Freshly ground coffee steeped overnight in cold water is not the same as hot coffee gone cold. In fact, it’s a completely different taste; described by Craig Brady, who is co-founder of Bare Roasters & Brewers which produces a sparkling cold brew coffee, as “light, sweet, mellow and less bitter”.
Bare was launched in May and comes in a can, while the company also produces Nitro cold brew coffee on tap for the cafe and bar market. “We roast, brew and can our coffee drink in our roastery in Wicklow town,” says Brady, whose love affair with coffee began during his time as a competitive international mountain biker.
“We wanted to produce a refreshing coffee-based drink and Bare comes with a lemon citrus twist. We also wanted a product that was suitable for the general drinks market as opposed to the specialist coffee market. There are other cold brew coffee drinks available, but nothing that’s 100 per cent natural and low in calories. Bare [35 calories a can] is aimed at adults looking for a healthy alternative to energy drinks, juices and soft drinks and there is nothing similar on the market at the moment.”
Brady stumbled on the idea for Bare in the summer of 2019 when he wanted his morning coffee fix but couldn’t face a hot drink on a hot day. “I started to make cold brew coffee at home and added tonic water and lemon. I loved it. Friends loved it, but I couldn’t find anything that even closely resembled it in the shops, and the seed of an idea was sown,” he says.
Brady has been in the coffee business since 2017 when he set up Brady’s Coffee Company to fill a gap in the market for a high quality “Irish” souvenir coffee. “There were Irish teas available, but no coffee. We now supply all major tourist attractions and the majority of souvenir shops in Ireland as well as exporting to the USA,” says Brady, whose family runs a wholesale Irish souvenirs business.
It took 18 months to research and develop the cold brew and Brady’s partners in the new business are his wife, Catherine Murphy, and his brother, Darren. The company employs six people and Brady says its main target market is the health-conscious consumer who cares about what they put into their body.
“The Irish market for iced coffee is well established as a grab-and-go choice and is especially popular with the under-40s demographic. However, it’s dominated by sweet, milky and flavoured options, and this has left a gap in the market for black brews which are naturally sweeter due to the cold brewing process,” Brady says.
“Developing Bare has been a long process as we didn’t know much about cold brew or drinks production before stepping into this project,” he adds. “It was a steep learning curve and that delayed our launch by seven or eight months. Our biggest mistake was not employing a brewing expert who could have helped us make better decisions about equipment at the outset. Up to this point, we have invested around €65,000 in the business. We have had really good support from LEO Wicklow, Bord Bia, Teagasc and Enterprise Ireland, and are now preparing to launch a fundraising round.”
At present, the company’s growth is constrained by production capacity, so for now the focus is on the Irish market. However, new equipment is on the way that will double output and open up export possibilities for 2023.
“The USA has a massive cold brew market, and as we already export our roasted coffee over there, it’s a natural route to take and scale will protect our margins,” Brady says. “Bare is a category disrupter. It does not sit within any existing market segment, so essentially it’s a completely new style product.”
