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Grant Caunter enjoys a hoppy 0%er (Photo: Supplied)
Grant Caunter enjoys a hoppy 0%er (Photo: Supplied)

BusinessJuly 11, 2022

‘Happy hours were getting earlier every day’: The beer boss who gave up alcohol

Grant Caunter enjoys a hoppy 0%er (Photo: Supplied)
Grant Caunter enjoys a hoppy 0%er (Photo: Supplied)

Grant Caunter had the beer-lover’s dream job, travelling the world sampling the best craft brews on offer. He tells Chris Schulz why packing it in and boarding the zero-alcohol train was the best decision he ever made.

Grant Caunter sits down and takes a sip of the cold beer in front of him. Four years ago, this would have indicated that another big night was beginning. As the global director of craft beers for Heineken, Caunter was among the world’s top beer dogs, and his high-flying job involved many nights out that began like this. “I was the craft guy going to South Africa, Mexico, Sweden … France, the UK, Brazil,” he says. “We would enjoy everything that the craft industry has to offer.”

Caunter was a beer guy and he knew the craft beer market intimately. For years he’d watched the trend for batch brewing, IPAs and hazies grow across Aotearoa, so when he was offered the opportunity to move to Amsterdam with his wife and kids to help Heineken educate their brewers with his knowledge, he jumped at the chance. “We had the blueprint for how to grow a craft programme globally,” he says.

It was a dream job, “the pinnacle of 25 years in beer,” Caunter says. So he made the most of his punishing schedule. That meant constant travel and big nights out with clients sampling their wares, before ending his evenings asleep on a couch. “We would probably end up with a kebab at some point,” he says. “You finish the last morsel the second you fall asleep.”

Grant Caunter
In his former life, Grant Caunter was a big drinker. (Photo: Supplied)

All that changed in 2020. As Covid spread and lockdowns began, Counter found himself stuck in his Amsterdam apartment. The travel stopped. So did the socialising. “Instead of all go-go-go, it was 1,000 steps a day, not going anywhere, worry,” he recalls. “My happy hours were getting earlier every day.”

One day, he took a look in the mirror and realised all those IPAs he’d been drinking had helped him pack on the pounds. “I was 145kg … a big boy. I remember trying to run around Vondelpark (a huge park in the middle of Amersterdam) averaging 12 minutes a kilometre. I think you can walk around it in 11.” 

Stressed about his job, worried about what might happen to the craft beer industry with bars closed around the world, and bored with wondering where his next beer or bottle of wine was coming from for his stay-at-home happy hours, Caunter decided to do something that had seemed unthinkable just months before: he and his wife Nicky quit alcohol. 

“I just stopped,” he says. “For me, the obvious thing was the weight. I had no health scare, I didn’t have a doctor tell me anything. I  just knew that, in my late 40s, it wasn’t going in the right direction. I gave myself a yellow card. I said, ‘You’re bigger than this.'”

Caunter
Beer has played a major part in Grant Caunter’s life. (Photo: Supplied)

Inspired by Australian rugby legend Peter FitzSimons’ book The Great Aussie Bloke Slim-Down, Caunter stayed off the booze, cut out sugar and began regular exercise. It worked. “I was literally losing one kilogram a week,” he says. Soon, he gave up using his sleep apnea machine, something he’d come to rely on. Instead of talking beer, he started telling his workmates about his weight loss.

But Caunter didn’t want to give up socialising. His job depended on it. Overseas, he found he could get a wide range of zero-alcohol drinks, including beers full of hops and flavour. “I shifted quite quickly into being an advocate for zero,” he says. When his contract at Heineken ran out, he and his family returned to Aotearoa and found the beer industry here a little behind on zero-alcohol options. So he started his own.

Today, over drinks at Ponsonby’s Chapel Bar, that means the beer Caunter’s drinking isn’t a hoppy eight percenter but a zero-alcohol IPA. State of Play has a hit of citrus, malts and hops, but comes with one key difference: its alcohol content is just 0.3%. When he asks beer drinkers to try it, Caunter says the response is often the same.  “People go, ‘Fuck, that tastes like a beer,’ because it’s so different.'”

Caunter’s lifestyle change comes at a time when many are rethinking their relationship with alcohol. Media personalities Patrick Gower and Guyon Espiner both gave up the booze after making frank documentaries that admitted to their drinking problems. The growing trend has seen the first 0% bar open in Aotearoa, and local brewers like Sawmill and Behemoth say their zero-percent beers are now among their top sellers.

After 25 years in the alcohol industry, Frankie Walker, the owner of entertainment and cocktail brand Black Pineapple, also embarked on a sober-curious journey recently. Low-alcohol beers helped him overcome any social anxieties about admitting he wasn’t drinking, he says. “You can put it in your glass, drink it from a bottle. No one knows, no one cares,” he says. “I’m a better networker, more socially capable … I’m a better listener.”

But 0% beers still have some alcohol in them – the limit to be called a “zero” beer is 0.5% – meaning they may not be suitable for those with addiction problems. “We always caution our sober friends who are drinking zero alcohol beers and wines to be careful and watch closely for whether it’s triggering, causing cravings to intensify or linger for longer,” Lotta Dann, the author of three books about her journey to becoming sober, recently told the Sunday Star-Times. “… Vigilance and honesty is important for sober people drinking these beverages.”

They’re also not ideal for losing weight. While 75% of a normal beer’s calories come from its alcohol content, stripping out the alcohol doesn’t remove all the calories. Each can of State of Play contains 59 of them. But Caunter says that’s far fewer than a normal IPA, which can contain up to three times as many. He’s found he’s able to have regular zero-alcohol drinks without impacting his weight. Recently, he and Nicky celebrated their two-year sober-versary with rounds of zero alcohol cocktails at a Mt Eden restaurant. “It’s about getting used to new habits,” he says.

Grant Caunter
Grant Caunter with his zero-alcohol beer brand, State of Play. (Photo: Supplied)

State of Play has only been out for two months, but it’s already stocked in 53 Countdown supermarkets, bottle stores and many online stores. Caunter has sold out of his first batch, and most of his second, and while the CO2 shortage is affecting supply, he’s hoping to take on staff and grow profitable within the next 12 months. He’s using the same knowledge from watching the craft beer market grow to analyse the 0% trend. “It’s 2% of sales [now]. In 12 months it will be 3%, 4% in 18 months, 7% in three years…”

While sales are improving, it’s Caunter’s message that really seems to be resonating. Recently, he posted before-and-after photos of his weight loss on LinkedIn, explaining how he lost his 45 kilograms, and how it inspired him to start State of Play. It went viral, with many telling Caunter they were on the same journey. “My story is no different to millions of others that pushed the boat out a little bit in terms of no exercise and eating and drinking [too much during lockdown],” he says.

Ultimately, lockdown helped Caunter realise he’s in charge of how he feels when he gets out of bed in the morning. “If you don’t like your job or where you’re living or how you’re feeling when you wake up in the morning, you can do something about it,” he says. “Fuck it. That’s what I did.”

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Craig Hickman (Image: Supplied / Archi Banal)
Craig Hickman (Image: Supplied / Archi Banal)

BusinessJuly 11, 2022

I’ve worked the land for 25 years. Am I a ‘classic Kiwi farmer’ yet?

Craig Hickman (Image: Supplied / Archi Banal)
Craig Hickman (Image: Supplied / Archi Banal)

People like me may not have farming in our blood, but we’re just as passionate about the industry as those born into it, writes Craig Hickman, better known online as DairymanNZ.

The classic Kiwi farmer is Fred Dagg. He’s Wal Footrot. He’s Barry Crump from the classic Toyota Hilux ads.

The classic Kiwi farmer may have gone to university and got a diploma in agriculture, but more likely they got a trade or travelled on their Big OE before returning to New Zealand. When they arrived home, they worked alongside their parents in preparation for taking over the family farm and implementing their new ideas.

Today they’re middle aged, white, conservative, weather beaten and set in their ways. When they get angry, they’ll drive their tractors to town to protest and they most definitely took to Facebook to complain about a recent episode of Country Calendar.

 

 

Unfortunately the classic Kiwi farmer is a concept that has reduced farmers as whole to little more than a meme, thanks in no small part to the signs displayed enthusiastically at recent farmer protests. Oh, he’s at a Groundswell protest in a brand-new Ford Ranger? He must have inherited the farm off mum and dad, vote National, prioritise profit over all else and be a little bit racist with a side helping of misogyny.

If you met me I guess, on the surface, you might take me for the classic Kiwi farmer. I’m straight forward to the point of being blunt, I prefer to listen rather than talk, I am much happier outside working with animals than I am dealing with the avalanche of paperwork that comes with running a farm in the 21st century and the wrinkles on my face will tell you I’m not familiar with the concept of a regular skincare routine.

I also snorted with disdain at a recent episode of Country Calendar, though I kept my thoughts to myself.

 

 

I’m not actually a classic Kiwi farmer, though my deadpan TikToks have drawn comparisons to a modern day Dagg. Nor are the thousands of other people who saw the opportunities presented by the explosion of dairy farming from the mid-90s to the present day and switched careers. I was working in the advertising department of a large Wellington appliance retailer when I made the move to dairy farming at the age of 25, a degree in agriculture ensuring I had plenty of theoretical know how but very few practical skills. Many people made the leap at the same time with even less knowledge about farming than I had, bringing with them different skill sets, different world views and different opinions.

This influx wasn’t always welcomed with open arms by the local, old-school farmers of the district. Often there was suspicion of the new people who didn’t have generations of farming lineage coursing through their veins daring to call themselves farmers. Even now, with 26 years of farming under my belt, I run into this attitude. If I express an opinion that runs counter to what farming leaders endorse, I am easily dismissed as “just an equity manager”, as though the percentage of a farm you own is any indication of the value a person brings to a discussion.

The diversity that tidal wave of new farmers brought to the industry was, in my opinion, a much-needed shot in the arm for farming. A good half of the farmers I interact with on social media are women, and a good portion are Māori or Pasifika. Some are organic farmers who think the Green Party isn’t quite far enough left, and others are of the opinion Act are heading in the right direction but aren’t quite there yet. Mainly we fall in the middle, pragmatic and bound by our shared passion for working the land, doing our best in the face of whatever Mother Nature and whoever is currently holding the reins of power can throw at us.

 

 

A strength of New Zealand farming has always been the willingness to get the job done no matter the obstacles, and to share ideas and information. Gatekeeping is a foreign concept to most Kiwi farmers, and the rise of social media platforms like Twitter and TikTok have only accelerated the pace at which we are exposed to new ideas and methods of farming. I’m learning about sheep farming from a 21-year-old Wairarapa shepherdess and the superiority of the modified Toyota Landcruiser from an old school Southland sheep and beef farmer.

Despite the huge diversity in farming, we are all bound by some very common things: we are in it for the long haul, and we look to make incremental gains season on season over a very long period of time. We rarely gamble on big changes that might revolutionise the farm because we simply cannot afford the consequences if it goes wrong. We are planners and incrementalist by necessity, not disruptors.

As a group we also find it very hard to articulate our thoughts. We’ve never had to in the past and the rise of social media makes it easier to blurt those emotions out without being able to articulate the reasoning behind it, and unfortunately those social media posts are very easy to mock.

The Country Calendar episode set at Lake Hāwea Station in Central Otago is a case in point. The approach on display was disruptive, the antithesis of New Zealand farming. Very few of us have the luxury to make wholesale changes to our farming system and simply shrug our shoulders if it goes wrong, which is why there was a backlash from farmers both new and classic alike.

The classic Kiwi farmer is no longer Dagg or Footrot or even Crump. Farmers have always been willing to change, albeit slowly, and the massive growth of the industry in the past two decades only served to hasten the change at a pace more than a few found uncomfortable.

The Hiluxes Barry Crump used to drive in those old TV commercials are now classics simply by virtue of having been around for more than 20 years, and I think that’s a fitting way to classify the new generation of classic Kiwi farmers; we’ve been in the game long enough to know what we’re doing but we’ve not been in it so long that we’re constrained by ties to the past.

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