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It has been hard over the past month for Londoners travelling on the Tube to be unaware of Lucky Saint. The non-alcoholic beer brand’s posters were everywhere during Dry January, featuring a nun devoutly holding a pint next to the words Salvation Exists, in the long tradition of irreverent British beer ads.
Lucky Saint’s £26mn sales last year were a drop in the UK’s beer ocean: drinkers consumed about £1bn of both Carlsberg and Birra Moretti’s alcoholic lagers in pubs and bars. But it has established itself as the country’s fourth biggest alcohol-free brand and largest independent with Bavarian-brewed beer and comic marketing.
This reflects the heritage of the founder Luke Boase, who grew up “consuming beer commercials” because both his parents worked in advertising. His father was co-founder of Boase Massimi Pollitt, an influential agency that dreamt up ads for Hofmeister featuring a lager-drinking bear, and his sister later worked on a Stella Artois ad involving ice-skating priests.
“I’m definitely not a brewer,” Boase conceded last week as we sat in The Lucky Saint, a Marylebone pub that doubles as its head office. He worked in asset management before seeing the opportunity a decade ago for a non-alcoholic beer that tasted better than early efforts to cater to non-drinkers, notably Beck’s Blue and Guinness’s Kaliber.
The opportunity is growing, although brewers have responded by making better non-alcoholic beers and stouts, including Heineken 0.0 and Guinness Draft 0.0. UK alcohol consumption is at a record low as younger drinkers seek alternatives, and Dolf van den Brink, Heineken’s chief executive, is stepping down amid weak demand for traditional brands.
Boase struck the right moment, with breweries becoming able to produce tastier low- and non-alcoholic beers by fermenting them to full strength and then removing some or all of the alcohol. Lucky Saint’s four beers are made by third-party breweries, including a Bavarian Weissbier launched in September. It is sold both in bottles and on draft in more than 1,200 pubs.
The link between brewing and advertising is integral to its growth. It has raised about £20mn from institutions, including JamJar, the venture capital fund of the Innocent Drinks founders, and from individuals. Several of them are marketers, including David Golding and James Murphy, co-founders of the ad agency Adam & Eve DDB, which is now owned by Omnicom.
Beer advertising historically relied on humour because it was aimed at men meeting in pubs and bars. “Beer is the world’s most sociable drink,” Boase said. This inspired many 30-second television ads built around characters such as the Hofmeister bear, which hailed from Bavaria but inexplicably spoke with a Cockney accent.
But men and women drink non-alcoholic beer and 30-second ads no longer dominate marketing. Lucky Saint’s images were shot by the fashion photographer Rankin in 2018 after Boase settled on a name that evoked the monastic tradition of brewing and the virtue of not drinking, along with the luck that founders need. The brand has used them since.
“Luke has built a brand with modern-day iconography. You get the impression in a short, sharp burst,” Golding says. This works both on social media and billboards and has the benefit of being cheaper than television. It is also well suited to Tube travel in London, where it originated and where sales — particularly in pubs and restaurants — remain concentrated.
Lucky Saint leads independents such as Big Drop and Nirvana: its nearest rival in pubs last year was Ghost Ship Alcohol Free from the Suffolk brewer Adnams, according to the Morning Advertiser. But it remains small: while brewers took time to grasp the market’s potential, they have woken up. Diageo’s Guinness 0.0 not only sold far more on draft last year but grew faster.
Golding argues that, like Tesla solely producing EVs, Lucky Saint has more credibility than brewers selling both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beers. “The brand says to consumers ‘This is all we do, and what we believe’. People like that.” Conversely, bigger rivals have economies of scale and beers that are now capable of challenging Lucky Saint’s premium position.
As brewers struggle and pubs face rising costs, Lucky Saint has been a bright spot of growth for the British drinks industry, thanks to non-alcoholic brewing and craft advertising. Now the brand has to keep spreading.
john.gapper@ft.com