A craft beer club with nearly 200,000 active subscribers is to capitalise on a surge in demand from curfew-hit Brits by tapping investors for millions of pounds of new investment.
Sky News understands that Beer52, an Edinburgh-based start-up, has hired the investment bank Houlihan Lokey to coordinate a funding round.
Sources said that Fraser Doherty and James Brown, Beer52's co-founders, were looking for a new investor to help the business scale internationally.
Beer52 is said to be the world's most popular beer club, with its 'community' having drunk more than 20 million beers together.
Mr Doherty said the company was open-minded about the size of the fundraising and that the priority was to secure the right partner to fuel its growth.
Beer52's members receive drinks from a new country each month, with recently distributed beers coming from as far afield as Melbourne, New York, South Africa, South Korea and New Zealand.
It has also recruited breweries from the UK and Europe have taken part in a live-streamed beer festival called Cyberfest, which has attracted more than 65,000 participants.
Over the coming weeks, it will allow members to take part in virtual Christmas parties, enabling groups of 10 or more to use their own video chat bar on a 'Cyber Alley' street of online bars.
The prospective growth funding round underlines the improved fortunes of many digital and direct-to-consumer businesses during the coronavirus pandemic.
This week, the British Beer and Pub Association warned that the government's new tiering restrictions in England would result in the loss of 180 million pints in beer sales over the Christmas period.
"Our growth throughout 2020 has given us the chance to support our brewery friends and partners who have been having a tough year with all the pubs closed," Mr Doherty said.
Beer52 aims to expand its workforce from 65 to more than 100.
