Harnessing the full potential of your pint of beer

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In brief:

• After taking over Brewerkz, the Tan brothers transformed the struggling brand into one that was proudly Singaporean, pivoting away from its American sports bar origins, and embracing some necessary but painful changes.

• They realised there were opportunities in the global waste problem of brewers’ spent grains, which is also more nutritious than wheat flour. And invested time and capital to find ways to upcycle the waste created at their brewery.

• Brewerkz today has not only diversified so that the brand supports events and national initiatives, but is also in the midst of developing food products like nacho chips from spent grains, with the support of the DBS Foundation Grant Award. 

• Having had extensive experience in large corporations before joining the SME business, Wee Tuck made it his personal task to close the gap between the way operations were run for the company versus big corporations – finding processes that would work for Brewerkz as well.

• They advise other companies looking to start their sustainability journey to start small and focus on the small wins.

Daphne: Today on The Next Impact Maker, we speak to brothers who have made it their family business to take Singapore's longest running craft brewery into a more sustainable future by upcycling brewers’ spent grains into delicious bar snacks. Welcome into The Next Impact Maker. 

Today, Tan Wee Han and Tan Wee Tuck, owners of Brewerkz join us. And yes, for those who are familiar with Singapore, that is the boozy institution that sits by the colourful light-speckled Singapore River at Clarke Quay. So Brewerkz was one of DBS Foundation's Grant Awards recipients in 2022 for their interesting, sustainable project that they're ramping up, which they will tell us all about during today's episode. 

Welcome in Wee Han, Wee Tuck. 

Wee Han: Hello. Good morning.

Wee Tuck: Good morning. Good to see you.

Daphne: We want to find out a little bit more about your story. You guys weren't the original owners of Brewerkz. Give us a bit of background to the company and how this became a Tan family business. 

Wee Han: Brewerkz was started by a group of American guys some years back, in fact, quite many years back. It was in 1997. Over the years, the ownership changed. We were not involved until several years ago although I know the original owners. 

Initially, I participated in the ownership of the brand. Subsequently, my brothers also got involved and we took full control of the company about five to six years ago. 

Daphne: Talk to us about the brand then. Brewerkz started in 1997. What was the brand like when you came in? What was your impression of the brand and how did it evolve when you came in, and what are you trying to do with it now? 

Wee Han: So Brewerkz was really successful in its earlier days when it was started in 1997. It was the best beer in town. It was the concept everybody wanted to enjoy - what Brewerkz had carried on for a long time until about 2010. When the previous owners did a few ventures and opened a few restaurants, they didn't work. 

It hit them really hard. The market started to change. There was a lot more competing products. Customers started to have a lot more offerings, expectations changed, and the brand started suffering from then.

Wee Tuck: Prior to me joining, I was already involved. We had regular review sessions, board meetings to look at the business. And there was a period, where the numbers were bad. We were losing money and every month it got worse and worse. And we kind of started to panic because we didn't want a situation where we had to go to our bank accounts and take out more money personally. 

We had a huge discussion around what we should do. Essentially, we were down to two options. Number one, close it, because it's old, it's tired, it's too much of work to try and turn it around, and very few brands last for 25 years and beyond anyway. Or two, give it our best shot and try to overhaul. 

So we decided to go for the overhaul. 

That kind of began the pivoting, the transformation of us trying to change what the brand was about. As Wee Han had mentioned, Brewerkz was essentially an all-American concept sports bar, and its cuisine was full American. So you've got the burgers, pizzas, and baby back ribs. They taste great but it was just American and it was very heavily skewed towards the male customers. 

You walk into a Brewerkz of old – it's big, it's industrial and there are TV screens all around all screening sports like American football, EPLs. Then you get giant portions of food. And it is very dark too. Sometimes quite smoky, even though we don't allow smoking anymore because of what's happening in Singapore overall. That was the concept. 

It wasn't friendly to people outside that kind of target market. What we decided to do was to showcase our Singaporean roots, because Brewerkz was, after all, rooted out of Singapore. We wanted the cuisine to be more diverse and contemporary. We wanted to keep the best-selling stuff because they taste great and customers come for that. We didn't want to just put aside our existing customers. 

We wanted the place to be welcoming to everyone, including families and ladies. We just wanted the place to be bright and welcoming. It's a very different concept altogether. 

To do this, we knew that a few things had to change in our brand. Story positioning had to change from all-American to more about the Singaporean-ness of the brand. We had to revamp the food and massively increase the variety of beer that we were putting out. Subsequently, we went to put it into cans as well. We had to change how our restaurants were designed. 

To do all these things, we had to go out and hire people that could help us and execute this vision. We had a brand-new head brewer, and a brand-new head chef. That was also the time where I was coming from a milestone in my corporate career. And I was looking at the business and saying, let me come on board full-time to try and give it a push. So, I joined full time myself. And that was how we kind of kickstarted the transformation. 

A few years forward to today, we're quite happy with the results. We think the brand is much stronger than before. Once we came out of the recent dining restrictions and having passed those few months, we felt like the brand is stronger than even pre-COVID and we took the brand into different places that we didn't play in before. 

For example, we went into major outdoor events. We can go into an event that has got 20,000 to 30,000 people with our beer brewed onsite in a kitchen and deliver food exclusively. We also pursued major brand collaborations. We've got the Sentosa beer series, we’ve got the NEWbrew, and the beer brand at the Singapore Air Show. 

These all created a huge distance for us in versus our peers. It took us out from just being a restaurant or a brewer, into a space where we can provide solutions for corporates, for operators and add a higher fun factor to whatever's out there. So, that was the transformation. 

Daphne: Lots of changes and lots of challenges over the past few years. What was that wakeup call? Because I remember you talking about that very harsh meeting that you had with your staff. 

Wee Tuck: I remember that we called a meeting with all our department heads. And this was when we were looking at the numbers and they were really bad. That was also the period when we were deciding whether to just close shop or try and do an overhaul. We kind of asked around the table to tell us, like, hey, what do you like about Brewerkz? What do you want to keep? 

As we went around the table, the comments were almost all negative. Everybody felt that the brand was tired, it was old, it was kind of lacking in dimension in terms of what we offer for food, it is not comfortable for people other than guys. That was a real wake up call. 

Daphne: And I think you've done a really great job because when I think of Brewerkz, I think it's a Singapore brand, right. It's really pivoted away from that American sports culture, masculine look. Why that pivot to being hyperlocal, though? Wee Han? 

Wee Han: First of all, it's the industry that we're in - craft beer. It's always a lot about the story. And when we want to tell a story, which story should we tell other than Singapore? I mean, we ourselves being Singaporeans, we really want to expound on that Singaporean-ness of us. We felt that since we took over, we're not Americans, we are very different from the founders. We decided that, “Hey, let's make this really Singaporean as much as possible”. And that has worked well for us. People connect with the brand much better. 

Wee Tuck: If I can jump in – I have two points to the question. I will say that we became a lot more convinced - and what's true right now – that craft beer is always about provenance. It's always about where you're from. What's your origin, what're your roots? 

When Brewerkz first planted itself 25 years ago, it was still an evolving space, if you will. People were less particular. But over time, as more and more craft breweries opened around the world, everybody dived into telling their story in a way about where they have come from, where they're going etc.

We felt that Brewerkz is going to tell the Singapore story and not some made up story from somewhere else. Because it fit into the narrative of people wanting to understand, “Hey, what's the background? Tell me about yourself”. So that was one reason. 

Second driver, I would say, is that we had begun to notice that in the local market, there was a growing appreciation for Singaporean-ness of, our culture deserves to be celebrated. We see retailers like Naiise coming out and they're selling cushion covers that were resembling Mah-jong tiles or Ang Ku Kuehs. And people were just loving it. These were the kind of products that were getting onto social media. These were the kind of products that were moving off the shelves. And that was like, wow. We are that and we should embrace that. So, we should definitely go towards that direction. That were two of the biggest drivers for us to move towards that direction.

Daphne: Let's talk about the sustainability of a business, which is absolutely essential as well. The fact that you can survive, that you can thrive, that your business is profitable, so that you can continue making the kind of impact that you want to make as a business. And that's the other slow burn pivot that we're talking about here today, which is that you've had a journey in sustainability as a business as well. I mentioned this in the introduction about spent Brewerkz grains or Brewerkz's spent grains. Explain what those are to us. 

Wee Tuck: When we make beer, the process starts with us taking barley malt and mixing it with water. After which, we boil it, and stir it in the tank for several hours. We keep the liquid which is going to rot at that point of time, for further processing to turn it into alcohol. 

What remains behind are the multi-barley grains. In the process, we refer to them as Brewers’ spent grains because it's spent and it’s grains that were used in the brewing.

Brewers’ spent grains is high in protein, high in fibre and it's a clean waste. For the longest time Brewers’ spent grains have been discarded, by breweries around the world. 

Daphne: This is worldwide. 

Wee Tuck: This is worldwide every year. So for breweries, that are closer to places where there is animal farming, then they become, animal feed. But, for breweries that are not, then it becomes difficult because it's tough to transport a lot of wet grains   across the world. So, for the most part, it goes to the landfill. 

For Brewerkz ourselves, we generate maybe about 100, 200 tons of Brewers’ spent grains. It's not very big, but it's not small - it is a couple of Olympic sized swimming pools. In the past, nobody really talked about the environment. You just assume that the earth is going to take care of itself, right? There was no real effort to try and upcycle this waste stream. In any case, upcycling is tremendously costly because it is wet and you would have to dry it. 

Then the question here is, what are you going to do with it? Today, there is no market for upcycled food per se. The market didn't really exist. So, you don't want to recycle something and put it into a market that doesn't really exist. Therefore, it gets given partially to animals and for the most part, thrown away. 

Fast forward to the pandemic, everybody is aware that we've got to take care of the environment. And being green is common sense now. For us, we felt that we had to also tackle this thing because we are not the biggest brewery in Singapore. Tiger Beer is, APB is. But we are the largest craft brewery in Singapore and that is our biggest waste stream. 

In the context of everything else going on, we want to try and tackle that. 

Daphne: Why does it bother you, though, if every other brewery has the same problem? It's kind of a sunk cost per se, right? 

Wee Tuck: I would say two things. Number one, we want to respond to the call to be sustainable and to be eco-conscious - we want to do what's right. We want to reduce the food waste as it's a problem. 

The other aspect is that it's also an opportunity, because it's high in protein, high in fibre, it is clean waste and there's a lot of potential to turn this into food or sustainable foods that is also healthy and edible. 

But it requires processing, and somebody to do the work to figure out: how do we process this? What is the right recipe? How do we transform this thing? How do we dry it? How do we develop the market, get retailers and food services companies to come along? 

And because we have a little bit of the ecosystem ourselves, we've got restaurants, we know how to do the marketing, we've got the motivation and we've got the waste… we felt that we should try it. 

Because we are probably the most well positioned. 

We don't have all the solutions, but we felt that we should try. So, two things, really, number one is we want to kind to, help fix the food waste problem. And number two it is a business opportunity for us. If we can be successful, then this becomes a new product line, and a new business for us. 

Daphne: Well, what are you turning it into? Because I've seen the granola bars – and that doesn't seem like a Brewerkz thing. 

Wee Tuck: Eventually when we have a line-up of food products that is made using these spent grains, it won't be marketed or branded under Brewerkz. It would be a separate brand that is more health and eco-conscious, that we will develop to market it. 

Essentially, Brewers’ spent grains can be a replacement for regular wheat flour. Today, flour goes into a lot of products that we eat. Whether it is bread, cookies, pasta, chips, or even noodles, it goes into all those things. 

Brewers’ spent grains can replace the wheat flour partially. When we can do that, we don't have to grow too much regular wheat. Regular wheat has got a bigger carbon footprint because we have to grow fresh wheat, you’ve got to use fresh water, and the growing will generate carbon dioxide. 

Regular wheat also happens to be less nutritious than Brewer's spent grain. The objective is to turn it into a flour product that replaces wheat flour which is used in all the things that we are consuming right now. And when we can do that, we are making second use of a product. 

Moreover, less water is used in trying to create the second range of products. It's healthier and greener. An interesting fact that we discovered is that it takes 1800 litres of water to grow one kilogram of regular wheat flour. By not growing fresh wheat to make wheat flour we are saving 1800 litres of water every time. 

Daphne: I tried the nachos from your line. That was really good. 

Wee Tuck: We've got to find the right food products that would land well to the properties of the spent grains. Flour tends to be more texturous and coarse with a brown colour. It's got both limitations and constraints, which is why we cannot replace, wheat flour one for one. Right now it is only a partial replacement and we also got to find the right recipe. 

We're also working with food science spinoff from National University of Singapore (NUS) called Synergy and they are bringing their expertise in terms of fermentation and bio transformation – applying bacteria to spent grains to try and enhance it, make it perform better and to also release multi nutrient properties. 

Daphne: So Wee Han, I'm hearing the passion coming up from Wee Tuck. Is this just another crazy idea from your younger brother that he brought into your business and now you have just have to deal with it? 

Wee Han: Both of us have always had interest in green projects. At some point we spent quite a few months studying indoor farming. We've visited a lot of places around the region and the result was no - we decided that we were not going to go into that.

Then we invested into research into the beer yeast that we use to make it into hydroponic nutrients. And this was done with a Japanese food science tech company. We spent a year doing it and decided not to continue. 

But when we found out that we could do a lot more with spent grain, we jumped into it. Naturally, you probably can guess that Wee Tuck is very into this, as he's leading this project. And he's the point person for sustainability projects that we have. And he has the full support of the brothers. 

Daphne: Okay, I'll believe you! Wee Tuck, at the very beginning you mentioned you came in from a really big corporate background. Brewerkz is obviously much a different set up, SME situation. What's been the biggest challenge for you with this change?

Wee Tuck: I have accumulated 25 years of working for big companies, be it Japanese MNCs or American MNCs. I did my tours around the world and then the last five years, I spent time in a local-listed corporate with a lot of corporate transactions, M&As, buying and selling companies - really fun stuff. 

Coming into Brewerkz, into the family business, I would say that I knew what was in store - I knew what was different. If I were to crystalise the challenge, it is less about what is different between big company and a SME and more of how I bring all the experience that I've seen into our family business. How do I try and close the gap between a SME and a large corporate. 

That was my personal task because it's kind of easy to complain “Hey, a lack of resources, a lack of this and that”. But the point is about what can I bring to the table? 

Being in large companies, one of the great things is that you see the how things are being done. In really large organisations they tend to be best in class, they tend to be at the leader of practices. 

I got to observe how leaders build organisations, how they relate to people, deal with issues and what not. And because I've also had the opportunity to circulate through a number of industries across different parts of the world, I saw quite a fair bit. 

I created a template based on what I have seen and learnt that we could use to grow. I was able to have a vision of what this brand and our portfolio could be. I was able to have a quicker sense of what the road map should look like. 

Because we're much smaller, we didn't have armies of people, I therefore had to do most of the execution myself. And it was my job to persuade my brothers that this is the way to go. And then I had to excite the key people in our team that, letting them know that this is what we're doing. 

To kind of sum it up, my challenge was to bring my background and make a difference.

Daphne: And you talked about those successes, the small wins Wee Han for yourself. What were all those small wins that keep you going? 

Wee Han: I think over the years, certainly our brand has gotten much stronger. It didn't just happen like that. We did small projects that led to bigger projects. For example, in the area of a collaboration that we did with PUB to make a beer called NEWBrew. This beer was made from NEWater. We started in 2018, not knowing a lot about what we were going to do. PUB came to us and said, “You think you can make a beer with this NEWater?” So I said, “Yes”, immediately the moment I heard this. 

Then okay, how do we do it? We went to figure it out. It was done in a small way, we had good small successes. At the end of the day, there were a lot of issues that we had to overcome because at the brewery, you can't turn on the tap and get NEWater. It doesn't exist. NEWater can only be found at the NEWater plant at PUB. 

NEWater goes into the reservoir or if you are a semiconductor fabrication plant. It doesn't come to our brewery. We went through a lot to overcome that. It was really fun. And in 2020 when they came back to us again and said, let's brew NEWBrew again, we were like, “Oh, we are going to do it man.”

But it became a huge success, much bigger than we could ever imagine. We got onto headline news of I would say, almost every major TV station. That's one success that helped bring our brand to the front. 

We've tried a lot of new things in the company that were also developed from small successes. When you have small successes, you get the entire team excited, motivated, and they are more willing to try. 

I can give you another example. Last year on 31st December 2022, we were exclusive F&B Partner for Star Island, which is essentially our New Years Eve countdown fireworks drone display at the floating platform. 

We deployed 120 people, set up four huge booths, and brought the Brewerkz brand upfront to 20,000 people. We served them beer, we served them food – that was amazing. We have never done that before. That was the first time we've executed such a big event. 

But it didn't go from zero to 120 people immediately. We had to go through many small successes before that. Our people were so confident in doing that event well, that in fact, we weren't around. We overseas having holidays in Italy. But it was heart-warming to see the team telling me, “Hey, go have your holidays. We would do this event and we would do it well”. And it turned out so good. Our partners were really happy with what we did. 

Daphne: Wee Tuck for you, what are the small wins that are memorable? 

Wee Tuck: I would say the collaboration we had with Sentosa to make five new beers for them, called the Sentosa Islander Brew series. That was at the beginning of our effort to build big brand collaboration. We pitched the idea to them, and thankfully for us, they liked the idea and we worked together. 

For us, it was really encouraging because, to be able to crack a big brand like Sentosa who brought all the expertise into the project was a huge encouragement. We took our beers into supermarket, first time into Sentosa and our products also went into Cold Storage. 

While we worked for them, we also got a lot of benefits through brand association and then fast forward to last year, we picked up two awards and we were quite surprised. One was the Outstanding Casual Dining Experience award from Singapore Tourism Board (STB). 

If you had asked us if we were ever going to win a dining award five years ago, we'd probably say no, not with the kind of restaurant, not with the kind of concept and the food that we had. When we were nominated, we were invited to the stage, we were like “Wow”, we wouldn’t even think of it. And we had really strong peers competing. 

The second award that we picked up was Bespoke Brewing Solutions - Champion for Medium Sized Brewery of Asia at the Asia Beer Championships in Bangkok last year. Competing in the same category as we us were breweries around the region that we practically idolised, because they do their craft so well and their storytelling is amazing, I feel like I can look at their website everyday. 

And we got picked over them so that was beyond the heel for us. 

For us, those are big wins and not exactly small wins. But for us, that came on the back of many, many small things that we started, four or five years ago. 

Daphne: I'll remind you guys of another big win, the DBS Foundation Grant Award. 

Wee Tuck: Absolutely.

Daphne: How is that going to be used to scale up your business? 

Wee Tuck: The award comes with a monetary grant which is very helpful towards paying for R&D work that we had already begun on how to make the grains perform better, to buy the relevant machines and build the product launch and stuff like that. 

But the best part about the grant really is the association with DBS, and to be able to leverage the full network and platform that the bank brings because it's very clear to us that we are not going to be able to solve this thing on our own. It’s very clear that while we may have a few pieces of the puzzle, we probably need to get a lot more pieces, we can see some but the rest we can't see. 

Therefore, we have to get our message, our story out on what we want to do. What DBS does for us is to be the platform that helps us amplify what we want to do and bring in potential collaborators, like-minded partners to partner, brainstorm and work with us. 

And I have to say that DBS has been tremendously generous in extending its resources, its networks, and very deliberate about wanting to help and support SMEs like us. We are really grateful for and appreciative for that. 

Daphne: And on the last note as well from both of you, any advice to other SMEs looking to start their sustainability journey. We'll start with you, Wee Han. 

Wee Han: I think that it's important to find the bearing and while I say it's important, it's not easy. People trying to do this should put that as an objective. 

For us, we embraced a 360-strategy concept in our business. And somehow, we just got to believing that we are not just a restaurant brand, but we are more than that, and the branding that we do puts us at a higher place. But it also enhances our restaurant business. 

One might ask us why did we get into the sustainability project? Well, we are really passionate. We also know that through this sustainability project, Brewerkz's brand will be elevated. And when Brewerkz's brand is elevated, all the things that we do get elevated.

When we look at the sustainability project, we don't just look at it single mindedly and say, “oh, it's not working, it's not making money” etc. We look at it and go “wow, we might not be successful now, but we are already successful. We are successful because this is where this project has brought us and will continue to bring us”. 

Meanwhile, we are focusing our passion on trying to make it successful. Having that vision is very important. It really would help you last and help you wake up everday and continue to do it every day. 

Wee Tuck: Last week we had a sustainability event at DBS. I want to draw some points that was said at that meeting. Most SMEs shared that starting with sustainability is the most challenging thing. And “challenging” was the key word that most companies surfaced. So I would say to that,

Don't try and do a big chunk. Have small wins along the way - that's number one. 

Number two, I would say collaborations. Because the collaboration other than drawing expertise, is a source of motivation, it is a source of encouragement to keep on going. 

And thirdly, the top management and the owners have to believe in it. If you don't then, don’t start because you're going to waste time. 

Getting started can be challenging. Sustaining the journey after you start can also be challenging. And there's also a possibility that you wouldn't see the ROI in the beginning, maybe not in the medium term. For the long term it's a question mark, depending on whether you're successful or not. 

All these things are what you're going to encounter because we encountered them ourselves. It is about persevering and clearing things one step at a time. By some point you will be able to get there and when you get there, you will know that you have a differentiation that your peers don't have if they haven't come along on that journey yet. 

And that differentiation is the form of a product. a service or a way of doing things is going to be that difference in your business. 

Daphne: Thank you very much. We'll leave it there. I've been speaking to Tan Wee Han and Tan Wee Tuck, the brothers, who with their youngest brother, Tan Wee Lee, run Brewerkz and are taking Singapore's oldest craft beer brewery into a sustainable future.