JoyBräu: Bringing you a new kind of beer belly

Protein instead of a buzz: The two former Hapag-Lloyd trainees Tristan Brümmer and Erik Dimter are successfully marketing an alcohol-free, protein-rich beer that promotes muscle growth – and tastes good. They now ship their protein beer with Hapag-Lloyd to 11 countries. And now they are preparing to enter the big leagues.

It’s a goal that all boys dream about: a six-pack. But we aren’t talking here about a six-pack of beer from the supermarket, but about the six small abdominal muscles. They’re the ones you can only show off at the poolside if you work out a lot – and eat a protein-rich diet. Tristan Brümmer (24) and Erik Dimter (25) also grew fascinated by strength training at an early age. And the two former Hapag-Lloyd trainees have found a way to combine beer and bodybuilding – and make a living in the process.

Four years ago, the two Hamburg natives developed an alcohol-free beer for athletes who no longer want to guzzle protein drinks. The craft beer contains 21 grams of protein and some amino acids, and it costs 2.50 euros for a 0.33-liter bottle in Germany. The non-alcoholic beer has been a hit among male bodybuilders – and its brand-new grapefruit flavour is also winning fans among women. What’s more, ultra-fit US Army soldiers based in Europe have also grown to love JoyBräu. This has prompted the two founders to start making strategic preparations to conquer the US market – via encirclement.

The Hamburg natives learned to think internationally at a very early stage of their training programme at Hapag-Lloyd. “Our stay abroad, which was part of the dual work-study programme, taught us how to think and work in an intercultural way, and we were able to learn how important it is to think outside the box,” Brümmer says. And they learned early on that “as unconventional thinkers, we need freedom in our job.” Their start-up is benefitting enormously from these lessons. “We have set up flat hierarchies and innovative approaches for everyday work in our company, which enables us to implement projects extremely quickly and efficiently. Our work at Hapag-Lloyd laid the foundation for these ways of thinking.”

Hapag-Lloyd has already transported the first containers full of beer to Mexico, and a first container sailed to India in August. “As the most populous country in the world and one with an emerging fitness market, we see enormous potential there,” Brümmer says. The volume planned for 2020 is one 40-foot container per month.

The first four containers fully packed with beer will soon be headed to Canada for a broad-based market test. “Canadians are very sports-oriented,” Dimter notes. The importer and distribution partner is GNC, a large chain of stores selling health and sports-nutrition products. And the Pittsburgh-based company also has very good contacts to the US supermarket giant Walmart. However, Brümmer says that “there are still a few regulatory hurdles to overcome” before JoyBräu appears on Walmart shelves.

A while back in Germany, the two of them already went through the motions for how this could work. With a lot of perseverance, they managed to surmount the high bureaucratic hurdles of the US Army and obtain supplier status. “We currently deliver to 16 bases throughout Europe.” More or less randomly, the two had been able to make some initial contact with members of the US military at a sporting event in Frankfurt am Main. The latter were particularly interested in the beer/protein/alcohol-free combination, which is unique in the world to date. “The soldiers are allowed to work out in the gym during their operational readiness, but they aren’t allowed to drink alcohol,” Dimter explains.

JoyBräu is brewed in the Bischoff private brewery in Winnweiler, which is not far from the US barracks in the western German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. Dimter and Brümmer came up with the idea, and they ultimately contracted the Brewing Science unit at the Technical University of Berlin to develop the beer. “Based on the nutritionally valuable ingredients present in a malt wort, once developed, the fitness drink was supposed to combine all the naturally positive properties of a non-alcoholic beer with the special properties of the amino acids that promote muscle formation,” says project manager Thomas Kunz in describing the requirements of the two young entrepreneurs.

The two had already invested a lot of time and money in their beer project during the period when they were training at Hapag-Lloyd. “The product-development phase alone lasted two and a half years,” Brümmer says. “And it wasn’t until we knew that the product, our protein beer, would be ready for the market in six months that Erik and I halted our training.”

According to Dimter, the Bischoff brewery has enough capacity to produce many more hectolitres of JoyBräu. But there have also been initial enquiries from food-supplement manufacturers abroad about whether they could brew the drink under licence in their own country. And, Dimter adds with a laugh, there have also been “fortunately unsuccessful attempts to copy our beer.” For now, plans call for continuing to brew the beer exclusively in Germany, from where it is already exported to 11 countries, including Russia and Singapore. And demand for it is growing.

Right now, the biggest problem for the two entrepreneurs is managing rapid growth and the many different sales channels in Germany. “We sell online and are available from Amazon, but we’ve also been in many supermarkets in northern Germany since the beginning of the year.” The number of supermarkets is supposed to grow by 200, and the company currently has so many sales channels that “you sometimes have to be careful not to get lost,” Dimter jokes.

JoyBräu is now available in almost every Hamburg-based store of REWE, one of Germany’s largest supermarket chains. But rather than being in the beer section, shoppers will find JoyBräu alongside protein bars and food supplements. “They’re also in high demand in supermarkets,” Brümmer notes, as such products are now part of the lives of many people. This is probably one of the reasons why protein beer was named the most innovative fitness product of the year last year.