How an alcohol allergy uncorked expats entrepreneurial spirit.

Charlie Taylor is allergic to wine, or at least he thought so. But that's the reason that he set up a wine bar called Cask Wines here in Bristol. He's on a mission to introduce natural wines to the world. Let's hear his conversation. Charlie, welcome to the NatWest Unnoticed Entrepreneur podcast. Love to learn more about you and the business you've built here in Bristol. Cask Wines and the wine bar that you've been building?

Yeah, so yeah, we've got a bar on North Street in Bedminster. Traditionally the tobacco factory area of Bristol. So it's seen a fair amount of gentrification in the last kind of 10, 15 years. And I guess putting a wine bar on that was the final nail in the gentrification coffin for North Street. We focus on, we want to break down the barriers of getting into wine. It can be inherently a, a bit of a snobby industry. It can be hard for people to walk into a wine bar and feel welcome. And we basically want to create a local, so a pub where the main product happens to be wine rather than beer, and have that kind of comfy feel.

Okay. And then just let's find out, why would you want to do a wine bar in Bristol? What's your backstory?

So I'm allergic to alcohol and I own a bar and a wine business. So I basically used to drink a lot of beer, used to drink a lot of gin, little bit of wine, but didn't know much about it. And then found increasingly I was having allergic reactions, which ended up getting worse and worse and worse to the point where now if I was to have a glass of Jacob's Creek, a Carling, a Gordon's gin, anything kind of what I would call industrial alcohol, I'll sneeze within 5 minutes and then tomorrow I'd be in bed. For the whole day, constantly sneezing. And then somebody introduced me to what some people call natural wine, it's called organic wine, minimal intervention. And I suddenly discovered I was fine and didn't have that reaction. So good news, I could drink alcohol again. Yeah. And then discovered more about it, really like the ethos, I like the farming ethos, I like the fact it's predominantly made by small farmers. Most through the land's been in families for generations. They've looked after the land. So it's none of the kind of the fast farming and people who care about the product and the land and then the glass in your hand, if you like. So kind of got into it that way.

Let's talk about the business in a little while, but before we do that, just, it's a bit alarming that what you are saying is that, you know, wine in the supermarkets is toxic beyond the alcohol, but that's not a common Understanding, is it?

Yeah, I think we need to be careful. Not all wine is that bad, right? But if you look at the organic food movement, that's obviously become very big in the last 20, 30 years. A lot of people don't understand what's in alcohol, whether it's wine or beer or gin or any other form. There are potentially, potentially between 60 and 70 different toxins in a bottle of wine on supermarket shelf, whether that's from fungicides or pesticides or herbicides or additives, preservatives, acid, sugar that are put in the wine afterwards. And that's legally allowed. I think in America it's 76, the FDA allowed. If that was food, that would be called ultra-processed food. But nobody knows it's in wine, which is starting to catch on. But a lot of people don't know that. So now for most people, that's fine. Most people don't have reactions to that. Some people do. But for me, people should know, people should know that and have almost that freedom of choice.

Well, and you say that there's a choice that comes from the awareness and the education. So you are really introducing people through your Cask Wines and wine bar to, if you like, naturally produced wines.

Yeah. And it's wine how it was always made before I think basically before pesticides came along. And I think from memory, pesticides kind of were invented or came into common use in the 1920s or it was just a bit earlier, but became really common after the Second World War when a lot of farmers didn't return, right? So, and there was food shortages. So suddenly governments, farmers had to fast farm quickly. So then a lot of chemicals were kind of introduced into farming in the '40s and '50s. So wine historically was made well. And in large parts of the world, especially those traditional areas like a Bordeaux or a Burgundy, they've never used toxins in the land because they haven't. That's not how they used to do it. But your industrial stuff, the stuff, let's name them, your Jacob's Creeks, you know, the things which if you're buying a bottle of wine for £4 in a supermarket or in your local Spar, that's probably been produced very quickly, which is damaging for the land. Long-term and potentially harmful to your body. You need to be careful, we don't say it is bad for you. I mean, all alcohol's inherently bad for you. So drink in moderation, but it's important people kind of do know that. And for me, it's not just about the stuff it may do to your body, it's also just that ethos. I would rather drink something that's been made with a bit of love and love for the land than something that's effectively a, commercially produced product being made in a boardroom somewhere to tick a box.

So you've got this vision really to start to bring people, if you like, to natural wines, partly from your own story there of experiencing the downsides of the toxins that go alongside the alcohol. As an entrepreneur though, Chai, you know, what brought you into being an entrepreneur? 'Cause you could have just frankly bought bottles of wine.

Yeah.

At some time. Without having to go around building, sort of trying to solve That's the whole problem for everybody. So why, why did you decide to become an entrepreneur?

So I was living overseas, um, in Dubai in a corporate job. I was— I'd been head of comms for the tourism board there, then became head of comms for a hotel group. We had hotels, um, kind of around the world, um, and loved, loved the, loved the job, loved the career. It was really exciting. Um, myself, my wife had been married, um, and we were— we just got married in 2008. 2018, um, and we knew we at some point wanted to come back to the UK. Our parents are getting older, we wanted to be closer to family, kind of you start long-term planning, um, and I, I didn't think continuing that career I'd find a job as exciting as the ones we were doing. Like, okay, now if I'm ever going to have a career change, now's the time. And I, in my mind, always fancied the idea of having my own bar. I'd worked in bars when I was you know, late teens, early 20s. And I'd done a project for the hotel group where we had 90 restaurants in Dubai and we looked at the bottom performing third. And I worked with the heads of the F&B to look at why those restaurants might be not doing so well. Restaurants and bars may not be doing so well as others and how to reinvent them, look at concept, look at what people wanted. And I'd really enjoyed that and even said to my, my boss at the time, I quite fancy moving into operations and She had pointed out that wasn't great for her head of PR to say that. So that was always in my mind. And then had discovered the natural wine, was in a bar on holiday with friends in San Sebastian, where this kind of bar is common, you know, mainland Europe, these are the kind of bars. And they said, kind of bar you go into holiday, you go on an EasyJet flight, and you end up in a cool little bar you stumble across and spend the evening there and love it. And we just wanted to do that., but it just happened to be at the end of your road in Bristol. And that was kind of the dream, if you like. And so we set about it.

Okay. So from, from Dubai and the sunny climes of Dubai, uh, to the sunny climes of Bristol, having lived overseas for 25 years myself and come back to the UK in 2019, I completely, you know, I'm with you in terms of the joys of living overseas, but also the connection that you have with family and friends when you come back. What were some of the challenges that you faced? Because if you've worked for a big company, yeah, you've got all the security, stability. They, they organize your email for you and they pay the credit card for you and so on. When you set up a business, you're responsible for everything. So take us through some of the challenges that you faced.

Well, I think the first kind of— at first we created the concept sitting in our villa in Dubai, right? And, and we didn't want to move until we knew we had a location. Um, first challenge was finding a location, and we, we had a very specific list of criteria we wanted. Um, off the top of my head, kind of top few were be surrounded by what we call chimney pots, so be in the middle of a community. We didn't want city center, we wanted to become a local, and we wanted a group of regulars. Um, that was important for us both from what we wanted if we were going to be in there, from the joy of knowing people, but also commercially, having people who are going to come in not as a special occasion, come in week in, week out. Um, we want small things. We wanted a garden, which I'll come to, save this later, um, and a few other things, and size, etc. Not too big, not too small, enough storage. Um, so we looked at a lot of locations online and then coming back and forward a little bit. Um, had a few fell through, so there's your first challenge. Things I'd never done this before, never opened a business before, never looked for sites. I remember being on a beach in Dubai on my birthday. We had a location all sorted in North Bristol and finding out that day it had fallen through because something in the lease we weren't happy with, that they changed and the landlady wouldn't change. So coping with that disappointment of having that kind of highs and lows, and then we finally found the right location. So then it's excitement and you're planning. For us, it was— I talked about the concept. It's about coming up with the concept, coming up with the brand, going for all the names, etc. What's it going to be like? The interior design. So then it's all really exciting amidst moving back from Dubai, which was— there's a story there, but it was rushed, to say the least, because we had a lease. The landlord— basically, we were arguing over a point on the lease for about 3 months, and the landlord finally said, right, I'll agree to that, but you need to be here tomorrow to sign it. And we were in Lyon, so we, 19-hour bus to get there to sign it. Still excitement. So that first kind of 6 months, I guess, is exciting. It's kind of, it's almost on paper and you're not in the business reality.

And were you doing this from Dubai and still working and trying to start Cask?

Yeah, I'd left the corporate job, but myself and my wife had a some clients over there, some PR and social media clients, all in hospitality. So it was quite good, you know, to bat off as well. But yes, we're doing the same.

Yeah, I have to ask, why Bristol? Because I mean, is it 'cause it's the sunniest city in England and it's the closest thing to Dubai?

My brother lived here, owned a bookshop, we had family. So anytime I'd come to London quite a lot for work, I'd always come to Bristol and loved it. And if you like, it's the absolute antithesis of Dubai, right? It's independent, the atmosphere is great, they support loads of small independents, the community vibe, the music. I'm really big into music. So everything I loved about Bristol, we thought if we're going to move and we were coming back to be with family, so our choices were up north where my wife's from, Birmingham where we got loads of mates, or Bristol. And we ended up looking at venues in all and settling on Bristol.

Yeah, lucky for us that you have. And then talk about community, you got involved in the NatWest Accelerator. And the community here. How, how did you discover the community?

Yeah, so we're— I guess we'd been open 5 years, had gone through Brexit coming in. We opened 6 months before lockdown, survived, survived that, which might come to later. And it had never been my plan to have one bar. When we came up with the idea of doing it, the plan was to have 5 within 5 years. To have that kind of ambition. As with many people's lives, COVID kind of scuppered that, um, and then we find ourselves kind of 3 or 4 years in, oh, we're still where we are, um, and that was quite challenging for me because then you start questioning, have we made the right decision, you know, from a money perspective, uh, what that affords your lifestyle, but also from a general happiness in your day-to-day, um And I think we just saw in that West Accelerator advertising, we're like, right, now is the time. If we're gonna change things, we need to change things now and need that bit of a spur. And it felt like a good, it felt like a good thing of doing.

Okay, so you joined the accelerator and then if we look at what you've been doing with Cask, you talked about COVID Let's just talk about how you overcame the challenges because that's a great example of where all entrepreneurs had to think quick. Yeah. Or, or go home.

Yeah. So it was 6 months. We'd opened in the October. I think it was March 19th, maybe, where we were told we had to close. And that the next day after having to close, we had had a tasting in the bar that had sold out. So 30 people. We didn't really want to give that money back. So we contacted them all and said, if we can somehow get wine to you, we'd, we'd just— as everyone was just finding that point, a thing called Zoom, which we'd never heard about. But if we can "Get us signed up for that, get some wine to you. Do you fancy jumping online tomorrow?" And everyone said, "Yeah, that's great." So we did that. We popped, I think it was ASDA maybe, and popped down and bought some pretty horrible looking plastic bottles, poured wine into it from other big bottles. It looked like we were delivering urine samples around Bedminster on our bikes, dropped at the door, knocked on the door and ran away 'cause everyone was scared that, you know, you were about to get the plague the moment somebody came to the door. Jumped on Zoom and did it. And at the end everyone said, that was great. Could we do it again next week? If we're still locked down, can we do it again next week? 'Cause obviously that point no one knew, right? It was, it was very novel. Did it.

Well, when you say did it, just help us understand what, because they were expected to come and have a wine tasting.

Yeah.

And you were dragging and dropping bottles of kind of look like urine samples to their door.

Yeah.

And then Zooming them. So what, what value are you offering them?

Well, so we're talking through the wines, right? So we do do tastings in the bar every week and introduce people to new wines. For me, it's about the winemaker and the stories behind the winemakers. It's not getting down and deep into kind of soil types and the chemistry, 'cause some people are interested in that, but most people, most people not. So it's just storytelling around the wine's provenance and the winemaker. At the time, as well as being allergic to alcohol, when we opened the bar, I knew nothing about wine. Literally nothing. I discovered it through the allergic reaction, but I didn't know anything about it. But we were, we opened the bar initially with some friends and the long-term plan for the 5 bars in 5 years was they would do the wine, we would do the marketing and the venue concept creation, if you like. But they lived in Birmingham, so they couldn't, it was COVID, they couldn't get there. So we spent those first few months of COVID with me, a script behind, the laptop so no one could see it on an old piano stand, literally reading off things, but trying to do it in a way that seemed natural and basically blagging it because we had no other option. Because what we're going to do, give that money back and not have any money?

Well, and being resourceful as well as an entrepreneur and that point in a way that you don't have to be an expert, you just have to be more of an expert than the client.

Or pretend you're more of an expert.

I wouldn't want to say that in recordings, but But this idea that you were also giving people something to do during lockdown, which presumably meant as much in a way as the wine itself, was the connectivity in the community that you continued to—

Yeah, and it was that time when everyone was doing quizzes, right? I mean, I spoke to my family way more during lockdown than I've ever spoken to them, with you jumping on doing regular quizzes. And it was, again, if we, some of us don't wanna remember back, but if we remember back, it was quite a nice warm summer. It felt like novel to jump online and get a takeaway and drink wine and talk to your friends and family. And we were the alternative to the quiz that quickly people, I think, got bored of doing a quiz online. So we were, I guess, the alternative. And we grew it. And luckily we have some wine importers who do know about wine and they were happy to do it as well because it meant they got the business from us. So they would join in and do it. But kind of 3 or 4 months in, we realised that wasn't scalable. We could do one or two a week, but it wasn't really scalable. So what could we do next? So we developed at-home tasting kits, so things that didn't need us to be online. So it was— now look nice and new in samples, we had the branding on it, we'd got the cardboard boxes done, and we found the bottles and we branded the bottles and created little wine cards. So every wine had a nicely branded card. So people could then host their own parties at home and then branch out to corporates. So the likes of PwC and Red Bull and Nike wanting stuff for all their colleagues that were now working at home. So we would do that and those were normally where we'd then host them. So hosting 150 people on Zoom doing a wine tasting was definitely not the most fun thing to do.

Yeah, I can imagine quite stressful.

Quite good for the business.

Yeah. But just backing up a little bit, because you talked about the products and services you were delivering, which is really innovative. But how are we getting the demand? Because if it is lockdown, marketing background, but you're in Dubai, and my experience is, you know, if you're in another country, you don't just have the network.

Yep.

Or the profile. How are you driving demand for the offerings?

So first, we were first to market, right? So literally going back to that Spanish wine tasting that we sold tickets for, within an hour of realising we're having to lock down, we have to get money back, we'd contact them all. So we did it within a day of locking down. And then we realised— I used to do a lot of crisis comms, so like, okay, what, what do we do in this scenario? And my wife luckily is very creative and also in marketing and social, so we very quickly said this might be something we need to, to move quickly on. So got some good SEO behind it in the first weeks of lockdown, developed our website. We'd had a very simple one or two pager but very quickly developed the website as well. So people were finding us, um, excellent. We also— you talk about network— one of our friends from Dubai was the digital editor for Vogue. So within 4 weeks of lockdown, we had an article in Vogue about the story of Moon Muffin Dubai opening a bar and being locked down. So that network also helped.

Okay, yeah, I read that story, and I also read a piece of PR that you were in where you talked about people canceling their bookings. So was part of the strategy to be as transparent as you could be? Because potentially you're taking a risk criticizing your customers for not showing up when they'd booked a table.

That, I think the case you're talking about is a very recent case. Yeah. So this wasn't the COVID time. I think we always wanted Cars to be authentic. And we always wanted, you know, the product's authentic. The product is no chemicals, no bullshit. You know, we want the same to be to us. Now, funny enough, saying that, I look back now, for the first 6 months to a year, I was, this is very honest now, I was terrified of people finding out our background of having worked in Dubai. Because there's, especially in a city like Bristol, which is very authentic, a lot of people have negative views of Dubai. And I was terrified that actually that story didn't quite work. And I knew we were authentic in what we were doing, but you could see some people going, oh, natural wine bar funded by money earned in Dubai. You know, something for me jarred. I was unnecessarily worried about it, but it's that kind of thing you get in your head and you think, oh God, this could ruin us. It was never going to, but you know, it could ruin us. And then I did realise later on, actually, there's some authenticity to that as well. But the brand, we wanted to be authentic. It wanted to be about us. We never— I talked about kind of blagging those online tastings about my knowledge, but we've never been shy in coming forward and saying, we— there's a lot to know about wine and we don't know much about it. We'll discover it with you. And I think actually that's helped the experience because we want to appeal to people who— we want to tick the boxes for people who know natural wine really well, will walk in, see a bottle on the shelves that they think, God, we can't get that anywhere else in Bristol. This is amazing. But 80% of people who walk through doors, our doors, are not those people. So they're people who are popping in for a bar because it looks nice. And we don't want them to feel the barriers are up for them discovering the wine. So a lot of what we do is about helping people get through that first barrier.

Okay, that's really nice, eh, that you've got this idea about authenticity. It's an interesting issue about the negative bias that people might carry in and how you might carry that in your mind more than the customer does. I, I want to just go back to something you talked about, thinking of the concept, because it's actually quite a big topic, uh, and many people have got an idea for a business, but then the practical implementation might be a company name or might be a logo. But how did you and your wife think about the brand? Can you give us some steps that you went through? Because there are a lot of different aspects, and often people need to have that framework and feel the confidence that it's all in place before they go into the market.

Yeah, yeah. And I think it's our backgrounds did help on that. I think you always want 2 or 3 things as that becomes through lines, which don't necessarily get talked about, but you can always come back to it. Does that tick that box? Are we true to that value? So for us it was, be a pub that just happened to serve wine. So, so we want to look like a pub. The venue we ended up with on North Street has been a pub for 150 years, so that inherently helped. Yeah. Um, although we did then rip it up, rip it apart and rebuilt it. Um, but it looks like a pub from the outside, so that helped. Um, and then I think that European thing of, of it's the bar you discover on holiday. But it just happens to be at the end of your street, that also helped. So not over-engineered, beautiful interiors, beautiful inside, and we get a lot of comments on that, but again, not loads of stainless steel, organic materials, you know, that kind of thing. So we knew we wanted that. The name was, it's funny, the names, we spent months and months and months and months, and we found old spidergrams the other day of some of the names. And we ended up at Cask because it was a cask house. The venue we actually found was a cask house. And one of our core things on sustainability is we have wine on tap. So we have wine in bottles, but a lot of our wine comes in kegs or casks. So the two kind of came together. So, so that was an important message as well, because although now there's a fair few venues in Bristol that have wines on tap, we were the first ones. And the reason we do that is Glass is pretty expensive and bad for the environment in terms of shipping around the world. We get 26 bottles in one cask or keg and you can recycle those. So it's better for the environment, but it's also better wine for cheaper price. Yeah. And that's another key thing as part of that breaking down the barrier. You want to walk in and see a £5 glass of wine. That's good. We can do that from having that wine come in keg.

Yeah. So you're making wine much more accessible, you say. Yeah. And I'd use the word sort of democratic, but making it, say, a public experience, which feels much more, if you like, continental Europe. Yeah. Rather than the barrier of the sort of oenologist and who the sommelier comes in and tries to frankly confuse you and get you to buy the most expensive wine you can.

Yeah. And when we were looking at research, we went to a lot of bars, we went to London and a few other cities in the UK and looked at where we felt comfortable walking in. And I remember we are, There was a Sunday night in a really good bar in London, really well respected in the natural wine world. But we walked in, there was 2 other customers there and us, and we sat at the bar and it took 15 minutes to get served, 'cause the bartender was just pouring knowledge down this customer's throat. We're like, mate, we just want a glass. So that's key as well. It's reading the room, reading what do you want. You might be coming with your mates or on a date and you want a little bit of treatment and left alone, or you might be coming in 'cause you're really interested and you want us to pour you something you would never normally pick or special and have that chat. So a lot of our thing from the start has always been how would you read what that customer wants, um, and taking some of my hotel, hotel background and putting into that. We had a thing, the hotel group I had, there were, there were some tenets, and one was smile at the guests before they smile at you. And that's something that we've carried through as well. So as soon as people walk through the door, it's getting that eye contact and, and being loud, like, hey, come in, you know. Wine bars can be stuffy and quiet, and we want people to feel very warm.

They come in. Yes, it sounds though you've really thought through, right, the, the core values of Cask, um, and then it's playing out in, say, the venue, the, the kind of merchandise and the product you're actually offering to people. Um, in, in terms of being an entrepreneur, because it sounds like you've really nailed that concept and the delivery there, What have been some of the challenges that you face? I mean, one comes to mind for me is always about cash flow, because you talk about leaving a job and then there's 6 months, 9 months, there's leases, you maybe put deposits down. Yeah. Meanwhile, certainly my, my experience, you know, money's— the savings are going down while you're investing in what could be a future income. Yeah. Charlie, can you just tell us a little bit about how you've managed that side of of life because it does come with its stresses as well.

Yeah, it does, and we had left a lifestyle where the bank balance went up at the end of every month, you know, and were able to travel and not really worry about spend. So that's part of it, and that's a, if I do it with my wife, and although she's got what I call a proper job now and has had for kind of 3 or 4 years, we did do it together, so that was a commitment together to do it, and it was definitely more, my dream than hers, if you like. So there was, there was some of supporting behavior from her. Yeah. But then some real tough times as well, you know. So we've had to kind of work on that together. In terms of cash flow, again, I'm going to be really honest, we were lucky we had savings built up, right? So, so when we knew we were going to be leaving Dubai at some point, it was okay, now let's stop being frivolous. So let's actually put something, some things away. So that definitely helped. So we haven't needed to take on debt, which I'm really thankful for. It's just not something I'd ever want to have to do. So yeah, but that is always an anxiety now because it's like, well, that's— was that the right thing to do 5 years ago, that money? Should I put that in stocks and shares? Should I invest it in property? You know, and when we have a bad week or a bad month from a cash flow perspective, or the government introduced new costs and etc., you go, crikey, was this— was this a, are we playing at running a business or is this actually a business which is good for our long term? Yeah. And I'm not even sure now I could answer that, which is part of what coming to Accelerator was for.

Yeah, let's, let's talk about that. 'Cause when you start a business, there's always the opportunity cost of what you've done with the money, right? And if you'd kept the job and turned up and given the man your time in return for the cash, put it into stocks and shares as you say, or into a property. There's always that doubt when a customer doesn't come in or there's a delay or something doesn't go right. You talk about the accelerator, Charlie, what's been your, if you like, experience in the accelerator? What's helped you get through?

So I think the core thing for me was, and actually I didn't mention it earlier, but as we've talked, I realized it about a year and a half, 2 years ago, I got out of absolutely nowhere, an old contact, I got offered a job., in Saudi, in Saudi Arabia. And I, I'd never liked Saudi. Um, I'd never— I don't like some of the things it stands for. Um, I had not— nothing about that job offer made me want to go other than the money. But the money was really good. And when you're looking at, you know, your bank balance not necessarily going up at the end of every month, you think, God, if I could do this for 2 years that kind of sets us right and maybe that affords us to open another bar, etc. So we spent, myself and my wife spent about 4 weeks maybe talking about it. She was pretty against it from the start and that was a key thing. She, she wasn't going to move. So there would have been some pressure on our relationship there. But I realised at the end of that kind of 4 weeks of going back and forward, my motivation isn't money, which right now is probably quite a good, quite a good thing. But that was— and so then at that point, it's like, right, I guess I am now in this. I guess this is what I've chosen to do, at least for the next kind of 10 years. So now we need to actually go back to our original plan of having multiple venues or a business around it and not just one bar. I don't want to be behind a bar pouring wine. Well, actually, I do. That's not— I'd love to be behind a bar pouring wine all the time, but that's not gonna build a lifestyle that we want to build. So it was around, it was around that time that we saw the accelerator and we thought, right, now that might be the right time to do it. And so there was that motivation getting in it. We did the induction day and straight away there are a few things that were said, um, from the NatWest guys that really resonated with me about working on the business, not in the business, which, which is the one line that I think everyone— really resonated for me, and I know a lot of people in the group do as well. Um, And it's afforded me the ability to step away from the business. I say to myself, if I'm in on a— I come in every Wednesday, that's the time I'm not going to do other, other things. And that's my time where I'll focus on the business. So with Accelerator's help, we've created a business plan which we never had. We had 6 years ago, but have never relooked at, revisited what my ambitions are, what I want to be spending my time doing, where we want to be in 5 years' time, etc. Um, so that's one big tick for me that the accelerator has done. Um, and then being around other people who are of a similar mindset as well. You know, I've come from a corporate background where I was part of a commercial team and had a VP of Revenue and a VP of Sales that I met with every day. And, um, you suddenly do your own business and you're kind of on your own. Um, so the accelerator gives you those people around you that you can have a little chat to and bounce ideas off, which is really valuable.

When you joined the accelerator and then you started to get into it, what was the mindset and if you like, the, the actions that you needed to take that were different from, if you like, running on your own? Now you want to run 5, 6 and build up Cask Wines. What are some of the practical steps that you're needing to take and that you've got guidance on, do you think?

Well, I think the first step is is going, if you're going to grow, you can't do everything yourself. Um, so in the last 6 months— so I've been in accelerator now for maybe 9 months— in the last kind of 3 to 6 months, it's been, right, what can my team do? And we, we're lucky. I say lucky because in hospitality it's very rare to keep staff for too long because it's a low-paying industry. We're lucky that our GM has been with us since we opened. Um, And I definitely was guilty of not delegating. And he's got talent there that I haven't been, I hadn't been tapping into, but also desire to do it. And actually my, my, my realisation point of that was I realised actually he's a flight risk and if he leaves, I can't grow this business because I'm going to have to go back and do that or and train somebody up. So that delegation role. So he's now got a completely different job role than he had 6 months ago. Seems to be loving it. Um, and, and with the— we're, we are hopefully about to sign a lease on a new venue. Um, and he's been involved in that from the start, including the decision to do it. So include— we looking at the venue and saying, right, is this now the right time? Can, can we do this as a group of people? Is this the right time? So he's— and he'll project manage that. So that gives him a new lease of life as well within the business. But also gives me skills which I don't have.

When you do that though, you start to take on the overhead. And the, the reason that most of us try and do the work is we think, well, I'll save a bit of money by doing it myself. What has that meant for you in terms of how you see yourself, um, as a business owner rather than a business doer?

That, that, and it's— that's a hard shift in itself, right? Especially with with him because we've got 5 and a half years of a relationship built up where now that dynamic's got to change. And he's— we've always had a flat structure, but actually as we grow, he's gonna have to be focused on profit and, and loss and turnover, which he's never had before, which therefore means I'm gonna have to be a bit maybe harder on him, for want of a better term. Um, and, and that's a hard shift to go from being very flat structured, almost colleagues, to a there's now a relationship here where you're going to be motivated by a bonus, etc., which, you know, and therefore, you know, I might have to come down hard on you, or that's hard. And that's what I'm kind of going for at the moment. But there's some mentors within the NatWest Acceleration environment that are kind of helping, helping with that as well.

Okay. Because I was going to say the, the biggest challenge as you grow a business is to grow yourself as an entrepreneur. You— we all get comfortable in certain roles. Certain kind of work, certain kind of conversations that we might have. And my experience as well is that the people around me get used to playing me in that kind of role. And you need some support to, if you like, train and work out differently, don't you? Yeah. What have you been doing now with Cask Wine to start to grow it beyond— you talk about the one and want to have five. What sort of systems are you needing to put in place to realize the ambition to have a business that you own rather than a business you work in?

Well, so one thing that's, it's gonna be a buzzword coming up, but one thing that Accelerator, we've done some training on AI. So, and again, I brought it into the GM's role, which is not something I knew he'd feel comfortable with, but brought it in and say, okay, what can we do on a daily basis that, well, what are we doing on a daily basis that AI could do for us? So you create some efficiencies there. And actually, we both kind of embraced that once we got over that initial hurdle. Now, it's something that my wife, who works in an agency, has been telling me for a year. And every day I say, oh, do you know how to do this? Just get ChatGPT to AI. And I'd always been resistant to it, and I don't know why. Come into Accelerator, you hear a third party tell you 'Oh yeah, that seems like quite a good idea actually.' So I should have been doing it for the last year. So looking at how we can create efficiencies, looking at how I'm spending my time. We did a presentation in Accelerator where we did a day on, you know, your diary management. And it was something I used to be really good at in a corporate world because my boss was great at it, about managing your own diary, not letting somebody manage it for you. And that's something that we've again looked at an accelerator. So it's almost some stuff that I've kind of forgotten because you go from corporate world into the entrepreneur world where you basically are dealing with the most urgent thing. You know, it might be an alarm has gone off, so you've got to leave your office and go and start the alarm. It might be that the thing's fallen through the bathroom window and you've got to fix that, or a delivery hasn't turned up. All these issues that suddenly hit you. Um, but as a mentor said to me in accelerator, you've got a GM, but you're doing that stuff. Why are you doing that stuff? You've got a team. So it's also that delegation responsibility, but making them realize it's their responsibility.

And also realizing, I think, that there are new revenue streams. Yeah, to go after. I think sometimes it's tempting to keep doing what you're doing because it's comfortable, because we haven't necessarily identified the new things, or we've identified them but don't feel self-confident enough in the new role. In terms of you growing, Charlie, and, you know, handling, if you like, the mental toughness that comes with being an entrepreneur, because if you're an employee, you have structure created for you, you have pay reviews, you have, you know, discipline and teams, as you said, like you had your boss. How have you now, if you like, game changed and helped yourself to become the kind of leader that you need to be to grow the business?

Well, I think that's a work in progress. I definitely don't think I'm there yet. I went through quite a tough period 2 years ago maybe. So we have, we already have a second venue. A place came up during COVID which hadn't been, or at the end of COVID it had been empty for a year. So we, opposite Cask on North Street, we snaffled it up and we turned it into a pop-up restaurant, which was exciting and fun. At first. The actual refurb of that became a nightmare because in hindsight, the contractor was having some issues himself. So that then led on to me again, classic case, contractor should be doing the work, wasn't doing it. So I'm ending up painting, you know, a kitchen at 3 o'clock in the morning and etc., etc. So I was absolutely knackered by the— on the day of opening, you know, and it was almost, well, that job's done, thank God for that. Oh Christ, now we've got a second venue actually. We actually need to run. Um, got it in a good place, it was running really well. And then unfortunately we're running pop-ups, and unfortunately two of the pop-ups didn't pay us the money they owed us. Um, so straight away your margin's gone, and, and, and that really impacts. I mean, it's not just the money, it's also the whole brand was around us working with chefs in Bristol and helping them, you know, people who haven't got a venue, helping them have a venue and it will be great and collaborative. So when two just walk off and don't pay you the money and and you've got no recourse of action, um, because we can't afford— there's no point going after, you know, paying legal fees. It's just not worth the money. So that really impacted me.

Um, why did it impact you? Is it lack of, uh, delivery, the loss of trust, the loss of self-confidence?

Lots of trust, lots of money. Yeah. And, and, and then therefore completely losing passion in that, in that project. But that's a project you've still got to pay for. You've still got to pay a rental fee and you've got energy fees, etc. So that was tough, and that was a good year, year and a half of pretty bad feeling. Um, yeah, depression basically. Um, and ultimately it came down to, again, you know, conversation with the wife of, you've got to get this sorted, you know, we, we can't continue like this, this is not enjoyable, um, what have we done this for, you know. Um, so the fix for me for that has been exercise, and it's now a non-negotiable for me that I exercise every day. Those endorphins you get, great. Again, being very briefly honest, anti-anxiety medication, which I was against for a year and a half, but actually the combination of the two have helped. And then, and I'm not just saying it because it's for the podcast, the Accelerator has massively helped with that as well. I now have a structure to my week, coming here on a Wednesday. You know, there's people around you who you can talk to who may be going through similar things. And I always leave Accelerator energized for the business. So that energy— I get energy from exercise and I get energy from Accelerator, and I always leave feeling, oh, actually this is quite an exciting thing we're doing. And, and feeling that old me that we used to have when we set up Kask, of that pep of going, this is cool, like, this is what I want to do, and I don't want a career job, this— I want to do something for ourselves.

There's that sort of middle place, isn't there? After you started the business, there's all the excitement, then a few knocks, you say, like people letting you down, maybe some questioning your own judgment, feeling a bit exhausted physically and emotionally, but you're too far in to go back, right? And then you talk about the accelerator giving you energy. How did you get the energy out of the accelerator? Because it's just a building, it's just an office. So what did you do, or what did you— conversations did you have to make this into a restorative place for you?

So there are— what are the bits I find useful? And I haven't taken advantage of everything the accelerator can offer because you just don't have time, right? So I realized that pretty quickly. I need to cherry-pick the bits which I think are important to me. So quite a few of the talks or presentations have been useful. Now, 80% of the time it's stuff I know, and that's not to sound arrogant, or it's just stuff I've learned over 25 years of a career. But it's a reminder. It's like, oh Christ, I used to do that. Why haven't I done that for 6 years? Because you're in the depths of running a business and you don't think about it. So the accelerator gives you that access to information and, if you like, inspiration. But also if you work on the business, you're in the business at the time you're in the accelerator building, you then freed up that time to actually do that as well. So I've known for the last 4 years we need a business plan. Like, we're just kind of carrying on, but we need a business plan. It only took me half a day within the accelerator building to sit down and write one and then talk it through with the guys from NatWest and polish it up a bit. Suddenly I've got one which now I've communicated to our team and I'm referring to not every time I'm back in the accelerator, but maybe every month for going, are we actually on track here? Which we'd never had before. And it's very easy when you're running that business for time to move on very quickly and you go, Christ, 9 months ago I wrote a to-do list that said write a business plan and I haven't done that yet. And that's kind of to me what's been rewarding.

Good. And having the sense of a shared journey, I think, and as you say, business in some respects is actually not that complicated. It's the reminders and the self-discipline and having someone who cares.

Yeah.

To go on that journey with you, I think can be so, so important. It's so hard to do it on your own. So you've got a business plan. What's in the next 5 years, Charlie, for you and for Cask Wines?

So the business plan, which I did, I think I wrote in November, the business plan had said next step is develop, further develop our corporate tasting revenue stream. So we, Coming out of COVID I said we've done a lot of tastings. We now do tastings every week in cask. Um, we do quite a lot of private tastings and corporate tastings for the likes of Hargreaves Lansdown, etc., etc. That is the best margin, um, we can get, but we've never gone after that business. It's always come to us. We have good, really good SEO. So if you search best wine tastings UK, we'll come up in the first page. That's rewarding, but therefore I know we haven't actually done any push marketing. I don't know if that's the right term, but that's what I would say. Yeah.

Outbound, outbound marketing. All inbound marketing.

Yeah. So that's a big opportunity for us. So that was one big thing. And then that was going to be my focus the next 6 months. And then in the business plan was find another venue by the end, at the end of this year, look for another venue at the end of this year, knowing it would probably take 6 months. So middle of next year we'll open another cask. Things happen. A venue came up, um, available. Saw it advertised on Facebook, um, and we thought, let's just go and have a look at it. And it's in the location we'd quite like to be in. It's a really nice location, and other than a refurb to fit our brand, it's ready to go in terms of equipment, etc. So it's relatively easy— the ease of entry. I'm saying that we haven't done it yet, and I'm sure there'll be things that come along, but the ease of entry seems on paper to be there. So we just flipped that around. We said, actually, that's what we'll now focus on. But as I said earlier, the plan is for our current GM to really take that on, which still frees me up to focus on the corporate stuff. Because again, I need to keep reminding myself, it's nice to have bricks and mortar, and it's gonna be great to have a second venue, but actually the best margins are another part of the business. But having a second venue, north city, south city, Also, from a branding perspective, positions a brand again higher than just one bar in Bedminster. It's something, oh, those are a reminder, oh, those are the wine guys in Bristol. So then from a tasting perspective, we have more recognition, so it should drive that business as well.

Cool. It sounds, Charlie, as though you have a much more long-term strategic view of it as a business with different margin mix, different customer groups.

That's the view. It's then finding the time to execute it, isn't it? Because that is the eternal challenge of saying, on paper, that looks great. And I'd like to have an importing arm, and I'd like to do all this and this. But I think what we do now is— we do know now is we want to grow the business. So it's cask and it's wine-focused with venues, but there's other things around it that bring in those revenue streams, because ultimately bars do not make much money.

No, but it sounds as though you're doing something that you believe in, and you're enabling people that would otherwise either not be able to taste organic wines or naturally produced wines to access them, but also in a way that's, you know, very genuine and inclusive, which is wonderful.

Yeah. And it sounds a bit trite, but those community hubs as well, if you like, on our high streets, which are struggling. And, you know, I basically don't want a high street to just be all charity shops and vape shops. And there's a, Bristol is very good for that, supporting independence. So even on our, on North Street alone, there's a lot of independent bars and restaurants. And people might be surprised to know that quite a few of us actually work together on ongoing. Okay, well, to me it's your estate agent model. If you look at a high street, there'll often be 3 estate agents next to each other because people like to browse them. You don't want to be a standalone bar unless you're very, very, very good. You want other good bars around you. That people then come to that location and browse. So quite a few of us on our North Street will work together on that, whether it's on shared marketing calendars or, oh, you've got that on, well, if I do that, then more people will come to the street that day. That to me is also an important part of that kind of community and knowing it's nice to see regulars walking in. You know, it's— we did an event last weekend, I had a load of regulars and the feedback we got was great. And that's the dopamine hit, if you like, which kind of gets you past when you're looking at the financials, you think, are we earning enough money?

Yeah. And ultimately, that's the joy of being an entrepreneur, is that you create something from nothing, and then when it delivers on the values that you've believed in, then you get a validation. But also, you're giving joy to other people, and that's, that's sort of greater than maybe taking a salary from someone to deliver that for you. Charlie, if someone was thinking about becoming, you know, part of an accelerator, what would be your your thoughts, um, for an entrepreneur looking at joining an accelerator?

Well, obviously I can't say don't do it, but I would say do it. I think it's, it's, it's been, it's been invaluable to me in terms of where I was at with, again, SoundStrike, with my journey. It's been invaluable to go, okay, I need to move, I need to accelerate, I need to do something here to change the status quo. And it's kind of given me access to resources access to an environment where other people are doing it. Um, and again, I don't think I've taken everything from it I could, but you've got to cherry-pick what you've got, what you've got time for. Um, and like I said earlier, the fact that I leave— anytime I come here, I leave energized and excited about doing something. That to me is, is all you need, right? It's that kick up the ass.

Charlie Taylor, thank you for coming and sharing your story with me on the NetWest Unnoticed Entrepreneur podcast.

Thank you.