Business and a Brew

What if the smartest marketing strategy was telling people not to buy your product? In this episode, Dani and Si explore the fascinating world of demarketing, the counterintuitive strategy where brands deliberately encourage customers to buy less, consume less, or even walk away altogether. From Patagonia's iconic "Don't Buy This Jacket" campaign to IKEA's repair initiativ...

What happens when one of the country's most trusted financial institutions stops living up to its name? In this episode, Dani and Si unpack the extraordinary rise and dramatic collapse of Equitable Life, once regarded as one of the safest and most respected pension providers in the UK. Built on centuries of trust and pioneering financial thinking, it became the centre of one of Britain's...

Is Britain calling last orders on one of its most iconic institutions? In this episode, Danni and Si pull up a chair and explore the story behind the British pub crisis. From Roman taverns and medieval ale houses to Victorian gin palaces and modern locals, they trace how pubs became far more than places to grab a drink. They became the heart of communities, friendships, celebrations, and everyday...

What happens when doing the right thing comes at the cost of your career? In this episode, Dani and Si tackle the uncomfortable subject of whistleblowing and ask a question that sounds simple but rarely has a simple answer: are whistleblowers heroes, troublemakers, or something in between? Together, they explore what really happens when someone inside an organisation raises concerns about wrongdoi...

What does success actually mean? Not the Instagram version. Not the LinkedIn version. Not the version that tells you success is six-figure months, luxury cars, 5:30am starts, and an endless grind. Just success. For you. In this episode, Dani and Si explore how our definition of success has evolved from a simple measure of outcomes into something heavily tied to money, status, and external validati...

This one is difficult listening at times, but it’s a story that needs to be told. Dani and Si take a closer look at the vaginal mesh scandal, one of the biggest medical controversies in recent UK history, and a stark example of what can happen when systems fail the very people they’re supposed to protect. What began as a seemingly simple solution for stress urinary incontinence and pelvic organ pr...

Grab a brew and a custard slice, because this one is proof that sometimes the prettiest shop window hides the messiest books. ☕🍰 Dani and Si dig into the very British scandal behind Patisserie Valerie , the high street favourite that looked like the perfect success story right up until a £40 million black hole appeared in the accounts. We start with the nostalgia. Strawberry tarts, fancy coffees...

This one starts with a tired businessman in a taxi and ends with Formula One dominance, space jumps, and one of the most powerful lifestyle brands on the planet. ☕️🥤 We crack open the surprisingly wild story behind Red Bull , from its roots as a Thai roadside tonic for truck drivers to becoming a global brand selling billions of cans worldwide. We follow Austrian marketer Dietrich Mateschitz fro...

Is there a hidden ingredient in your pint? In this episode of Business & a Brew , we dive into the surprising story behind glyphosate – the active ingredient in Roundup weed killer – and its journey from farm fields to your beer glass. We unpack how a herbicide developed by Monsanto and now owned by Bayer became one of the most widely used chemicals on the planet, and why World Health Organiza...

BrewDog was once the poster child for punk business – cult branding, guerrilla marketing and a loyal army of “equity punks” behind it. So how did a billion‑pound craft beer darling end up as a cautionary tale? In this episode, Danielle and Simon revisit BrewDog – not just the headlines, but the actual full story. From two mates with a van and a second‑hand brewing kit to global bars, a US expansio...

Sand sounds harmless. Beachy. Innocent. Something you shake out of your shoes. Turns out it’s one of the most fought-over resources on the planet. We get into the world of illegal sand mining, often referred to as the “sand mafia,” and why this unassuming material is the backbone of global construction. After water, sand is the most exploited natural resource on Earth, with around 50 billion tonne...

Facebook changed its name. The internet didn’t change its mind. We unpack the 2021 rebrand from Meta, when the company tried to pivot from social network giant to metaverse pioneer. New name. New vision. Very shiny presentation. But public trust? Still wobbly. With 68 percent of users telling YouGov in 2022 that Facebook felt more harmful than beneficial, we ask the obvious question. Can you rebra...

From playing cards in 1889 to plumbers saving princesses on global cinema screens, Nintendo might be the greatest reinvention story in business. We talk about how Nintendo tried taxis, instant rice, plastic toys and a few glorious flops before landing on video games. The Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy, Nintendo 64, Wii and Nintendo Switch didn’t happen by accident. They happened because e...

Feeling guilty about your phone upgrade? Your takeaway coffee cup? That parcel that arrived in a box big enough to house a Labrador? We get into consumer guilt. The kind that makes you side-eye your wardrobe while corporations quietly churn out another billion units of “limited edition” whatever. We talk about how everyday choices, from phones to fast fashion, plug us into enormous global infrastr...

This one explores what happens when hope, fear, and business blur into something dangerous. With a brew in hand, we unpack the story of Laetrile, also known as amygdalin or vitamin B17, a compound once promoted as a natural cancer cure. We talk through why early studies created optimism, why results never held up, and how Laetrile was later shown to release cyanide in the body. We look at how misi...

We talk about mining, not the obvious kind with hard hats and diggers, but the kind hiding in plain sight. Phones, electric cars, toothpaste, tech, it all starts in the ground. And over a lifetime, each of us gets through millions of pounds of minerals without ever really noticing. We dig into the less comfortable side too. Environmental damage, social impact, and what happens when extraction goes...

We’re turning our attention to the UK fishing industry and asking some uncomfortable but necessary questions about who the system really works for. We talk through the pressure small scale fishers are under, from shrinking quotas and rising costs to competing with vast industrial fleets that operate on a completely different scale. We rewind to the days when cod was apparently “endless” and how th...

The story doesn’t end when a name disappears. We pick up where part one left off and follow the money, the lawsuits, and the legacy that refused to stay buried. This time, we’re unpacking the $63 billion acquisition that was meant to draw a line under a scandal, and why it didn’t quite work out that way. We talk through how Bayer absorbed Monsanto in 2018, retiring the Monsanto name and rebranding...

We’re opening up a two-part conversation around one of the most controversial business stories of the modern era. This first part focuses on how innovation, when paired with unchecked power, can quietly reshape entire industries and lives. We dig into how genetically engineered crops were introduced in the 1990s and why farmers were forced into buying new seeds year after year. We talk about paten...

Juicero had Wi-Fi. Venture capital. Sleek design. And absolutely no reason to exist. We unpack how Juicero raised around $120 million to build a $399 juicer that only worked with proprietary juice pouches and stopped functioning if your internet went down. A machine so over-engineered it managed to forget the most important part: usefulness. Then came the moment that ended it all. A 2017 investiga...

FYRE Festival promised champagne, supermodels, and luxury villas. What people got was cheese sandwiches, wet tents, and a masterclass in what happens when marketing runs miles ahead of reality. We break down how a glossy influencer campaign featuring names like Kendall Jenner helped sell tickets ranging from eye-watering to outright unhinged, while the basics like food, water, toilets, and infrast...

Changing a formula sounds simple on paper. It rarely is in real life. We dig into why tweaking a product can be one of the fastest ways to upset your most loyal customers, using craft ale as the perfect example. The stuff brewed to be drunk fresh isn’t the same as beer designed to travel, sit, and finish fermenting somewhere else. When you scale up, things change. Taste changes. Process changes. A...

Crocs were once the punchline. The shoe you mocked… right up until everyone started wearing them anyway. We talk about how Crocs went from cultural joke to business comeback story of the decade. After selling hundreds of millions of pairs and then watching their stock fall off a cliff, the brand looked finished. Ugly, unfashionable, and very much not cool. Then something interesting happened. Unde...

Formula One and premature babies don’t sound like they belong in the same sentence. And yet here we are... We talk about how the high-speed, high-pressure world of F1 pit stops ended up transforming the care of critically ill babies at Great Ormond Street Hospital. When Dr Martin Elliot and Dr Alan Goodman looked at how F1 teams manage flawless handovers at 200mph, they saw something healthcare de...

Mad Cow. Variant CJD. Government reassurance served with a side of crossed fingers. This chat pulls apart one of the biggest food and trust scandals the UK has ever quietly moved on from. We’re talking about how contaminated feed made its way into the food chain, how “there’s nothing to worry about” turned into “ah… actually,” and why economic protection kept winning over public safety for far too...