next week,
Tyler
Brought to you by The Good Studio