Did you know that 42 million tons of grain are discarded from breweries a year? Or that 44% of bread made in the UK goes to waste? Yup, there's a whole lot of toast that never saw its delicious potential in their landfills. These companies have taken this wasted bread and allowed it to live its best life.
Let's Toast
Today, bread is largely over-produced in first world countries, and the surplus goes to waste in landfills. Currently, 44% of bread produced in the UK is thrown out and much of this waste occurs before it even reaches consumers. Toast, a crowdfunded startup, is set out to fix that by partnering with sandwich factories to use up the otherwise discarded heels of loaves in unique brews, including lagers, IPAs, and even a Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Stout. By the end of 2018, the company hopes to expand the brand to ten countries.
Super Flour to the Rescue
RISE Products, a startup out of New York, has partnered with 20 breweries to collect and repurpose grain after the brewing process is complete. Their patent-pending process removes moisture from barley and grinds it into a flour. After being used to brew beer, the flour has 1/3 of the carbs found in traditional flour, while boasting twice the protein and 12 times the fiber. And the benefits don't stop there: bakeries are turning Super Flour into shortbread cookies, biscuits, and even biscotti. Kellogg's, Whole Foods, and Nestle are all in line for supply once RISE can support it. 
It's What's on the Inside...
In DC, Atlas Brewing is fighting waste in a totally different way. Their "Rescue Brew" takes produce deemed imperfect from a local grocery and transforms these flawed goods into flawless brews. Their debut rescue beer used 500 pounds of reject plums, peaches, and nectarines and was dubbed "Ugly and Stoned." This symbiotic relationship has been fruitful (pun intended) for both the local grocery and Atlas Brewing: it's noted that to make a 20bbl batch of beer with farmers market fruit, the company could spend upwards of $300, so getting this fruit from Mom's Organic Market was a smart business decision. When it comes to fruit in beer, do looks really matter?
What This Means for Brands
We know, millennials say that sustainability is a shopping priority for them -- a concept that applies to how they party, too. Getting wasted on waste is in. Atlas, Toast, and RISE know this, and they also know that sometimes you have to get creative to get people to take action. Toast bottles, for example, have facts about food waste printed right on the bottle, giving you something to talk about with your friends as you sip. It makes drinking responsibly fun, while also giving the brand a strong mission and message that their consumers can stand behind. Is it working? Let's just say that Atlas Brewing sold out of their Rescue Brew before it made it into kegs.