The archive · PR & Stunts · Marketing decision · 2024
Brooklyn Brewery's Brewing for Impact gets Guinness and Carlsberg to brew fonio
Brooklyn Brewery rallies Guinness and Carlsberg to brew with fonio, an ancient climate-resilient West African grain, to prove it can reshape beer supply chains.
Brooklyn Brewery
What it had to solve
Brooklyn Brewery wanted to prove that fonio — an ancient, climate-resilient West African grain — could work as a brewing ingredient and shift how the industry sources grain. It framed the push as a shared challenge rather than a solo product story, inviting the industry leaders it wanted to move.
How it works
Brewing for Impact started with a grain most brewers ignored: fonio, an ancient, climate-resilient West African cereal. Brooklyn Brewery did not just brew with it — it made the grain a shared industry cause, challenging the leaders whose buying decisions would decide whether fonio had a future in beer.
The initiative asked industry leaders — including Guinness and Carlsberg — to brew with fonio. Each partner brought the grain into its own beers, and collaborations, trade events and media carried the argument that fonio could shift grain sourcing while proving its commercial potential.
The result was framed as a global movement rather than a single launch: brewers engaging new consumers with fonio, challenging brewing norms and reshaping supply chains. The D&AD awards archive keeps the work under Impact; the page records no volumes or sales figures.
Why it lands
- Framing fonio as an industry challenge, not a Brooklyn product, turned would-be rivals into collaborators who prove the grain works.
- Partners such as Guinness and Carlsberg brought scale and credibility that no single craft brewery could lend an unfamiliar ingredient.
- Fonio's climate-resilient West African origins gave a commercial sourcing question a sustainability story with a human geography behind it.
- Trade events and media turned limited-edition fonio beers into an industry conversation about where beer grain comes from.
What it did
The challenge became a multi-brand movement in which major brewers publicly brewed with fonio, turning an untapped West African grain into a commercial option rather than a novelty. The D&AD awards archive keeps the work under Impact; the page records no volumes or sales figures.
What you can take
To make an untapped ingredient credible, recruit your competitors: when rivals brew with fonio, the grain stops being one brand's niche and becomes an industry-wide option with proven demand.
Since then
Announced in April 2024 with breweries from seven countries, the initiative put fonio into limited-edition beers across the year — including Carlsberg's 100 percent fonio lager and a Guinness fonio stout — and Brooklyn followed by taking its Fonio Rising pale ale wider in 2025. The D&AD archive keeps the work under Impact with no volumes recorded, so the measurable outcome is adoption: competitors now brew with a grain the industry had left out.
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