Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Ted Fleming | Partake Brewing
167 Plays1 year ago
Non-alcoholic beer is all the rage but it’s not new to the grocery store.
For the longest time it was a sleepy category, dominated by multi-national brands, leaving a lot to be desired from a taste and experience stand point.
Then in 2017 a plucky Canadian took it upon himself to brew award-winning beer that can be enjoyed anywhere, by anyone, anytime.
This episode of Aisle 42 is a conversation with Ted Fleming, the founder of Partake Brewing and we talk about the exciting future of their healthier, low-calorie, guilt-free beer.
The discussion covers a wide range of topics including the importance of quality, precision, and natural ingredients in the brewing process, how consumers with dietary restrictions or lifestyles cherish alternative beverages, sustainability and social responsibility in beverage making, and we even hear about his experience on Dragon’s Den which included a beer cart bike journey in a rain storm on a Toronto Highway.
The entrepreneurial force is strong with this one.
To learn more about their wide selection of beer visit https://drinkpartake.com.
To learn more about Ethical Food Group and why the Aisle 42 podcast exists visit http://www.ethicalfoodgroup.com.
Here’s a summary of the conversation:
Introduction: The interview began with Ted Fleming and Corwin Hiebert expressing excitement about discussing low-calorie, nonalcoholic, and sustainable beer.
Vision for Future Grocery Stores: Fleming envisions future grocery stores as more accessible, distributed, and affordable, emphasizing the importance of community and convenience.
Nonalcoholic Beer in Grocery Stores: They discuss the growing consumer interest in nonalcoholic beer, noting it as a guilt-free option that is gaining shelf space in grocery stores.
Partake Brewing's Journey: Fleming shares the story of Partake Brewing, starting with its first IPA in 2017. He highlights the challenges and innovation required to create a diverse range of nonalcoholic craft beers.
Brewing Process and Quality: The conversation touches on the technical aspects of brewing nonalcoholic beer, emphasizing precision and food safety. Fleming explains the delicate nature of the process and the importance of quality ingredients.
Consumer Base and Drinking Occasions: They note the evolving consumer base for nonalcoholic beer, from those abstaining for health reasons to others seeking moderation. The flexibility of nonalcoholic beer enables consumption in various social and personal contexts.
Sustainability and B Corp Certification: Partake's commitment to sustainability and social responsibility is highlighted by their B Corp certification. This reflects the company's efforts in reducing environmental impact and supporting community well-being.
Experience on Dragons' Den: Fleming shares his experience pitching Partake on Dragons' Den, noting the exposure and challenges, as well as the outcome of securing a deal.
Availability: The interview concludes with information on where to find Partake beer, mentioning its wide distribution in North America both online and in various retail locations.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Non-Alcoholic Beer
00:00:00
Speaker
This is aisle 42.
00:00:07
Speaker
Non-alcoholic beer is all the rage, but it's not new to the grocery store. For the longest time, it was a sleepy category dominated by multinational brands, leaving a lot to be desired from a taste and experience standpoint.
Ted Fleming and Partake Brewing
00:00:21
Speaker
Then in 2017, a plucky Canadian took it upon himself to brew award-winning beer that can be enjoyed anywhere, by anyone, anytime.
00:00:30
Speaker
This episode of IL-42 is a conversation with Ted Fleming, the founder of Partake Brewing, and we talk about the exciting future of their healthier, low-calorie, guilt-free beer. The discussion covers a wide range of topics, including the importance of quality, precision, and natural ingredients in the brewing process, how consumers with dietary restrictions and lifestyles cherish alternative beverages, sustainability and social responsibility in beverage making,
00:00:57
Speaker
And we even hear about his experience on Dragon's Den, which included a beer cart bike journey and a rainstorm on Toronto Highway. The entrepreneurial force is strong with this one. Here's Ted from Partake Brewing.
00:01:13
Speaker
Ted, I've been looking forward to this conversation ever since we sat down for a cup of coffee from just around the corner from my office. And I excited to dive into the world of low calorie, non-alcoholic and sustainable beer.
Future of Grocery Stores and Non-Alcoholic Beer Popularity
00:01:26
Speaker
But before we make that jump, I'd love to know first, if you could imagine the perfect grocery store of the future, what would it look like? Yeah, that's a great question. Perfect grocery store of the future.
00:01:39
Speaker
I'm a big fan of grocery stores that are super close and convenient to me. I'd love to see more distributed retail, really close to a lot of communities making healthy, great tasting food accessible to all kinds of people with some great affordability as well.
00:01:59
Speaker
I think we've gone in the direction of really massive megastores where people have to drive to get their food and I'd love to see it more distributed, more equal in terms of cost and accessibility and nutrition being a part of that.
00:02:14
Speaker
Yeah. I like that idea a lot. And certainly the smaller grocery stores, the ones that feel almost a little bit more like a destination than a, you know, a logistical task on your calendar. It can be really fun. It can be a really, you can get really excited walking to a grocery store that's a bit more curated or a little bit more feel a little bit more of that neighborhood feel.
00:02:35
Speaker
Absolutely. And I think that would layer on just like, you know, a lot of people are having their groceries delivered, just having that distributed location where where groceries could come from, even if it's being delivered. That's that's a value add from an environmental perspective, too, I think.
00:02:50
Speaker
I agree. Now let's talk about beer. Beer in the grocery stores, especially for, I mean, out West, there isn't a lot of alcoholic beer in grocery stores, at least not that I'm aware of, but in other places there is. But what's interesting about the space that you play is that your
00:03:08
Speaker
Brewing beautiful beers that because of their lack of alcohol are in the grocery store and it's a category that's growing and that more and more retail shelves are giving space to and Consumers are just getting more and more excited about beer that they can enjoy. I think you guys use the term guilt-free
00:03:30
Speaker
And sure enough, guilt-free is a wonderful thing. But what I find really fascinating about the beers that you guys have is that you're leaning into some really interesting flavors. So let's go to the top of the pile here. Why don't you walk us through all the beers that you guys make. What are you guys brewing over there at Partake?
Brewing Process and Product Range
00:03:50
Speaker
Yeah, great question. We've made about 15 different beers over our lifespan. We launched in 2017. That very first product was an IPA and today it's still our best selling individual
00:04:04
Speaker
flavor. And the reason I started with that is in 2017, there was no such thing as craft non-alcoholic beer. Any non-alcoholic beer you could find at retail was some kind of lager. It was either from Europe or it was from one of the big brewers in North America. And so I kind of started with, okay, IPA
00:04:25
Speaker
it represents 20%, if not 25% of all craft beer sales. So to be a craft brewery and call yourselves a craft brewery, I think everyone understands you have to have an IPA. It also, in my mind, was probably the hardest craft beer style to get right in the non-alcoholic format. And so in some ways, I started with the biggest challenge and saying, okay, if I can launch an IPA, a non-alcoholic IPA that
00:04:51
Speaker
that really resonates, tastes great, then I can make other styles. That'll be the gateway to making other styles and prove to me that they're possible. And so that first launch of the product was fantastically received. We did a Kickstarter campaign. We had a $10,000 goal in that campaign. We reached that in the first three hours of our campaign and went on to raise over $30,000. And then we had repeat customers. I still have customers today that are
00:05:18
Speaker
or supporting me and buying that same IPA, albeit that IPA has evolved, it's gotten better.
00:05:24
Speaker
incrementally better every year as well. More recently, we've gotten into really specialty type of beers. We have a peach goza that's extremely well-liked. It actually drinks a bit more like a seltzer than it does a beer. So for anyone that says, hey, I love what you're doing, but I don't really have a taste for beer, we kind of put them onto our peach goza, which drinks a bit more like a seltzer. We're doing some new launches of product, like some variants on lager because the market for beer in general is
00:05:54
Speaker
moving a bit away from IPA today and towards sort of more easy drinking styles. So we've done a rattler in the past. We've done a lime flavored beer in the past. We also do seasonal beers that reflect sort of a darker, richer type of beer in the winter season. So we launched a Dunkle more recently. We've done a half a bison in the summer. So we have a pretty broad portfolio of flavors that we've launched and there's still more to come. Love it. It's such a great lineup. I tried it for the first time.
00:06:24
Speaker
three years ago, and what really struck me... Well, first off, my expectations were kind of low, I'll be honest with you. I thought it was going to be kind of a, you know, it said beer on the side of the can, but what was it going to taste like? And I was expecting sort of that light, flat, you know, zero mouth feel kind of consumption, and I was going to be underwhelmed. What hit me in the face
00:06:48
Speaker
was great flavor, bold flavor, where I felt like I took a big swig and it actually was satisfying. And I don't know how you do it. And a lot of people have failed trying to do it before. And you mentioned some of those large commercial non-elk beers or those European elk beers when my wife was
00:07:08
Speaker
you know, pregnant and early family days where she was like, okay, I can't have, you know, alcohol. So she's, you know, buying these other beers. And she was pretty grumpy about didn't last long. She was like, forget it. I'm just going to drink great juice or I'm just going to drink water. Like it just wasn't worth it.
00:07:24
Speaker
The non-alc beer space has had an evolution, but some of these beers just still don't taste good. So not everyone has evolved. What does it take in the process? Is non-alc beer brewing? Is it harder? What's different about it? Like, how does it work? Because I think for the most part, us consumers get the idea of, oh, it's fermenting this and hops that and we kind of get it. But you start saying non-alc, we're like, is it just juice? Like, how are you making this stuff?
00:07:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's a good question. And I actually I got a message today from someone who said, Hey, Ted, you know, I connected with them on LinkedIn, and they're like, Ted, glad you reached out. I've been a fan and a drinker for five years, you've helped sort of really change the non alcoholic landscape and given me something really, really fantastic to drink over those last five years. And she discovered
00:08:12
Speaker
Partake after pregnancy so i totally get the story in the path your wife was on and what things were like before i give up alcohol because of the diagnosis of crows disease so. There wasn't really much for people that didn't drink before partake in some other brands kinda let the charge.
00:08:29
Speaker
Yeah. And in those early days, as we priced our product similarly to our alcoholic cousins, you get a lot of people who would say, okay, well, why is it priced the same? Shouldn't it be half the price? It doesn't have taxes. It doesn't have all these things that they assume are in the cost of their alcoholic beer. And I like to use the word delicate. Making a good, in fact, a great, in our case, non-alcoholic beer
00:08:55
Speaker
It's very delicate. It doesn't tolerate errors very well. Whereas the 7% IPA, you can hide a lot of errors within that high alcohol content and our beer, you can't. And so it takes a lot of care, a lot of precision brewing. Definitely some companies are using dealkylization, some more heavily than others, some very light way. But I think part of the reason
00:09:22
Speaker
We've had the commercial success that we have had. It's the only thing we do. We are only focused on non-alcoholic beer. It's meaningful to us as a company. It's meaningful to me as a founder because of my situation. We've taken the time to make our product great. I think a lot of products entering the market today are just trying to get into a hot category.
00:09:45
Speaker
and haven't put the time in to really hone their product. And unfortunately, that's to the detriment of the category and probably a barrier to their long-term success.
00:09:56
Speaker
And there's a safety concern around this brewing technique where it can be done wrong to the point where beer can be unhealthy or harmful based on some factors. Is it one of those things where it just comes down to good technique and you just have to kind of follow the checklist or is there sort of a dark arch to this whole thing? Yeah, I would say there's some
00:10:18
Speaker
I think publicly available methods to make the beer shelf stable from a taste perspective and also from a food safety perspective.
Quality, Safety, and Health Benefits
00:10:28
Speaker
We're a leader in the category for us, full tunnel pasteurization of all our products.
00:10:33
Speaker
a non-negotiable. Any new partner we look at for brewing our beer or partnering with, they have to have that level of food safety. Unfortunately, I think a lot of companies, again, just sort of rushing to get into the market, maybe aren't taking that same level of care. And I think some of your listeners may be aware of sort of what happened with Kombucha five to 10 years ago in the US. A lot of recalls around the alcohol contents were higher than claimed.
00:11:02
Speaker
I think you'll see that in non-out beer in the next couple of years. But us as a company, and there are a few others that call it a platinum standard of food safety and product control, I think we'll be here for the long haul. And better for you is a phrase that some of us use to talk about products that are more responsibly made, especially when it comes to ingredients. So what's your approach at Partake when it comes to what goes inside these beers?
00:11:28
Speaker
Yeah, our beers have always been natural ingredients. So key ingredients for us, water, barley, hops, yeast, those are the four ingredients that you would see from the Bavarian beer standard in Germany that goes back to the 11th century. So very common beer ingredients. We will deviate from that when we do something like a Radler, which is a beer with a citrus juice, for instance, or our Pich Goza, the style calls for salt and coriander.
00:11:59
Speaker
some non-traditional beer ingredients, but still natural ingredients. When we do use flavor enhancers, they are natural flavor enhancers. They're organic in nature. So the quality of the ingredients is a huge component of the end product that consumers experience and taste.
00:12:16
Speaker
And consumption occasion is always a big play when it comes to beer. Personally, there are times of the day where I will enjoy a beer, elk or non-elk, but then I won't. So for example, late into the evening, I'm not likely to open a beer because of how it makes me feel. However, in non-elk, that consumption occasion window kind of widens a little bit, where it's a little bit more enjoyable, you know, a little later in the day.
00:12:40
Speaker
or a little earlier in the morning, like that Sunday brunch where, yes, I do enjoy an IPA and having a non-elk IPA with an eggs Benedict is actually really, really enjoyable. And then I don't feel like I need a nap at 11.45 in the morning. What kind of feedback are you hearing about how people consume, like where people consume it? What sort of consumer feedback are you getting?
00:13:03
Speaker
It's been quite an evolution in terms of consumer use occasion. When I started the business, most of our consumers looked like me. They had a health or medical or a personal reason why they didn't drink alcohol, and they were totally non-drinkers. Very different today. We're seeing a huge influx of consumers who are using non-alk as kind of... They could use it as a pacer, so they might have
00:13:26
Speaker
go out and have two alcoholic beers and then they'll have two partakes and they'll go home and they'll feel like, okay, I can sleep well, I can get up in the morning and be functional. But they're still feeling like good about, hey, I'm social, I'm connecting with people in that social occasion. And that's the way they balance things. We see other people who say, hey, I'm just not gonna drink.
00:13:46
Speaker
during the week and i'll drink non-alcoholic beer during the week and then on the weekend i'll be a little bit more flexible in terms of how i drink the funny occasion happen to me just a few weeks ago where i came down for breakfast and my wife is drinking what look like orange juice for me and i'm like oh can i have some of that and she's like oh it's it's not orange juice it's it's one of your rattlers so you know i think there are
00:14:07
Speaker
are a lot of new occasions for non-out where a few years ago people wouldn't consider that, but today a lot of great options and people are using it in a way that makes sense for them. We've got some employees within our company that say, hey, I don't drink when I travel, so I drink non-out when I travel, but I can drink when I'm not traveling. So they just have different ways that it is weaved into their lifestyle.
00:14:32
Speaker
And you guys talk about guilt free and that also plays into the calorie count. You guys have very low calorie beer, which is remarkable. And I think that that does extend into a lot of different types of occasions and situations where people want to enjoy something that's beautifully made, but it isn't that typical two, three, 400 calorie count. Yeah. I think that's something that's, that's fairly unique to partake as a brand. I think,
00:14:59
Speaker
As consumers look to what is meaningful for me in this product or any product, they want great taste, which we certainly deliver on. They want variety. We deliver on that, but the calorie piece is something quite unique to partake. All of our products are between
00:15:14
Speaker
10 and 30 calories for an entire can. So many people equate that to it's almost calorie free in many instances. Our team likes to joke, you know, you can burn 10 calories just in the act of raising your hand to drink a beer. So, you know, some people have
00:15:29
Speaker
joke that we're kind of like the celery of beer, albeit we taste really, really good. So that's a great component to what we offer. I happened to develop diabetes last year and it's just lucky for me, the beer that I make is really a product that I can use every day and fits that restriction that I have today. And I think it works for just people in general who are trying to
00:15:54
Speaker
manage how and where the calories they intake come from. And I think a lot of people are not looking for calories to come from beverages. They're looking for really low calorie beverages. So those calories can come from more nutrient rich food.
B Corp Certification and Awards
00:16:06
Speaker
And I was surprised to learn that you guys are B Corp certified and I don't know how long you've had that, but that doesn't seem very easy in beer manufacturing to acquire that and to retain it. And you certainly stand out in the, in the sea of craft beer. There is not a lot of B Corp certifications out there because that level of transparency takes a deep commitment. Uh, what has it been like for your team to kind of go through that process and to maintain that level of standard?
00:16:35
Speaker
Yeah, it was a very recent certification that we've gotten in the last few months, something I'm really proud of just as a founder for my company, but also the team having gone through that process.
00:16:47
Speaker
really eye-opening and educational for the team and I think really awesome community to be a part of when we announced that certification. I got so many messages about welcome to the club and people being supportive around that component of what we're doing. I think a big component of it and our success in getting that certification was
00:17:08
Speaker
You know, a lot of the foundation that was built early on in the company was around how do we reduce shipping costs and therefore greenhouse gas emissions? How do we reduce the amount of waste that we produce? Where does the waste go? Can it be upcycled in some way?
00:17:22
Speaker
pretty much all of our spent grain go to animal feed or human food production. So we're a very low waste type of company. The alcohol free component of what we do was, and the fact that that's all that we do was important to that too, because there's a human health and a human component to B Corp certification. And the fact that we're really focused on human health and doing that by making it easy for people to have a healthy relationship with alcohol, that was the component of things we have
00:17:52
Speaker
quite a few female leaders in the company, female board members, that was a component of the criteria as well. Paying our employees market wages all across the board, having parity between female and male employees as well. There's a lot of great things that the process makes you go through and opens your eyes to if you're not doing it and gives you some perspective and credit for things you have done well over the years.
00:18:18
Speaker
I love it. It's very exciting, by the way, to see a company like yours lean into a certification where you're exposing yourself to outside critique. And that can have a big impact on how you operate and how you run your business. So that level of transparency is a beautiful thing.
00:18:37
Speaker
You guys have won some awards. You're not just making beer for a few people and making beer for a lot of people and you're doing it in such a way that's getting industry attention. What are some of these awards scenarios like? Are they hard to win? What's the competitive landscape? Is it blind taste testing? What do beer contests or challenges or awards? What's that landscape like?
00:19:01
Speaker
Yeah, there's generally two different ways the awards work. And our first award was awarded to our second product, which was our pale ale, which came after the IPA. And I sent that product off to the UK for the World Beer Awards. And I got a call in August saying, hey,
00:19:20
Speaker
won a medal and I was like oh that's fantastic and it's like oh by the way it was you know the gold medal that was an amazing achievement because it was very early on in our history that award in many ways allowed us to open up some really really key retail partners and then we had the commercial success in those retail partners which opened up more more opportunities for us but that's probably the most special award for me the competitions like I said earlier
00:19:46
Speaker
tend to fall within one of two categories. One is there's a gold, silver, bronze, and that's it. Or there's a point system where multiple products could win gold, silver, or bronze based on their point scoring. So we've been in both styles of competition and won, I would say, probably 15 medals over the course of our history. And we try to put in new products to those awards. So
00:20:11
Speaker
pretty much all of our products have won some type of award in their history, which is fantastic. And I think it's good for us to challenge ourselves to be in that and to be at a competitive table. So we keep at the top of our game from a taste perspective. And the thing I tell my team and the thing that we all recognize is that calories is never a component of these awards. It's all based on taste. It's all based on mouthfeel. It's all based on how true to style you are. And we continue to win
00:20:41
Speaker
award after award for those things. And we do it in a 10 to 30 calorie format, which blows most people's minds. I agree. It's mind blowing.
Dragon's Den Experience and Market Reach
00:20:51
Speaker
You have stood in front of the dragons on dragon's den, uh, once or twice, just once live. And they did a recap episode recently. Yeah. That's what it was. What was that experience like to stand in front of them and say, this is what I'm doing. You know, are you interested? What was that whole thing like?
00:21:09
Speaker
It was terrifying. You know, even for people that have watched the episode, it's available on CBC website if you want to watch. And so I wrote in, I built this cargo bike that had like a beer keg inside and a tap handle on the top and it was branded Partake. And I actually had to ride that in.
00:21:28
Speaker
along the lake shore in Toronto in order to get to the CBC building where they filmed it. And it was like this spring, massive spring storm. So I showed up absolutely soaked at seven in the morning. People driving along the lake shore boulevard were looking at me with the strangest looks of like, what is this guy doing? I got there and then eight hours later I got to pitch. So you spend eight hours just rehearsing your pitch in the green room. And I almost lost my voice.
00:21:57
Speaker
And then you get in there and you do your pitch. And I did it quite well. I'll give myself credit for that, but super nervous. And you just don't know what's gonna come at you. It's so unscripted. And Arlene, for people who know who the dragons are on the show, she had a glass of red wine brought out to her because she says, oh, I don't like beer. And you have no idea, just stepping in there. It's like, what is going on?
00:22:26
Speaker
Like I was totally not expecting this. You watch the show, you watch the episodes and like, you know, some shenanigans are going to happen, but you're just never prepared for what probably actually happens to you. And, you know, I think I went in there with the mindset of, hey, let's just walk away with a deal and give ourselves an opportunity to talk to a dragon in the future and be able to at least say to people, hey, I was on Dragonstan and I got a deal.
00:22:52
Speaker
And that was, you know, in the long run, a great experience. I've got a TV deal with Manjeet and we've got, um, we've got a good relationship. We both live in Calgary. We, we chat with each other every once in a while. So, you know, great experience. I recommend it to any entrepreneur. It's just part of, to be successful. You got to put yourself out there. I love it. So good. Yeah. I watched that. For some reason, maybe it was the recap, it kind of threw me out. I saw the notification about the recap. I'm like, Oh, is he on again? Are you double dipping?
00:23:20
Speaker
That was definitely easier to do it, not live and not in front of an audience of dragons. Yeah. Where can people find you? Where's your product on store, which grocery stores, where, where are people picking up their next partake? Yeah. So the easiest place across North America is drinkpartake.com. So we sell e-commerce everywhere in North America. In Canada, we're very widely distributed. So,
00:23:46
Speaker
Superstore, Safeway, Loblaws, Metro, Whole Foods, Walmart, we're in some Costco's doing a roadshow right now actually. So quite widely distributed in Canada from a retail perspective. A lot of liquor stores have us as well, the LCBO being one of the larger ones. In the US, got a great start to our business there. We're in total wine and more.
00:24:07
Speaker
on the West Coast, Whole Foods across the country, Wegmans in the Northeast. So pretty widely distributed, but still early on in our evolution in the U.S. So pretty exciting path to growth for us, but a lot in front of us, particularly on the U.S. side of our business. It's amazing. I love it. Thanks for everything you're doing for beer drinkers and for people in the planet. You're doing it responsibly and with a level of transparency that is really stand out. So thanks, Ted. Thanks for doing this.
00:24:38
Speaker
Thanks Coron, great to chat.
00:24:40
Speaker
Partake beer is really delicious. It's in my fridge. Well, it was. And I hope you'll grab some the next time you hit the grocery store or order online. You can learn more about their wide selection of beers on their website, drinkpartake.com. On behalf of my entire team here at Ethical Food Group, thanks for listening. And thanks for sharing this podcast with your friends. The word is out and more and more shoppers are listening every week. It's very exciting. Okay, that's a wrap. I'm Corwin Hebert and I'll see you in the future.
00:25:22
Speaker
you