Five Pence

We give 5 pence from every can or pint that we sell to a rotating selection of charitable causes. We're going to settle down to a point where each particular beer supports a particular cause but, whilst we're getting started, and whilst these seems to be new crises emerging every month, we'll be sending the contributions to where it is needed most.

We tend to get a very positive reaction when we first describe our 5p policy to new drinkers, although, beyond that, the two most common comments are:

"5p, is that it?"

and

"Whoa. As much as that?"

Which sort of confirms to us that the figure might well be in the right place!

It took us a while to settle on that amount and the main points we considered were:

1. The amount has to be high enough so that our contributions can make tangible improvements to the recipients. We're a startup, our sales are as low as they'll ever be (hopefully!) and so there's a fine line to walk.

2. The contribution has to be low enough to ensure that we don't price ourselves too high. We don't want to place ourselves in the price bracket of the elite craft beer breweries in the UK (yet!) and we also don't want to price ourselves too high for less affluent craft beer fans. And taken even further: those less well off should be able to enjoy nice things too.

After settling on 5p, it's been pretty interesting to see how many other (HUGE) organisations also promise to donate that amount for a sale. Or something like "5% of profits", which can be massaged to depress the amount that is donated. We'll always be looking to do more, to highlight causes with our voice and to collaborate with good causes.

Small breweries are still currently subject to a lower tax bill than the macro breweries. This tax break was brought in by Gordon Brown in order to help ease the tax burden on small businesses in the hope that that saving will contribute to growth. We felt that to contribute more than 5p might also open ourselves up to criticism within the industry as we'd be not using the tax break in the manner that it was intended. The current, Tory, government are reviewing this tax break and we don't feel like we want to give them any reason to think that the tax break is being exploited by Spookton.