They say crime doesn’t pay, but rehabilitation does – especially at Tap Social Movement. The innovative brewery, bakery and hospitality chain goes out of its way to employ prisoners and prison leavers
I’m breaking a sweat as I dump a giant bag of grain into a steel silo. As I look over the edge to see my good work, a plume of dust blows into my face. I’m glad to be wearing a mask.
This back-breaking job isn’t how I imagined brewing beer. I’d pictured myself fine-tuning temperature gauges, tinkering with metallic tubes and carefully bottling the liquid bread.
Perhaps the good folks at Tap Social Movement took one look at me and decided I was best kept to manual labour. I wouldn’t blame them either, with my history of burning toast.
The grain I’ve been pouring has a very “bready texture,” according to head brewer Ben Addison. And trying a few crunchy mouthfuls, I can see what he means.
But his employers, based in Botley, Oxford, deal in wholesome as much as whole grain. Their innovative business – which started as a brewery in 2016 and now has a bakery, cafe and two bars – ensures a third of its employees are prisoners or prison leavers.
It seems rehabilitation works… and can actually be quite profitable. Just ask convicted drug dealer Kane Byrne, one of Tap Social’s many success stories.
He’s been working here for just under a year as a drayman – the name given to drivers who deliver kegs, which has stuck around since they did it on horse-drawn carts named “drays.”
When I interrupt his work – which he describes as a “free gym session” – he tells me landing the job two months after his release was “life changing”. He’s full of praise for the firm’s strategic leader, Will Rooney.
“When you come out of prison, it can feel like a bit of a lonely place,” he adds. “I was starting over again and Will Rooney gave me that opportunity.”
Kane admits it was “tough” to adjust when he first got out of prison. But thanks to his work, he says, it has become “quite easy.”
“My frame of mind when I came out and to where I am now – I’m like a completely different person,” he adds.
His prison life was “nothing like in the movies”, he adds, and more like a “community centre which you can’t leave”. It took him a while to get out of the habits he learned inside, including locking himself in his room at 6pm.
He certainly doesn’t miss the food, which he describes as “pure slop”. Lunch often consisted of a muddy baked potato with a single square of American cheese draped across it.
The only alcohol available was the illicit “hooch” or “distilled,” brewed by prisoners in five litre Fairy Liquid bottles. Kane – who never drank or made it himself – says it apparently tastes a bit soapy.
It’s quite the leap to this place, which now supplies craft beers to Waitrose at a national level. Not bad, considering the background of most of the staff.
While I’m skiving from my beer brewing duties, I track down Will to ask about the ins and outs of employing ex-criminals.
The probation service recommends candidates to the brewery and its associated cafe and bars, he says. But they “don’t do anything special for them. We run them through the same employment processes.
“They have to do a normal interview process and we make sure they actually want to do the work.”
Will says he has gone through a “massive mindset shift” on employing criminals. In some previous jobs, he put CVs with convictions on a certain “pile,” while those without were “prioritised”.
He explains: “Since working here, I have seen a massive benefit to almost prioritising those with criminal convictions to give them a second chance and break the cycle of re-offending.
“It is horrendous for the economy. It costs a fortune to put people back in prison instead of giving them an opportunity to start afresh.
“I haven’t got a single bad word to say about any of the lads who came from the programme.”
Will tells me they have around 12 employees who arrived via the probation service. When he asks if I can tell which of the people around me have served time, I have to confess I cannot.
The team at Tap Social make a lot of beer between them, all with prison-related names like Home Economy, False Economy and Inside Out. They sold 195,000 litres last year and they’re hoping to make that 300,000 in 2025.
Their best-seller, Time Better Spent, takes about a week to brew. “That is pushing it for high production,” says Ben. “We can have longer, but you don’t want it shorter.”
All this talk of beer is making me thirsty and thankfully, I’m still at a brewery. I pull a pint of Major Figures, a gluten-free lager, straight from the tank. Serving pints instead of serving time? I’ll certainly drink to that.