Case Study - Beatnikz Republic Brewing Co - Paul Greetham

  Overview: Beatnikz Republic is a new microbrewery based in Manchester. They needed a lawyer to help draft a shareholder's agreement as they sold equity in the business to fund the purchase of their own premises. After receiving very high quotations and long turnaround times from traditional firms they stumbled across LawBite who, in one instance, quoted a tenth of the price. 1) Tell me about yourself and your role in the company? I am the founder, owner, brewer and cleaner - I do everything! 2) How long have you been trading and where are you based? We’ve been operational for a couple of years in different locations, but we’re now based permanently in Manchester. This is the first time we’ve had our own premises as we were previously cuckoo brewing (brewing on other brewery’s equipment). 3) And what does Beatnikz do? Tell me what makes your product great. We look to enhance our beer’s flavour by adding various ingredients on top of the traditional water, malt, hops and yeast. For instance, we have a beer called Beach Bum which is a West Coast pale ale that uses sweet orange peel and lime zest to bring out the ‘sunshine’ in the beer – we came up with the concept whilst drinking tangerine IPAs in Venice Beach, LA. We have another beer called Afrobeat where we use fresh Ethiopian Yirgacheffe espresso to give the beer a real coffee kick. 4) What are your goals as an organisation? Our focus now is setting up the brewery successfully and becoming fully operational. This may sound like a simple goal, but the amount of work needed to get to where we need to be is huge! We hope to first supply the local market; then we can look at supplying other regions through national distributors. 5) What challenges have you experienced in the Food and Beverage industry? Quality control is of paramount importance. Anyone can make something amazing once, but the challenge lies in doing it again and again. It’s a competitive industry and sometimes ‘new’ can be as important as taste. The market is somewhat brand agnostic as people like trying new flavours/styles and the brand itself is becoming less important. It’s essential we keep coming up with new ideas, concepts and flavours. Luckily, with my background as a homebrewer, this is something I love doing - we very much view this challenge as an exciting one! 6) When it comes to dealing with the law and lawyers, what is most important? Being confident in the person and having the right expectations. It’s difficult to get the balance right between expertise, price and speed - but it’s even more important to get it right first time. I had been given outrageous quotes before I came across LawBite - the highest being £5000 for a simple shareholders agreement – but even the ‘lower’ end still seemed unreasonably high. 7)  How did you hear about LawBite? What made us stand out from the crowd? Before making any business decisions as to what services I want to use, I always thoroughly research my options. I spoke to many firms and received 15 quotes in total and LawBite’s was the most cost effective. Once I spoke to Andrew over the phone for an hour before being quoted, I was confident he was very well qualified in his field so had no hesitation in instructing him once the quote was agreed. 8) What has LawBite done to help your business? Provided peace of mind for the investors; the investors are friends and family so the agreement was quite simple. There was no need to spend a large sum on something that was fundamentally easy to put together. It also needed to be done quickly so we could use the investment to secure the ideal commercial unit we had found – which we managed to do. Andrew’s turnaround time was ideal. So, with the price, the speed and the confidence I had in Andrew, using LawBite was a no-brainer! 9) Overall why did you enjoy working with LawBite? It was just easy overall. A case of coming across the website, putting in a short brief and having someone get back to me quickly. I actually spoke to the lawyer on the phone the same day. The positives were definitely the speed, particularly the speed of initial reaction to get the ball moving quickly. The quality of the agreement was great. Everyone signed without any questions. Overall it was on time and at the right price. Thank you Paul! Lizzie Knight, Head of Marketing, LawBite Beatnikz Republic Brewing Co - http://www.beatnikzrepublic.com