Soton student company Future Brew has secured a £20,000 investment!

Future Brew, a company started by Soton Uni students, which brews beer made from leftover bread, has been offered a £20,000 investment. Future Brew was created in April 2019 with the aim to battle against food waste.

Soton final year student Dimitris-Marios Stoidis is the founder of the company and pitched the idea to investors at the University of Southampton during a Dragon’s Den style event.

Chris Broad, former Apple Director of Sales Contracting and Andrew Doe, founder of confetti.co.uk, offered £20,000 towards development and valued the company at £200,000.

Dimitris told the Soton Tab: “I was reading some articles and saw food waste is a massive problem, honestly it is so frustrating.

“As I was doing more research, I saw that more than 50 per cent of food waste is bread, so I thought what could I do with this? I did more research and saw I could make beer from leftover bread – I love beer and I love tackling problems.”

Future Brew uses surplus bread as one of the main ingredients to brew their beer. With every pint, they saw 160g of CO2 from the atmosphere.

Future Brew first created a pale ale called The Stag: “We launched our first beer at the University of Southampton in January. We sold out our whole stock within a day and a half”

They now sell a pale ale called ‘Dough Dough’ with more coming soon on their website. Their website states: “Dough Dough is our first-ever planet changing packaged beer that is available now for nationwide distribution. It’s brewed with surplus bread that we collect from local supermarkets and with every canned beer you save more than 100g of CO2 emission from being emitted to the atmosphere.”

“It is something I think is quite easy to drink. The flavour is quite subtle because we want everyone to try it,” Dimitris told the Soton Tab.

“We are carbon negative. We wanted to make something that is fully sustainable, not just in theory but also in practice. We have zero waste, zero plastic, so we are really happy about this.”

During the coronavirus pandemic, the company also stepped up to help some of those most in need. They sold mystery bags of food that would be thrown away by local supermarkets.

For every mystery bag purchased, they delivered another mystery bag to a vulnerable family. Future Brew gave ingredients for almost 9,000 meals to families in need. “We believe every business should care for people that don’t have a voice themselves”, Dimitris told the Soton Tab.

In terms of the Future, Dimitris told the Soton Tab: “We want to increase what we do. One of our big aims is to sell over a million pints by 2022, this will allow us to offset more than a million kilos of CO2 from the atmosphere”

“Our next step is to get our beer into some big supermarkets.”

“We also want to employ people from disadvantaged backgrounds as we get bigger”.

To students across Southampton or anyone that has an idea for a startup, Dimitris said: “Just go for it, honestly. Talk with people about your idea and be open to feedback. If you don’t try or talk to people you will never find just how much your idea could be worth.”

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