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- 🚀 Your Weekly Slice of UK Consumer Startups #18
🚀 Your Weekly Slice of UK Consumer Startups #18
How Foreva Farmers are challenging drinks giants with sustainability
The Startup Slice
August 31, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
Hey 👋
It’s been another big week for startups. From exploring how cookbooks convert curiosity into loyal customers, to cheeky Speedo-fuelled product launches, reality TV crossovers, and even community-designed merch. There’s plenty to catch up on!
In this week’s bitesize playbook, we sit down with Charlie Layton, co-founder of Foreva Farmers, the startup on a mission to create the world’s most sustainable drinks, straight from their family farm in Herefordshire. 🌱
📱 From the Feed
 Fortnum & Makers via Fortnums | 🏆 We visited Fortnum & Mason: the latest Fortnum & Makers cohort is out, spotlighting some of the most rising UK food & drink brands. 📚 Cookbooks that convert: challenger brands use them to land on kitchen tables, build routines, and turn curiosity into habit. |
👀 ICYMI: Brand Moves Worth Watching
🎥 BATCH LDN co-founder hits reality TV: marrying a stranger on a desert island in BBC 1’s new series airing this Wednesday. 🫘 Bold Bean Co unveils a community-designed tote: made to carry beans without the rattle. 🍑 Speedo-clad launch for Collider: launches new peach lager with a cheeky Speedo-fuelled promo video. |  Sam Matanle, co-founder of BATCH LDN via BBC 1 |
💡 Bitesize Playbook: Co-Founder @ Foreva Farmers, Charlie Layton
Rooted in a family farm since the 1950s and now producing their own CO₂ and electricity, we caught up with Charlie Layton, co-founder of Foreva Farmers, to talk drinks, green creds and what’s next 🌱
Charlie, Ollie & Grandpa Joe on the farm 🌾
For anyone new to the brand, what is Foreva Farmers?
Foreva Farmers is on a mission to create the world’s most sustainable drinks.
From our family farm in Herefordshire, we currently make a range of premium tonics and mixers using our own spring water, renewable CO₂, and electricity generated by our on-farm anaerobic digester.
Your Instagram BTS series gives a closer look at the sustainable systems powering your drinks. What inspired you to start that series?
There’s often a disconnect in sustainability. Brands make claims, consumers see the product, but the process is rarely shown. We wanted to bridge that gap by sharing our closed-loop system. The series lets us bring people on the journey behind each drink while highlighting a model proving sustainability can succeed commercially.
There are many ways to build a sustainable business, and our hope is to inspire others to think creatively about what’s possible.
You’ve recently launched the world’s first aluminium bottles for tonics and mixers, a big innovation in sustainable packaging. Can you share the journey behind this breakthrough?
Innovation within the tonics and mixers landscape has been sparse. It’s an industry dominated by one incumbent, and there was, and is, a clear opportunity to set ourselves apart whilst providing a format that is better for the planet.
The result is a world-first bottle that, compared to glass, is lighter, lower-carbon, faster-chilling, shatterproof, and infinitely recyclable (it also looks great). All without compromising on sustainability or practicality.
You often share messages from venues praising the taste of your drinks, with some even saying they’re switching from Fever-Tree to Foreva Farmers. How does that kind of feedback shape your mission as a brand?
As a challenger brand in an established and saturated market, seeing venues switch from industry heavyweights to Foreva Farmers completely validates our product market fit.
Our on-trade proposition has only been available for 2 weeks and the response has been phenomenal. The product truly sells itself, and we have since brought forward multiple production runs to meet this surge in demand.
It proves that quality and conscience do not need to be mutually exclusive. And it continues to fuel our drive to keep scaling and setting a new precedent for what premium mixers should represent.
Looking ahead, what’s next for Foreva Farmers? Any new innovations or anything exciting we can expect to see soon?
We’re working towards our B Corp certification and working to quantify our sustainability credentials.
On the farm, we’re looking at new ways to make the most from our anaerobic digester with new sustainability initiatives in the pipeline. We’re looking at new flavours, and planning events with our partnered charity Farming Minds.
We’re less than a year old, so we’re just getting started.
Foreva Farmers’ tonic water 🔥
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