Siren Craft Brew streamlines operations with Breww

We spoke with Darron Anley, founder of Siren Craft Brew, about their experience using Breww.

Founded in 2013, Siren Craft Brew was born from Darron’s passion for modern, flavour-forward beers that were emerging around 2010. Despite trying to resist the idea, the pull to start a brewery proved too strong, and Siren was established with a clear goal: to brew exciting, full-flavoured and forward-thinking beers without compromise.

Siren’s philosophy is simple. Brew the beer you want to brew. Source the best ingredients, regardless of cost, and refuse to release anything that does not meet your standards. From coffee-led stouts like Broken Dream to barrel-aged projects such as Maiden and Odyssey, Siren has built its reputation on quality, creativity and beers with a story to tell.

Watch the full video case study here

Why did you start using Breww?

“I think I’d seen it across so many different places, to be honest. We actually had three different systems. So we had a CRM system which was separate to Merlin at the time, and then we had a reporting software that sat on top. All three of those were really, really expensive.

We were looking to move to Shopify and to find a product that actually had a good native link was really important to us, and Breww had that.”

Tell us more about your webshop

“One of the big changes before was because of the system that we had, we would sell product to the webshop and that was then disassociated from everything else within the business.

If for various reasons we weren’t on top of how those products were selling, then we could find ourselves in a position where if somebody hadn’t sold enough cases, we could be out of stock over a weekend and we don’t want to be.

Now we’re in a great position where that’s not the case.

The move to Shopify took a little bit longer than we would have liked. That wasn’t down to Breww, that was down to our Shopify implementer to a certain extent. But the work that Breww did to help solve some of the problems we were having was fantastic.

That’s been a huge step in the right direction, exactly what we wanted from Breww.”

How has Breww impacted the duty returns process?

“The really big step up has been the lack of time we now have to put into duty returns.

Prior to this with our old system, we did a lot of double checking just to make sure that everything was where it needed to be and was done correctly. Breww gets it and therefore it just cuts out a whole load of time. We run the report and we know it’s right.

Just on duty, it probably saved a good four to five hours.

From a traceability point of view, that has been really useful. We’ve recently undergone a Marks & Spencer audit as we now supply their nitro stout. Whilst we could do that previously, because we were tracking all the guiles in, the lots in from our suppliers, and the same going out, it is 100% easier on Breww.

It’s just there, it’s simple. Somebody doesn’t have to go and write a SQL code, they just press a little button and it’s done.”

Tell us about the stock valuation process

“Where it is helping us is with a much tighter stock valuation. Previously that was much more of a challenge, but the way Breww works with valuing the production, the stock in production, and the stock actually in package that hasn’t gone out, that for me is a good step ahead of where we were before. Some of that was a little bit down to we weren’t following our own processes as well as we could, but actually Breww just does it much better for us.”

How has your experience been with the Breww support team?

“I think the support team have been great.

Certainly a lot of the guys in the team have got some really good stories to talk about where they’ve logged cases, they’ve had some really, really fast interactive conversations, and stuff has got fixed and stuff has got developed really, really quickly.”

What has the impact been across the team?

“With Breww, there is a lot more opportunity for everybody to interact with it, which for me is a much better thing because it should divest some of the admin and some of the work to the people who are doing the work in the first place, rather than them filling in a form and somebody else is going to key in somewhere else later. The more we can push that level of the work, then that’s a great thing.

In places we are, people are using a system like Breww in a way that they never did before, certainly even in the brewery side, and that’s been good and positive. I think the general feeling is that people want to do more, they want to help.”

Would you recommend Breww to other breweries?

“My advice would be to go for it. Breww has all of the groundings to really make sure that it can take us where we need to be. It’s got the information, it has got the reporting, it is all there.

As a business, you are clearly still driving where you’re putting the energy into a brewery-focused business, and only a brewery-focused business. I think that’s exactly what we all need.

If another brewery was to come to me, I would say absolutely go for it.