Hi friends of Ugly Beer Co,

This is my first newsletter detailing the Ugly Beer, Beautiful World project!

If you’re already a subscriber, you’ll know from our Welcome email what we’re up to and why. Otherwise you can find the backstory at UglyBeer.co.

tl;dr: We have a big vision for The Ugly Beer Co, and are thrilled to report our first sales from a pilot run this weekend!

Vision

Save 1 Billion bottles.

We’ve read estimates that only 40% of glass containers are recycled in the US today. The most common glass container to end up in the trash?

You guessed it, the 12-ounce, long-neck beer bottle. Along with the proliferation of craft breweries nationwide, it’s absolutely inconceivable to return slightly customized glass beer bottles to their original brewery to clean and use again. A much more manageable and environmentally conscious approach is to save, clean, and re-use bottles locally.

MVP

I’ve never brewed beer. I don’t know all the ins and outs of alcohol brewing, distribution, and sales from a regulatory perspective, but from everything I’m reading, it’s not cheap and it’s not simple.

I had the idea for Ugly Beer more than a year ago, and if you know me you know I’m not particularly patient in trying to test my ideas in the real world. But the idea of becoming an alcohol business just to test out the reused bottle concept had me stuck.

That’s when my friend Paul suggested Root Beer.

It was a literal God-send.

My friend Paul is actually the leader of my local Christian CEO forum group. Like any forum of CEOs and business owners, we discuss business issues, trends we are seeing, and trade best practices. But as a faith-based group, we’re also praying for each other and challenging each other to view our business “as a ministry”.

Paul recommended that maybe a Christian business owner should consider whether alcohol is the right way to approach the community as a ministry opportunity. I still firmly believe alcohol consumption is okay because Jesus himself was a skilled wine-maker (he cheated with a miracle, but whatever), but the Root Beer idea was a perfect MVP.

Not only that, but strangely enough, I have a personal history with root beer.

When I lived with my dad and brother in New Jersey before getting married, it was an alcohol free home so there wouldn’t be drinking around my brain-injured brother. So when I turned 21, I threw a root beer kegger.

It felt right at a deep level to shift to root beer, which not only avoids alcohol regs but is also something we can brew at home under the “cottage industry” law in Florida - meaning we are not yet subject to food safety inspections until we reach a certain level of sales. Perfect MVP.

Venue

But where to sell? While I’d like to see six packs of Ugly Beer on store shelves someday, I have no experience with retail.

Answer: Farmer’s Markets

We visited a few in our area, spoke with a couple, and landed our tent at the smallest market in town, Norwood’s Farmer’s Market, for the first time yesterday. It was a beautiful morning, and we were set with a few dozen cold bottles of root beer to try to sell some and gather feedback.

Product feedback

Data point one: we sold out!

OK, I know, some of the root beer was bought by our friends in town who knew what we were up to, and that can be a false positive.

But that was not the majority of our sales, and we learned a lot by talking face to face with consumers who had never heard of us or the concept before.

Data point two: Zero people were worried about the bottle cleanliness. Instead, our top question/objection was about sugar content, or asking for a diet/sugar free option. This happened at least five times over the four hours we were set up.

Emily had the idea to bring a larger container and little cups for free samples, and that was a key decision. The samples drew customers over and gave us the 20 seconds we needed to get them hooked on the story. So if we sell retail later, where there are no samples or verbal storytelling, we need the packaging to tell our story well!

Emily posting on Facebook and Instagram has already netted us a couple hundred followers starting with our own friends, but we didn't get many new social followers or customer contact info at the live event. No one opted to get a text or email receipt while checking out with a credit card. We need to incentivise these behaviors in the future with a discount or loyalty program.

The numbers

~$1,200 invested to run the pilot. We had to buy a keg and other brewing and carbonation equipment, ingredient inventory, some very basic design work, and product labels.

$129 in sales from the pilot

• 5 six-packs at $15 each

• 18 individual bottles at $3 each

$0.74 current cost per unit

• $0.29 for the actual root beer (organic cane sugar, root beer flavors, CO2)

• $0.45 for caps and labels

• Not including labor or other costs for collecting, cleaning, or filling bottles

48 bottles saved and sold so far. 999,999,952 to go.

Sincerely,

Tim, the ugly beer guy