Gorgeous Brewery – bringing CBD to the world of beer

Rosie Lintott: What makes your brewery different to others in London?

Robert Laub: We are family run and fairly independent; it’s just my sister and I, we are the owners and operators of it and we take a lot of pride in that. We take a lot of pride in the fact that we’re not really trying to be too crazy, we like to do some fun and exciting stuff but our focus is really on the quality of the product rather than how ‘out there’ it is. We find a lot of people try and differentiate themselves in the market by coming up with something new but what we’re trying to do is just do the classics as well as we can. We do sort of expand out though, certainly when we do collaborations with other breweries.

RL: Why did you decide to make a CBD beer?

RL: With the CBD beer, obviously I knew just from reading that businesses were starting to get a lot of lot of traction and I know someone who owns a company and a group of shops called CBD and You. We got talking about it and I knew he was one of the first pure based CBD shops and I was interested in going into business together, I was thinking about incorporating CBD into beer and that’s how it all started.

RL: Do you think there is an increase in consumers wanting CBD products?

RL: In general, as education and more information is more readily available to people, the demand has been driving across the board. I think it was a natural progression that eventually it would come into the brewer.

RL: Have you found much competition in the market when it comes to your CBD beer?

RL: There are a couple of others out there that I know about, there is more in America but we’re not quite into the position its built into America yet. However, I think because of CBD and You, and we’ve got CBD experts and farmers, I think it is a bit more unique in that respect. So I don’t think we’ve got a great deal of competition at this point in time but that’s not to say that other people won’t come up with the idea.

RL: Are you thinking of creating another CBD beer?

RL: As of now we’re really proud of Grasshopper and what it’s doing and we want to focus on that, but obviously there are things like different levels of strength of CBD. We do a number of gift packs in our range, like four packs and six packs of our beers, so I wouldn’t rule out doing something along those lines encompassing CBD in the products, so as of now we’re not but you never know.

RL: Do you think the CBD trend will grow or do you think it will phase out?

RL: I would say it will grow, I certainly hope it will, and I know it’s been around for a very long time, it got banned and then it’s been back recently and the more people that get educated about it the more people know about it, it’s all about awareness and regulating ourselves. Especially the world we’re in at the moment, where it’s a huge aspect of everyone’s lives, I would say that it’s here to stay.

RL: What are your plans for the rest of the year?

RL: Obviously now we’re going into Christmas we want to try and get as many Gorgeous pints into as many people’s hands as possible, we’ve got gift boxes online and instore as well which we’re looking to push and hopefully we can try and move that forward into the new year. We’re advertising the CBD a lot more and it’s also going to be on the Amazon store in the coming weeks so we’re going to push that and hopefully get into some CBD seminars and events, that’s what the plan is on a whole.

RL: Where do you see your business in the next five years?

RL: For our business on a whole, just natural progression, a bit more traction, an increase in the demand of production. Hopefully to [get] a bigger location, open a few tap rooms and some stores and just make sure we can push on as a business and a brewery would be great.