This episode of Fractal Marketing is called “How to be unique in a booming niche like craft beer” and today’s guest is Richard Jeffares, founder of TWØBAYS Brewing Co, is a pioneer of gluten-free, vegan, and lactose-free craft beer in Australia.
Richard starts by laying the context for a gluten-free product, and for TWØBAYS, that is the niche of coeliacs. He then discusses the early successes of the brand and their plans for brand awareness and expansion in 2020, including social media and word of mouth marketing
QUOTES
05:19 “It’s just not the same as sitting there at the bar and you’re drinking the cider while everyone else is drinking beer, for me anyway. You feel different. And unless you love cider and don’t like beer, which I don’t, you want to fit in with everybody else. So that’s really been the crux of it is, just want to be inclusive.”
06:55 “So we then negotiated the exclusive rights to import millet, buckwheat, and rice from these gluten-free malt houses in the US and bring them in by the containerload. So we’ve got, I think it’s 11 or 12 different millet malts, 1 buckwheat and about 6 or 7 different rice malts that we can use to make the beers that we have at the tap or even in package.”
12:11 “So from April to December, we got to about 750 locations around Australia, so anywhere from Port Douglas, Hobart and Perth and probably of those, I’d say 250, probably 200 of them are the big guys and the other 550 are independents. And so we’ve really wanted to make sure we try and do both strategies.”
27:30 “We’re 100% dedicated brewery and no barley comes in, sort of a no gluten allowed setup. So if you then go to a contract brewer, which is what these big guys are doing and say hey, brew me a gluten-free beer, then that contract brewer is going to make sure that throughout their whole manufacturing process, they are doing everything to avoid gluten.”
28:19 “We do offer it to other breweries if they want to but when they realize the price of that malt compared to barley, they’re kind of go, uhh. Then we talk about how they’re going to clean their mill, which you can’t do, so how are you going to mill that barley to brew with it? How are you going to clean your tanks? All those sort of things. And I say, well, why don’t you just buy my beer?”
Background
TWØBAYS Brewing Co was born from the need to avoid gluten and a trip to America which opened the eyes of Founder, Richard Jeffares, to breweries in Portland, Seattle, Denver and Montreal who were crafting high quality, gluten-free beers, so he decided to bring high-quality craft beers to Australia.

HIGHLIGHTS
01:49 Introduction to TWØBAYS
05:41 Creating gluten-free beer in Australia
09:23 Marketing TWØBAYS
16:27 Expansion and markers of success
25:07 Competing with the big names

RESOURCES
https://www.twobays.beer/
https://www.instagram.com/twobaysbeer/
https://www.facebook.com/twobaysbeer