How Lucky Saint’s founder turned his five-year-old alcohol-free start-up into the Grocer Gold Awards ‘Drinks Brand of the Year.’
Luke Boase never intended to start a brewery.
According to The Buyer, the Lucky Saint founder’s motivation was “more a desire to launch his own start-up business. Having come from a financial analyst background he had seen firsthand the power, energy and excitement that can be created by start-up companies.”
Reluctant brewer Boase may be, but the current Grocer Gold Awards ‘Drinks Brand of the Year’ seems to be doing rather well.
The judges lavished praise on Lucky Saint, “In the past year, it has grown to reach 4,000 off-trade distribution points including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Ocado, Waitrose and Morrisons, generating £3m in retail sales in 2022. Across all channels, that figure stands at £20m.”
In fact, things went so positively for Boase in 2023, he even had the temerity to open his own Marylebone pub, called – what else? – The Lucky Saint. Where they serve up frothing alcoholic beers alongside foaming pints of his non-alcoholic lager.
This enlightened philosophy, the brand’s desire to work with the traditional industry – rather than constantly declare – as so many overzealous start-ups do – an intention to ‘disrupt it,’ may also be the reason Lucky Saint has become the first alcohol-free brand to be welcomed into the British Beer & Pub Association.
It's also a testament to Boase’s marketing know-how.
Which is why when the charity Alcohol Change UK were looking for an official beer for ‘Dry January,’ Lucky Saint was almost certainly the first name they discussed.
Boase, again, “we believe that the greatest reward of drinking is the social connection, not the alcohol. So, while January is traditionally a month of moderation, it now means we can stay social and drink January dry.”
2024 is the third year Lucky Saint have been the official dry-Jan beer brand. And, shrewdly, they tailor a lot of their advertising spend around the first month of the year.
As brand-tracking specialists Attest point out, “Dry January 2023 was Lucky Saint’s most successful to date. Ten million people saw the ad, which they supported with activities including giving away 80,000 free beer samples. During the month, Lucky Saint was the number one alcohol-free beer, poured on tap in more than 600 pubs.”
Britain’s number one alcohol-free beer brand. Not a bad achievement for a man who “never wanted to start a brewery.”