E050 - Louisa Ziane from Toast Ale

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Welcome back to the Green Element Podcast. Where we feature business leaders and innovators transforming their operations to be more environmentally and socially sustainable. I'm your host, Will Richardson, and I can't wait to meet our guest today and help you on your journey of sustainability. Hi, Louisa. Thank you very much for joining the Green Element Podcast. So you're from Toast and you make ale out of bread. Is that a good way to describe what Tastelove is?

We do, we do, yes. We have a social mission, social and environmental mission, to change the world by brewing with surplus fresh bread from bakeries and the sandwich industry, and also donating all of our profits to charities that are tackling the systemic issues in the food system.

Brilliant, and where did this come about from? Do you guys have a background in bread?

Beer? We don't have a background in bread or beer. We're environmentalists. from the beginning. So I found Tristram Stuart is a campaigner on the social and environmental issues in the food system. Myself, I was working at the Carbon Trust as a consultant working on climate change issues business for 5 years. And yeah, we set up Toast as a mission-led business to use a really positive and engaging product to talk to people about some of the big challenges that we face and potentially Simple and fun solution to it. But we've learned a lot about bread and beer along the way.

I bet you have. What would you say your actual purpose was at Toast?

So food production is the biggest impact that we have on the planet. It's responsible for 80% of deforestation, for 70% of freshwater use, a third of the carbon emissions that contribute to climate change, and yet globally we're wasting a third of all the food that we produce. It's a completely bonkers situation. We also have health issues as a result of us not feeding the population properly, from undernourishment to obesity. So the food system itself is not set up well to feed people or to nourish the planet. By addressing one of those inefficiencies of the food system, namely food waste, we can make steps to fix the food system. So using surplus bread, because bread is one of the most wasted household food items, it's something most of us enjoy on a daily basis. Our consumption of sandwiches in the UK is, and all around the world, is completely massive. And we also, as a population, enjoy our beers as well. So bringing those two together in a really fun way to address What would you say your business superpower was? Well, I think turning bread into beer is a bit of a power, isn't it? Well, actually, I say that, but the origins of bread making and beer making go hand in hand. They discovered recipes going back to Babylonian times of people brewing beer with surplus bread. It's the fermentation of that bread that preserves the calories within it, and bread obviously has quite a short shelf life, whereas beer lasts for a long time. So it isn't as alchemic as we might like to say it is. It is a very natural process that we've been following for a long time. So maybe our superpower is more around engaging people in the challenge in a really fun way.

Brilliant. Yeah, I didn't actually realize that it was such an old-fashioned method for brewing beer. I think I just assumed— I mean, it kind of makes sense because you've got yeast And it's all the same ingredients, isn't it?

Well, yeah, it's actually— it's not the yeast, it's the carbohydrates. So we replace a third of the barley that would otherwise be used to brew with surplus bread. So we're taking one form of sugars and converting those.

So how do you engage your staff, suppliers, and customers with your mission and purpose then?

Well, our employees, they are already, I guess, coming to Toast as people that have quite a deep passion for the environment, given that we are such a mission-led business. The recruitment process itself involves us asking and finding out more about people's personal drives and making sure that they're a really good fit with us as a business. And then a lot of the stuff that we do internally just very naturally fits with our ethos because we are all driven in that sense. So we're very careful about, you know, how we do business, how, like, our commuting, for example, is low impact. A lot of the team cycle to work. We have flow. Flexible working arrangements to minimize travel as a whole. We give people time off so that they can support charities that mean something to them. People take 2 days a year where they can use that time to support a charity. They also have an additional 3 days a year for personal development, and that might be for them to spend time with, again, with a charity or with a social cause. stretches them as individuals. On the supply side, we contract brew, so we work with a brewery up in Yorkshire called Waldtop, who are an incredibly sustainable business. They source water from a borehole in the ground, so it comes fresh from the ground, and then at the end of the brewing process, the water that's been used for cooling and for cleaning goes back through reed beds on the farm— so the brewery used to be an old farm— and back into the land. They have turbines that power the brewery, and also the spent grain at the end of the process goes to a local farm to feed animals. And so they are already coming from a very environmentally responsible position and aligned with us as a business. And then our customers, you know, I think the very fact that people are choosing to buy toast means that they are also aligned with what we're trying to do, are often good at challenging us to do even better. For example, we've worked with the Green Vic, which is a pub in Shoreditch, a pop-up pub, who have looked to make the most sustainable pub in the world through the supply chain and the way that they run the business. And right through to our customers that are drinking the beer itself, many of those people that are maybe looking to just make some small changes in their lives to have a more positive impact on the planet, but not sure what to do or are not able to make significant changes. So just by enjoying a beer, they're able to do something positive.

And so it's reinforcing that message for them, communicating what it is that we're doing and how that feeds through to the impact that they are having by It seems like quite a holistic approach to everything that you do then, because you're incorporating all of your core values and bringing them all together, and whether it is your customers, with anyone that you have contact with.

Yeah, I think so. And we'll probably talk a little bit about B Corp, I imagine, but B Corp has certainly helped us to think in a very holistic way because it does assess the business's approach across a whole variety of stakeholders and the way that you do business. It isn't just focused on one final impact that you have. And, you know, we've challenged ourselves to be as good as we can be in each of those areas, with certainly with lots of room for improvement that we are working on, but it's certainly helped us have that holistic view.

Yeah, I bet. And with B Corp, have you found it's it's helped you in the direction and helped you with what it is that you're doing?

Yeah, definitely. So the process, as I said, itself was really helpful. The impact assessment at the beginning gives you a framework to assess the business and to look across the way you interact and the way you are as an employer, the way you interact with your employees, looking at your supply chain, your customers, your governance structure. And the impact that you have on the environment. And that whole process provided us with a benchmark for how well we were doing compared to other businesses. And the great thing about B Corps is it's such an open and welcoming community that people are willing to share their knowledge and their experience with you so that you can develop and do better. I think ultimately, we all are running commercial businesses, but we all have this bigger mission that aligns us together, and we all are therefore supportive of each other. So I've met with lots of other people from B Corps who have provided advice on business challenges that I have been having. Equally, I've met with lots of people that are B Corps or even going down the B Corp route to help them out with challenges, and we work together on joint projects like promotional activity, for example, on social media campaigns. I think being a small business can sometimes feel quite, well, lonely, but also you feel quite exposed because, you know, you're a small group of people that don't have all of the knowledge and deep expertise that you need to run a business. And so you're reliant on connections and people that are willing to help you out as a business. And I've just found the B Corp community to create that sense of a family, I'd say, of people that are there for you to help you out and make you feel like you're part of something bigger.

Yeah, I'd absolutely agree with that. I found exactly the same. With your background in sustainability, it's been similar with that, hasn't it? Because you had 5 years at Carbon Trust beforehand. And one thing that's always surprised me over the 15-odd years that I've been doing sustainability for businesses is how open a competitor is to another competitor with regards to sustainability and how I can get 2 people to talk to each other because they're, oh, actually you're trying to be more environmental, so are we. Let's talk about how we can be more environmental. And I want to learn from you and you can learn from me kind of thing. And I wonder if because sustainability is such a big part of being a social purpose-driven business, because it should be in its pure fabric of the business, because we're thinking about the future. I wonder if that has core roots in what it is that we're talking about as a B Corp.

Yeah, and I think you're right. Like, the people themselves that are working in, like, CSR functions or working in sustainability businesses are ultimately working to this bigger picture. And so are very collaborative. We're sharing knowledge and experience and having to work together. I think though that there is a genuine commercial challenge sometimes to collaborating. So there were projects that I worked on at the Carbon Trust where actually it can be very difficult to get the data that you need from a supplier because it's commercially sensitive information. And so to do, for example, a product footprint, sometimes we were having to use third-party activity data based on a number of assumptions. So I think when you spread throughout the wider business, if the business as a whole isn't environmentally or socially mission-driven, there are barriers that come up. But I'm often talking to people working in that sustainability function or in space that are breaking down these barriers. And I think the changes that we've seen in the last year that are driven by citizens and consumers that are forcing businesses to make sustainability less of an additional thought, a side thought, and more of something that should be core to the way that we do business. Almost, you know, it should become a hygiene factor where we should— there are things that we shouldn't be doing if it is going to have a negative impact on the business. I think the in those cases, the businesses as a whole are starting to open up more to having to consider people and planet at the same level as profit.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think we're seeing that more and more with businesses as well, with the way that, I guess, Extinction Rebellion has had a massive impact in our day-to-day living as humans. Yeah, I mean, like, we can only really see it in the UK, but The surge in interest in how to become more environmental has definitely become much more prevalent in the last 12 months than I've ever seen it before. I've seen people talking— I remember back in 2008, 2009, people were interested in sustainability, and then it suddenly started waning again 2 or 3 years later. But I don't think, I don't think it was the same as it was then as it is now. I think, I don't know, there's something different now.

Yeah, I think also there is that consumer pressure that people are expecting more of businesses, and we have more means to call out bad practices, namely social media. Particularly in the past year or so, there's been a huge focus on plastics and single-use packaging that's forced businesses to respond. And as one business responds to it, that then puts competitive pressure on other businesses to act. And so you create this new acceptable benchmark, and then consumers expect more and expect more. So I find even for us, you know, we're a very sustainable business, but we're not perfect, and there's always more that we can do. I find that we're held to very high expectations about the sustainability of our impact, which is great, you know, but it just means that we need to put that pressure onto other organizations that are not doing as much as us. And yeah, pushing organizations to continuously improve.

Yeah, it's that supply chain, isn't it? And ensuring your supply chain is as environmental as you, because we're seeing people like Unilever and those larger organizations pushing that sustainability and social purpose-driven model down through their supply chain, saying we will only work with people that have ISO 14001, for example. Because it's an easy way to say, right, you have to be green to have £14 for one.

Yeah, I think the power of organizations to influence their supply chain is big. Sometimes the supply chain is bigger than the customer, which obviously presents challenges. So everybody has to be part of this. And I think that's where we as individuals can influence business as a whole. You know, if people just stop buying something that they deem that's not sustainable, then that's when the companies have to respond.

Absolutely. When it comes to running an ethical and sustainable business, what would you say has been your biggest struggle so far? And can you tell us a bit about how you've overcome it?

Oh, I would say probably resources, both in terms of people and capacity and financial resources. So when we first set up TOAST, we set TOAST up as a fairly small project, I guess, and we were doing everything ourselves, kind of wearing multiple hats in different roles in order to be able to fulfill all of the various functions that you need to run as a business. And that puts pressure on individuals. I think anyway, the fact that most of us are very mission-driven, we're also We hold ourselves to high expectations for the quality of the work that we're doing. You do therefore have a tendency to work longer hours and work more intensively. And I think this is probably true of most startup environments, actually, but particularly mission-driven ones. And you're always wanting to do more and more and more. And at some point, you, you have to say, we can't do everything, we need to focus and prioritize. And to the point of the B Corp assessment where, you know, your workers, your employees are a core part of your sustainability of you as a business, you also have to look after your people. And realistically, people can't work at over 100% for very long, so something has to give in those situations. And I, I think we've as a small business, been really guilty of pushing ourselves too much and pushing each other too much, and certainly felt some pressure in the business over the past 6 to 12 months as things have really ramped up for us, and we've not necessarily been able to match that with having enough funding to be able to recruit bigger and bigger teams. So I'd say the lesson from that for me was about focus and Assessing whether everything that you were doing is mission-critical. Is what you're putting your time into going to have an impact on your ultimate objective as a business? And where it isn't, then that's where you have to be stricter with yourself and to be able to say no more often. It's really difficult when great opportunities present themselves and You know that, you know, it could be great for the business, and, you know, but at the same time, you can't do 3 projects that are all great for the business at the same time and do all of them well. Something will— something has to give. So yeah, getting a real understanding of what your business objective is, what your strategy is to achieve that objective, how you prioritize your time in order to deliver against those objectives. And then having the ability to say no. And then I guess from a financial perspective, we have been really fortunate that we've been through 2 crowdfund campaigns now, both reward-based ones, which means that you're not giving away ownership of the business, but you're inviting people to be part of the story. In both cases, to be able to essentially preorder new products. So the first crowdfunder we did was back in 2017 when we extended our range from 1 beer to 3, and we've just completed a crowdfunder to extend the range from bottles into cans as well. But that's a big financial outlay to do that first investment in, for example, the canning line and to brew enough beer to have those beers to sell to people, including some of our biggest customers like Tesco and Waitrose. So having crowdfunders put in money and be prepared to wait a couple of months while you use that money to brew and then get the product to them is really helpful. And we also did an equity-based crowdfunder last year to inject some real capital into the business that we called Equity for Good because we'd asked investors to make a pledge that they'll reinvest any net capital gains that they make into other social businesses, those with an environmental mission, so that the value that we grow in Toast as a business can continue to do good at a broader industry level. And having that capital, you know, obviously that helped us to expand the team. We moved from 4 people to where we are now at 12 people and invested a little bit into work on our branding and our marketing campaigns. We've just launched a new look to the brand that was enabled partly by some of that investment that we had last year. And we hope that these investments will have a step change in as a business and the success of the business. But this all comes with the challenge of resource because it takes a lot more to raise capital and to run a crowdfunder than we might have naively expected when we entered into them. So yeah, it's been really helpful for us as a business, and there is finance out there and there are ways to access it. But again, it comes with a lot of hard work to get it. So being— having that focus and clear strategy for where you're going and what you're going to need the money for and how you're going to spend it for maximum impact is really important.

That's so useful. I want to get every member of the team I work with to listen to what you've just said. Just totally resonates with me. Totally resonates with me. And it is really hard. If you could offer one piece of advice to our listeners which could help them with their purpose, what would that be?

I guess it depends on what your purpose is, and maybe that is the piece of advice. It's about being really clear about your purpose and not necessarily feeling that you have to be perfect in every single way. There are businesses that— so if you look at the B Corps, for example, there are some that are very focused on a social mission, whereas others are very focused on an environmental mission. And even within those 2 very broad categories, there'll be some that are focused on, say, the supply chain and fair trade in the supply chain, others that are focused on the product offering for consumers and helping consumers to be more sustainable in their lives. But you can't do all of this. There are some businesses that can do more than one of those things, but it's— I think it's being really clear about what your purpose is to— it will help you in what we were talking about, about having that focus. You need to be really clear on what the purpose is in order to be able to say yes and no to things. Have a really consistent external message as well. So from my hat at the moment of brand and marketing, your purpose also is about communicating externally, essentially what you're selling to people. What is it that people are buying into when they engage with you as a brand or buy your beer? And yeah, just being really clear what that is. There'll be some people that for them, it doesn't align with their own social beliefs. And so you won't be the right business, product, service, et cetera, for them. others who will get you 100% and will be amazing loyal advocates of your business and your brand. But the first step is about communicating really clearly what that is. Equally with your employees, being really clear, this is what we're all aiming to do together, this is the direction we're going, and this is what we're hoping to achieve. Some people will love that and they will come along that journey with you with passion and enthusiasm and put everything into it. For others, it just won't be right, and then, you know, they may decide that it's not the right fit for them as an employer. But having that, that purpose defined is a really important first step.

Do you think that your experience at Carbon Trust has helped you with the reducing of your environmental impact and carbon footprinting for your business?

Yes, definitely. So I was doing a lot of work on carbon footprinting of businesses and of products. I was also working on the policies, both from an external perspective and also internal sort of change management for employees. And a lot of the experience from working with various different clients in my time as a consultant also was really helpful. The specific technical aspects of the role for carbon footprint, for example, have been recently very useful. We just completed a study with Advance London, who are part of the London Waste and Recycling Board. They completed a hotspot analysis of our business, which looks across your entire business and identifies areas where your impact could be significantly improved. And we focused then into one of those areas, which was packaging, both for the product and the outer packaging for the cases. So we looked at glass bottles and compared those to aluminium cans. They ran the study for us, they collected the data, they ran the analysis, but being able to interpret that and then make decisions for us as a business was really important. And to weigh up sometimes Quite conflicting arguments for one option over the other. So for example, our outer cases for bottles are a cardboard tray that is shrink-wrapped with plastic that keeps the glass bottles tight together, prevents them from breaking. And we're planning to move to whole cardboard boxes with also dividers between the bottles to prevent breakage. When we looked at the carbon footprint of those 2 options, the cardboard box had a carbon footprint that was 3 times higher than the plastic alternative. And so we've delayed making that change while we look for a better option. We've also obviously moved to cans in the meantime that don't have the problem of breakage. And so we can use cardboard boxes that are much thinner and lighter for those cans. But in Intuitively, you may feel that we need to move away from plastic, and actually, in that case, it wasn't the right decision from an environmental perspective for us as a business.

No, for sure. I think every situation has its own merits, and you've got to look at every situation differently. Plastics are also different as well. There's so many different types of plastic with so many different types of recyclable factors involved within those plastics as well.

Yes, that's true.

It isn't a blanket.

No, not at all. Right, no, not at all. And, you know, even we moved to using Vegware cups for some of our tasting cups when we were out doing sampling, and then subsequently understood more about the challenges for waste treatment of those, that type of plastic. Biodegradable, but it needs to be in industrial waste streams. Exactly, it needs to be separated, and industrially composted because it requires heat to break down. It doesn't work in household composting, and if it goes into plastic recycling, then it can degrade the plastic recycling stream. So there's all of these other factors to weigh up in making any decision.

Yeah, no, I think that whole Vegware thing is quite controversial though. Anyway, I'm not going to talk about it.

I mean, I think it's a great move that we should be going in that direction, but we just have to make sure that the system as a whole is set up to better deal with it. You know, we need proper collection of the waste and proper treatment. We just don't have that at the moment in the UK.

What would you say your biggest challenge or frustration was with regards to reducing your environmental impact?

I would say it's the fact that we contract brew, so we essentially outsource the production process. We are very selective in who we choose to work with, and that selection process is more important because we don't necessarily have the control. We certainly have the influence and we can request or at least discuss changes that we would love to see made in the process, but we don't have the ultimate control to make those changes. So, for example, looking at water efficiency with our brew partner, we rely on them to measure that and to find ways to be much more efficient with the use of water, water being one of the biggest impacts of brewing because we use so much water. It's at least 4 pints of water for a pint of beer. That can go up to sort of 10 times the amount of water for a pint of beer.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, so the water is a really important factor to consider, but there's— because the brewery isn't— it isn't our brewery, we have limited control over what can happen in the brewery does their best, obviously, because anyway, the partner that we work with is very driven to be as efficient as possible. But yeah, I guess it's, you know, it's that element of us relying on a third party for such a big impact for our business that can be a little bit frustrating.

Yeah, I can imagine. Have you got any advice or learning that you'd like to share with anyone listening to this podcast?

We touched on it earlier, but this idea of us never being able to be perfect, I think it's really important that we're honest about what we can do and what we can't do, and, you know, invite people to challenge us. And that requires us to be transparent about the reality of what we're doing and some of the challenges that we're facing, and also to respond to some of those challenges in a just a very honest way. Sometimes there are restrictions to what we can do because of the financial issues. So for example, we looked at moving to organic hops, but the hop varieties that we use are not grown in the UK, and one of the hop varieties that we could use to— could move to was going to be 10 times more expensive. So a change of product plus financial impacts, that wouldn't make sense to us as a business.

Mm-hmm.

The answer might be that Although it doesn't seem logically the most sustainable response, we've assessed the options, and for us, it's what we feel is the best solution. So we talked about the plastic versus cardboard issue. We also use malt, so malted barley is— the malt, the barley is grown at the brewery. The brewery used to be an old barley farm. It then travels about 20 miles up the road, where it's malted and then travels 20 miles back to be used to make beer, so it has a tiny, tiny footprint. It's not organic barley, and we looked into whether we should move to organic barley, but actually the process for moving to organic is really complicated. It would require the land to be left fallow for 3 years, and anyway, the brewery is using very environmentally respectful farming practices with the barley. It just wouldn't make sense for us to change to a barley that is traveling a long distance instead of using this like micro locally grown ingredients. The financial impact of that wasn't as great. And so we had weighed it up, but I guess the bigger issue for us is we're tackling food waste by using surplus bread. And we wouldn't specify that the bread had to be organic. So we would never be an organic brewery in that sense. There are organic beers that we've brewed, so we, for example, do collaboration brews with Stroud Brewery, who are a B Corp and an organic brewery. But for us, it just doesn't make sense for our purpose, which is about food waste, so addressing bread, and then also working with the local community and doing stuff as locally and sustainably as possible. But yeah, I'd just say, you know, be transparent about what you're doing and then be honest in your response.

And I think you've answered it in a way of just think about what it is that you're doing and just think about it. And that's probably as good as, isn't it? I mean, everything that you've just said is think about what you're doing, think about the plastic and the cardboard. Don't just rush into something, just go and work it out and don't be worried about going, actually, we're not going to go down that route because that may not be environmental, because you've thought about it.

Yeah.

The bit that I've taken away the most from that is the fact that you are properly assessing and evaluating every single situation that arises.

Right, exactly.

What's the best way that we can learn and connect with you? And of course, all the things will be on the website as well.

Yep. So I'm on Instagram and Twitter @lou_zed, L-O-U underscore Z-E-D. Or contact the team at Toast on hello@toastale.com and our website toastale.com.

Brilliant. Thank you so much, Louisa. Thank you very much for—

You're welcome. Thank you for having me.

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