Start-up of the week: Hackney’s Toast beer - made from bread - now stocked by Tesco nationwide

Each week we take to the streets to find a start-up business right here in Hackney. This week, we discovered Toast beer made from bread is expanding to US and Brazil

A beer made from surplus bread is now being stocked by Tesco nationwide.

Rob Wilson set up Toast to help eradicate food waste.

From his HQ in Mare Street he began brewing beer using bread donated from local bakeries, including Tesco itself. The brewing has now moved to Yorkshire to meet demand, and they will soon start brewing in the US and Brazil.

Since its launch in January 2016 Toast has saved 10 tonnes of waste bread, and aims to save 100 tonnes in the next three years. Bread is the UK’s most wasted food product, with 44pc wasted across the whole food chain.

Rob said: “The choice of bread was a very deliberate one.

“A single sandwich factory will discard 13,000 slices of loaf-ends every single day, while beer, a 4,000 year-old way of preserving the calories in bread, has a much longer shelf life. It also connects people in a celebratory way and, as we say, to change the world you have to throw a better party than those destroying it.”