In a world where sustainability is top priority, the traditional model of large breweries shipping their beers all over the world doesn’t quite cut it. That’s where Your Round comes in – our innovative circular subscription concept for beer reimagines the supply chain system to keep things local and sustainable.
We started with a simple idea: the best way to drink beer is by heading straight to your nearest brewery to enjoy it fresh from the tap. But we know that’s not always practical. That’s why we set out to create a new platform that connects consumers with local breweries, offering convenience and reducing the barriers to engaging with reuse systems.
Working with sustainability business Anthesis, we designed a packaging system that addresses the environmental impact of the beer industry through circularity and decarbonisation. Your Round allows you to receive high-quality beers from a variety of brewers, while also reducing the depletion of natural resources and the amount of material used over time.
The packaging system uses robust, sustainable materials that offer longevity in use. Our modular containers are unbranded, so they can be repeatedly filled with any brand of beer, reducing waste and energy use. The system ‘slows the loop’ down by keeping or reusing resources and materials for longer, and ‘cleans the loop’ by moving away from carbon and energy-intensive single-use materials.
To subscribe, consumers simply use the Your Round app to purchase beer brewed by local breweries. The fresh beer is delivered to subscribers using a purposefully designed reuse packaging system. Upon subscribing to the service, you are sent a “Smart Tap”, leased to you for the duration of your subscription. The smart tap can be attached to any of the kegs ordered from the Your Round App. The Smart tap has been designed with a modular approach. Components are easy to assemble and disassemble making maintenance and upgrades easy for users to implement. Doing so lessens the environmental impact of the device by futureproofing, extending the Smart tap’s lifespan.
The pressurised system is initiated through a refillable CO2 canister, also provided with each order, ensuring that your beer is always served as fresh as the brewer intended. Once empty, pickup of the kegs and cannisters can be arranged via the app.
Our service works at a local level, with city or regional hubs and distribution networks collecting used kegs, cleaning them and redistributing the clean containers to breweries to be filled and sealed, then returned to the central hub where they are stored. The filled containers are delivered to subscribers’ homes, with empty ones collected in the same journey so that they can be cleaned and refilled again. Subscribers can also collect and return containers at their local bar, pub, or off-licence.
Through the data-enabled app, subscribers can interact with the service to browse and purchase beers, receive recommendations and offers, manage their orders, and monitor the status of the beer they have purchased. The containers are fitted with smart tap technology, meaning that the primary brand interface ‘talks’ to subscribers using e-ink technology via a lens. The lens then presents the customer’s preferred beer with information about the product such as its brewing date, CO2 pressure and the ideal temperature for serving. The app and smart lens provide opportunities for targeted marketing for breweries and data collection to help the industry thrive.
The shape of the kegs are designed with a UK household fridge in mind allowing for either vertical or horizontal storage. Likewise the smart tap can be pivoted on a 45 degree axis meaning you can pour beer from either position depending on your needs. It allows you to experience cold draught beer just like you would at your local pub from the comfort of your own home.
The service could also be perfect for B2B, with independent bars and pubs, pop-up events and food trucks subscribing to the service and ordering larger containers (10L or 20L) from which to serve beer to customers.
Your Round harnesses the growing love of local and connects consumers with local breweries and beers, forging new roles for local pubs, bars, and off-licenses to play and strengthening their interactions with local consumers. The concept successfully challenges the existing global supply chain paradigm of the beer industry and offers a more sustainable alternative – a perfect example of how to create a new retail channel to support small businesses.
