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We love to relax with a crisp glass of white wine or a craft beer after a hectic week at work. However, whether it’s exercising, taking a bath or enjoying your hobby, ‘switching off’ without booze is something we recognise as increasingly important in today’s environment.  The start-up world is fierce and fast-paced and the traditional 9-5 structure doesn’t necessarily suit the way we run our company.  At Dalston’s we have moulded a team culture that empowers and energises – providing everyone with control over how, where and when they work to get the job done. This means taking the...

BEGINNINGS  It all changed for Bobby Kasanga in 2015. It marked the year he was released from jail after eight years inside for gang-related crimes but – perhaps more importantly – it was also the year he founded Hackney Wick Football Club. Bobby remembers that football had been a passion since Year Three, when his teacher suggested he fill in for a missing player on his older brother’s team. But funnily enough, he imagined his post-prison career to be in literature, not on the field. “I thought originally that I was going to become a best-selling novelist because I’d written...

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS It started in the most vibrant and eclectic of East London homes. The iconic Passing Clouds nightclub in Dalston – a hub of spoken word, reggae, gypsy swing and everything in between – was the birthplace of, well, Dalston’s. It was there that founder Duncan O’Brien started mashing and blending the first bottles of Dalston’s Cola by hand in a tiny kitchen to sell at the venue as its alternative to mainstream soft drinks. But his journey to the drinks industry goes back even further – in the bar car of an Orient Express train riding around the...

Stepney City Farm is a colourful little gem nestled in the heart of East London. Its multicoloured bunting flutters in the breeze outside the newly painted ochre coloured cafe, which serves up local produce grown on the farm. There are goats, pigs, chickens and rabbits, workshops, education programmes and allotments to name but a handful of the activities that take place here. Speaking to the farm’s CEO, Clare Hawkins about the sheer range of activities going on at Stepney, it's a feat to be holding so many strings together. Founded in 1978 on an old bomb site, you can still...