This article is from the July edition of Inside FMCG print magazine. Since going to print Sauce has officially opened the Marrickville brewery in October this year.
Tired of the corporate world, former telecommunications executive Mike Clarke turned a love for craft beer into a thriving business.
His concept for Sauce Brewing Co, a craft beer microbrewery based in Sydney’s inner west, evolved about 1am on a Sunday after he had spent the evening searching on his laptop computer for synonyms for “alcohol” and “booze”.
“I came across ‘sauce’ and thought it could work, so I checked the business name and domains were available, and registered it on the spot,” Clarke said. “The next morning after the beer wore off it still sounded good, so it stuck.”
Clarke launched Sauce in November 2016 with a select range of brews, and is nearing completion of a brewery at Marrickville, set to open late this year.
“We decided to get the brand out there before building the brewery, so when it opens it has customers and a demand for the beer we will start to pump out. Being a gypsy brewer has had pros and cons. You don’t make profit – it’s a loss-making exercise. But it’s all for marketing. That’s how we have looked at it: let’s get the brand out there. And that is purely what it is.”
Bars and bottleshops
Sauce Beer is currently stocked in more than 100 bars and bottleshops, mainly in Sydney but also in the ACT and Brisbane as well as throughout Victoria. Clarke said there is also a strong following in Adelaide. His sales are evenly divided between cans/packaged product and keg. The packaging is simple with bold colours, which Clarke said is memorable and stands out in the fridge.
“We have the core range. There are six beers we always do, and they are quite conservative cans. They feature big, bright colours but are all the same design. They are not too crazy, not too complex – suitable for your BWS, Dans or the like.
“Then we have our special beers, and we get more funky with these,” he said. The weirdest flavours he has made to date include a mole (choc-chipotle) porter and a Snickers beer.
Clarke has tapped into an industry that has flourished over the past five years in particular, which according to IBISWorld has benefitted from “changing consumer tastes, particularly the move toward premium beers, and growing emphasis on quality across liquor retailing”.
‘Local’ touch
“There is a lot of competition and it is growing, but also the demand is growing,” said Clarke. “So it’s roughly keeping up pace. There will be some rationalisation in the next few years as there are more than 600 and something breweries at the moment, but that is going to shrink.”
While his new brewery will support his distribution plans, it will also feature a 200-seat beer garden.
“We are going to be that local ‘come down and have a beer’ kind of model, but we are also scaling the system with a packaging line and everything else to be able to do national distribution. Everything I am doing here now is in such a way that we can increase the output in the future.”
Clarke describes the microbrewery industry as collaborative and competitive “but not cut-throat”.
“I have a couple of peers in the industry I aspire to. Pirate Life has done really well, almost entirely in cans and packaged. Our BHAG (big, hairy, audacious goal) is to be one of the top 10 producers by volume in the independent segment,” he said. “That is our 10-year goal.”
