How Two Guys Are Putting Beer Waste to Use With a Healthy Snack Bar
Yahoo Food is partnering with Barnraiser, a crowd-funding site that helps raise money for farmers and food entrepreneurs. Each week, we feature a project which highlights the mission of Barnraiser: to put a billion dollars into the hands of food innovators as they reshape a healthy food world. This week, Barnraiser is featuring Regrained. Founders Dan and Jordan are home brewers turned entrepreneurs who want to build a better food system.
Hi world!! We are Dan and Jordan – homebrewers turned sustainable food business entrepreneurs – who are united by a shared passion for good beer, food, and building a better food system. ReGrained’s mantra is:
“Brew Good. Bake Good. Do Good.”
As homebrewers, we were constantly presented with the problem of what to do with our own leftover grain. The idea of finding a better use for spent grain made sense, so we began to experiment. Our “garage” was a crowded apartment kitchen, and our first product was an evolving recipe of small batch granola bars. We distributed these bars to our community of friends in order to get feedback and funnel our modest sales into the next round of ingredients. Batch after batch we honed in on a recipe until we had something that we believed we could bring to market. Then we did.
Our brewery partners take care of the first part, we own the second, and with you, we can do the third for our bodies, our communities, and our planet. After all, we believe that we should all be able to have our beer…and it eat it too. Don’t you?
Join us in raising $30,000 to upgrade our recipe, packaging, and process for ReGrained’s two flagship “Eat Beer” bars: the Honey-Almond IPA and Chocolate-Coffee Stout.
Only about 10% of the ingredients used to brew end up in your glass. Grain represents about 85% of what gets left behind. ReGrained recovers this “spent” beer grain from local craft breweries…after they have already used it to brew. Our partners only need the sugars to make beer, and the remaining grain is a source plant protein and dietary fiber. This “waste” is actually food, so we upcycle it to create delicious, nutritious, and sustainable baked goods.
Ultimately, ReGrained exists to create win-wins with our (1) customers, (2) partners, and (3) planet by treating this grain like the resource that it is.
ReGrained 2.0: Where Will the Dough Go?
We’ve spent the last 10 months producing thousands of IPA and Stout bars in a shared kitchen space in San Francisco’s Hunter’s Point baking and packaging by hand. We’ve been growing, but more importantly, we’ve been learning.
We’ve identified ways to upgrade our recipe, packaging, and process. Now, we need your help to bring ReGrained bars and this delicious, nutritious, and sustainable ingredient into our food system.
Video and photos provided by ReGrained
Barnraiser is the No. 1 crowd-funding community for good food and healthy living. At Barnraiser, you will meet the people changing how we eat and live, share their inspirational stories and fund good food, farming, edible education, social innovations and more projects that create a healthier world.
