How a venture to help ex-offenders flourish is developing into a much wider opportunity

Based on the outskirts of Oxford, Tap Social is a small craft brewery with its own cafe, bar and social space.

The small team of founders and colleagues are proud of their ‘criminally good beer’. But this amusing description of its ales, lagers and stout has a serious foundation: this beer enterprise trains and hires ex-offenders.

This makes Tap Social very unusual. Half of all employers in the UK wouldn’t hire someone with a criminal record. Which means that, on top of having already been punished for their mistakes, ex-offenders face an obstacle course of unemployment, low self-esteem and financial dependence. Tap Social’s mission is to end this double punishment.

By bucking the trend, Tap Social not only gives ex-offenders a sense of purpose, it puts money in their pockets, helps them re-join society and, ultimately, reduces the risk of them re-offending. Whilst, simultaneously, benefiting the business by giving it access to willing and committed labour. Which is a mutually beneficial way of creating value if ever there was one.

As a customer of Tap Social, when you enter their taproom or pub you feel safe. You feel comfortable to be yourself and to welcome difference and dialogue. From the unpretentiousness of the surroundings to the unassuming reception from staff, there is something you experience which cannot be seen or heard, only felt.

Tap Social have created a tangibly safe environment, where members of the local community can relax and spend time away from the daily grind. As in a normal bar or pub, they can connect with others. But here, in addition, they have the opportunity to connect with a very different set of people — people who they would otherwise not meet.

Creating an environment which helps people to step across boundaries and connect with difference is desperately needed and is a fundamental step towards community building.

So, in pursuing their purpose, the business has built capabilities beyond brewing and beer retail. These include building psychological safety, developing trust and connection and convening diverse groups. With these new capabilities, TapSocial has upgraded its value creation model and stepped even more fully into the community pub sector, purchasing The White House.

Tap Social goes further by offering the community a real, lived experience, too. It does this in the form of social experiments.

So far, these have included quiz and music nights, beer tasting sessions, comedy nights and ‘TapTalks’ — a kind of TED talk in a bar, offering the community an opportunity to learn and be inspired, for example, by ‘A Pint Of Science’.

The Tap Social venture illustrates how beer can be a ‘tool for conviviality’, investing in trust-building and thereby turning both the recruitment sector and the pub business model on its head.

A public space acting in service of community building and connection. A safe space where community can come together to explore what it is that matters most to them.

Yet this is about making money, not just doing good. And that’s where a new form of doing business is emerging.

In searching for a positive impact on ex-offenders and local community, TapSocial is creating a financially sustainable value creation model built on the far more solid foundations of social and human capital.

Purposeful businesses consciously invest in different forms of capital to sustain the flow of financial capital more successfully than the widely used shareholder primacy approach.

By injecting trust into the justice ecosystem TapSocial has happened upon the deficit of trust within our own communities and started to build it there too. And their employees, previously excluded from the employment market have become the lynchpin of their value creation model. Who would have thought it?

If you want to find out more about purpose led strategy then speak to us at otherkind and we’ll help you to discover that being purpose-led is achievable, desirable, profitable and simply good business.