Alcohol-free beer Lucky Saint raises a glass to £3.5m fundraise

Lucky Saint, the alcohol-free beer, has pulled in £3.5million from investors to fund its ambition to get its drinkers to buy more on draught in pubs.

Backers include Jonathan Warburton, chairman of bread dynasty Warburtons, who said founder Luke Boase impressed with his ‘absolute conviction’ and ‘exceptionally good quality product’. 

Bouncing back: Lucky Saint’s sales collapsed as pubs shut at the start of the pandemic, but then grew 300 per cent as online demand rose six-fold

He added: ‘It’s a very clean drink. I ordered 96 bottles on Boxing Day, thinking it was going to last me weeks. But my wife, who has never touched beer in her life, decided this was going to be her drink of choice and my stockpile has run down very quickly.’ 

Its sales collapsed as pubs shut at the start of the pandemic, but then grew 300 per cent as online demand rose six-fold and Boase sold more in Tesco and Sainsbury’s. 

Boase said: ‘There has been a huge change in attitude to health. We already have the widest distribution of proper draught non-alcoholic beer and we are still tiny. The opportunity is huge.’