2023 was a big year for us at the micro-brewery. Here's a quick re-cap of our major milestones!
📊 Bigger & Better!
- People glugged down 66,90,750 ML of Shrub Soda this year alone! That's 20,275 bottles!
- We are now pouring Shrub Sodas at 90+ of your favourite cafés & restaurants in Bangalore, including some of the coolest new restaurants in town like Foo & Pizza 4 P's.
- This year we increased the shelf life of our Shrub Sodas from 6 months to 1 year!
- We shipped our Diwali & Christmas hampers to 300+ homes/offices, and fulfilled orders from marquee companies like ETHIndia & Razorpay.
- This year we welcomed 502 new customers & 451 repeat customers.
- Our Instagram family grew to 4.7k & Twitter grew from 450 followers to 1k!
💰 Going Klub'in
This year we decided to diversify our funding streams, by approaching not just equity investors but by exploring revenue based funding.We've had a fantastic experience with Klub, which provided us with much needed critical capital to accelerate our growth this year.
Here's an interview Klub did with Akash about our experience with them:
We are thrilled that we collaborated with them for the Breakfast Klub, a showcase of their D2C portfolio companies (they're doing another one on 20th Jan - see you there 👋🏽)
🗞️ Pressin' Matters
This year, we organically got featured in the country's leading journals & press with spreads like:
- Harper's Bazaar lndia's list of cafés across India that have got their sandwich game on
- Times of India's feature on How Sober Became Stylish
- LiveMint Lounge on What's Brewing in Koramangala
- Tweak India's list of 10 best non-alcoholic drinks in India
🌭 Sunday Randoms' 2nd Anniversary
Speaking of our sandwich game, if you've been following us for a while - you know that we love experimenting with fun & funky flavours & sharing the results of our impromptu trials! The result is what we've famously coined as our 'Sunday Randoms', aka one fine glorious day the LFC fam gets to gorge on these gorgeous limited edition BEST GODDAMN Sandwiches like:
- The BEST GODDAMN Sandwich,
- The BEST GODDAMN Hoagie,
- The BEST GODDAMN Chili Dog & many more that you can find on our Swiggy/Zomato menus.
This year we did 4 new Sunday Randoms -
- The BEST GODDAMN Chicken Katsu
- The BEST GODDAMN Shrimp Katsu
- The BEST GODDAMN Cubano &
- The BEST GODDAMN Boozy Steak Sando
In order to commemorate our 2nd Sunday Randoms anniversary, we decided to celebrate the best of the best editions for our customers to enjoy from the comfort of their home by running massive month-long discounts on our gourmet sandwiches!
*burp* Catch the full story behind our Sunday Randoms here.
💻 Grungy to Garage Chic
We also gave our office a face-lift. This year, we went from grungy to garage 'chic'.Here's a quick look at the before & after!
🥂 Garage Get Togethers
In addition to making our micro-brewery a place where we love to grind everyday - we started hosting a lot more brewery takeovers ranging from birthday parties & team gatherings to more curated events like:
- Mindfulness Mornings, with a meditation session led by Ankit Vengurlekar,
- A Tamil themed takeover with the Soru Soirée, to
- Pump-tober with 824 Fund & Lore, where we minted a new-fashioned LFC themed collectible POAP.
Here's what people who attended had to say:
Just casual @theborklar sharing the 824 origin story with some super cool people inside a brewery with a garage startup setup while serving some darn good kombuchas is the most bangalore startup sub cultural plot for me this month.
— Paul Finney🦇🔊 (@paulfinneyx) October 28, 2023
We’ll revisit this in 2 years, lessgo 824. pic.twitter.com/gjkrR6R7Uo
🛍️ Poppin' at Pop-Ups
In addition to hosting some cool events at our brewery, this year we popped up at 25+ pop-ups across Bangalore! While we did a repeat performance at events like:
- Gin Explorer's Club,
- Nammu Recommends Vegan Market &
- Indian Craft Cocao & Craft Chocolate Festival (where we got back crowd favourites like our Ham, Chocolate & Cheese sandwich) & did a bar takeover at Sly Granny with chocolate cocktails
We also made our debut to pop-ups like:
- The Leap (af)fair - where we loved interacting with some of Bangalore's best #girlbosses
- The Courtyard at the Sandwich Takeover - where we debuted our exclusive Slim Deli range of sandwiches, a mix of thin crusty ciabattas & flavoured focaccias paired with choice cold cuts.
- Under 25 Summit - where we met 25+ of India's leading content creators like Jova Ferreya of The Artidote & Faye D'Souza.
- No Borders x Kapu Glass Bending Workshop, which blew our minds while we supported small artisans.
- VS Mani's Pongal Pop-Up - we participated in some Sadhya scenes with VS Mani & brought forth
- Bangalore Poetry Festival - we got the literati community try our beverages when we joined the BPF as their beverage sponsors.
We also did Zero-Proof Bar Takeovers, where we were stylishly sober at:
- LinkedIn's Bangalore office along with the Mogra Collective, &
- Copper & Clovers Café, where we did a Sundowner, pairing non-alcoholic drinks with chef Sarah's vegan nibbles
🌎 Green & Clean
This year we also took 2 big steps to reduce our carbon footprint.
We paired up with Our Reverse, a recycling company, to join the reuse revolution - so that our beverage bottles can be reused multiple times. Our bottles are now periodically & hygienically recyled with Reverse's technology-led waste management solutions.
We also got a brand new spankin' electric vehicle to make environmentally conscious deliveries. We're still working on its branding designs in-house & can't wait to show you guys our own "Batmobile".
👩🏽🎓 Dialogues & Discussion
Another goal on our agenda was to give back to the F&B community by initiating conversations centred around entrepreneurship, speaking more openly not just about our learnings & experiences but also our mistakes & regrets.
Perhaps one of the most gratifying moments of our year constituted addressing the young, bright minds of Christ University & Indian Institute of Hotel Management. We were so happy to see GenZ being so eager to learn more about the industry & contribute to it in their own way.
🎄Great Christmas Feast Box
Finally, we wrapped up our year with a new addition to our end-of-the-year exclusives: The Great Christmas Feast Box, where we curated a 5-course gourmet meal that could be enjoyed from the comfort of your home, along with our signature Mulled Wine Shrub.
And that's a wrap to 2023, fam!
We are brewing bigger & better plans for 2024 - with new flavours, stockists & onboarding more people on to our team! We wouldn't have made it this far without your continuous patronage & support.
In honour of that, our team's resolution is to work on delivering a better customer service experience to you!
What about you, dear reader? (who's read all this way!) What is your new year resolution for 2024?
