Meet the Disruptors: Toast Ale

The word ‘disruptive’ is overused and much maligned. We want to reclaim the term and apply it to those who are truly worthy of the name: those who embody a misfit mindset for their industry and therefore hold the potential to radically change the way that we all do business.

One such brand is Toast Ale, which taps into our Trash-to-Table microtrend. Some 24m slices of bread are thrown away in the UK each day, which is 34–44% of total production. Supply-chain transparency means that consumers are becoming increasingly savvy about the costs of their consumption, however, and Toast addresses these concerns by collecting waste bread from bakeries, delicatessens and sandwich shops before combining the breadcrumbs with malted barley, hops and yeast at the Hackney Brewery.

‘It was at the Brussels Beer Project where I first found out about this innovative brewing process that turns a colossal global problem into a delicious, drinkable solution,’ says Toast founder Tristram Stuart. ‘We hope to put ourselves out of business. The day there is no waste bread is the day Toast Ale can no longer exist.’