The travel mug we couldn't find, so we made it
bru is a ceramic-lined stainless steel travel mug, designed in Epping, Essex and built to be the last one you'll buy. No plastic taste. No compromise. Just really good coffee, wherever the day takes you.
How bru began
It started with a simple frustration. Every travel mug we owned let us down in the same ways. Coffee that tasted faintly of metal or plastic. Lids that leaked into a bag. A cup that felt cheap in the hand and worse on the lips. We kept buying replacements and kept being disappointed, so eventually we stopped looking for the right one and decided to build it.
The answer was ceramic. We lined the inside with a smooth ceramic coating so your drink only ever touches an inert, taste-neutral surface. Coffee tastes like coffee. Tea tastes like tea. Nothing tastes like the cup. Around that we built a double-walled stainless steel body that keeps drinks hot for hours and cold for longer, a lid that actually seals, and a shape that feels good to hold and drink from.
We are not a huge company. We are a small team who cared enough about one everyday object to get it right, then kept refining it until it was good enough to use ourselves every single day.
What we stand for
Get it right, not fast
We would rather remould a lid, remake a batch and take the hit than ship something that isn't good enough. When our first lids weren't perfect, we went back to the tooling and fixed it properly. That instinct runs through everything we make.
No plastic taste, ever
The ceramic lining isn't a gimmick, it's the whole point. Your drink deserves better than a mouthful of metal or plastic. We designed bru around the drink first and worked outwards.
Built to be kept
The world does not need another cup destined for a drawer or a landfill. We build bru to last for years of daily use, back it with a real warranty, and make replacement parts available so a worn lid never means a wasted mug.
Better for the planet, honestly
Yasmina leads our sustainability work, and we would rather show it than shout about it. Reusable by design, lower-impact materials where we can, and no vague green claims we can't stand behind. Read exactly what we're doing and where we still have work to do on our sustainability page.
Backed by 3,380 people before it existed
We launched bru Travel on Kickstarter in 2021. We hoped a few hundred people shared our frustration and set a modest goal of £5,500, just enough to make the first production run. By the end of the campaign, 3,380 backers had pledged a total of £87,767, funding bru to nearly 1,600 percent of our goal. Every bru since has been built to the same standard those first backers believed in.
Meet the founders
Ashley
Ashley leads on engineering, product and the endless small refinements that make bru feel right in the hand. With a background in hands-on engineering and a low tolerance for things that are almost good enough, Ashley is the reason the lid seals, the ceramic is smooth and nothing leaves the door until it passes the same test: would we happily use this every day?
Yasmina
Yasmina leads on sustainability and making sure bru's values hold up under scrutiny. From materials to packaging to the claims we're willing to make, Yasmina keeps us honest, so that "better for the planet" means something specific rather than something that just sounds nice.
Between us, bru is genuinely a two-person labour of love, made for people who care about the small daily rituals as much as we do.
BUILT FOR EVERY DAY, tested for it
A travel mug lives a hard life. It gets dropped in bags, left in cars, knocked off desks and opened one-handed on a freezing platform. So we build bru for that life, not for a product photo.
Every design goes through real-world testing before it reaches you. Lids are cycled thousands of times to make sure the seal holds. Bodies are drop-tested and thermal-tested so hot stays hot and cold stays cold. And because we use bru ourselves every day, the final test is always the simplest one: if it's not good enough for us, it does not go out the door.
We work closely with our manufacturing partners rather than ordering from a catalogue, which means we control the details that matter, from the smoothness of the ceramic lining to the tolerance on the lid seal. When something isn't right, we fix the tooling, not the marketing.
ONE BRU, HUNDREDS OF CUPS DIVERTED fROM LANDFILL
A reusable mug only helps protect our planet's resources if you actually keep using it, which is why we obsess over making bru good enough to become a habit rather than a guilt purchase. There's more to it than that though, from the materials we choose to how we ship. See exactly what we're doing, and where we're still improving, on our sustainability page.
buy with confidence
Every bru is covered by our two-year warranty against manufacturing faults, and if something isn't right we'll fix it. Replacement lids and parts are available so a single worn component never means a whole mug in the bin.
Questions before you buy? Email us at info@bru-cups.com and you'll get a real reply from a real person, usually the same day.
bru Global Limited, 20 Laburnum Rd, Coopersale, Epping, CM16 7RA, United Kingdom. Company registered in England and Wales.
Thanks for reading this far. If bru ends up being the last travel mug you buy, we've done our job.
Ashley & Yasmina, co-founders
bru