From Grad Schemes to Redefining the Tequila Industry - Pimentae Drinks | The Midnight Pod Ep 59

We got to launch day and we didn't have any money left. So it was kind of right, how do we launch this product with literally no money? And I think that was kind of where lockdown played in our favor a bit because we could guarantee that everyone was at home. Influencers, we knew kind of the power that they had. But also because of COVID a lot of them were looking for new content just because they couldn't go to bars, they couldn't go out and about. There were no events happening.

Yeah.

So it guaranteed everyone was going to be at home.

Right, we're back with episode 59, I think, of the midnight pod. We've got Alice and Winter from Pimente Drinks. And I was just saying before, it's probably terrible, but the second ever female guests on the pod since Natasha, which was like the third episode about a year and a bit ago when I was two, stand heavier and looked very different. So, yeah, I think Lucy, who booked you, told me that I definitely need to get more female entrepreneurs on and they definitely are out there. But I just feel like because the pod was on my mates to start with and almost pretty much until this point, it's been my mates and I've just rinsed my entire network of friends of friends, of friends. And now it's like we actually need to get people on.

We better not. Weird tick box.

I actually cleaned the kitchen before this episode because I don't know you and.

That doesn't even matter because we're girls.

Well, just cause I don't. I've got a male coming on tonight. Not cause you're girls, just because I was trying to be polite for guests that I've never met.

The toilet was flushed when I went in, by the way, so thank you.

It was flushed. Yeah, that was Jack's toilet. So it's not normally in. I actually cleaned that as well, briefly.

God, we've got special treatment.

Gold star.

Yeah, exactly. I guess first question is always, we'll dive into loads of shit, but like your background, I mean, how do you even get into building a tequila? Which, by the way, we're drinking right now. And we've got another one coming in about 55 minutes.

As long as it's under the hour, we won't be pledging a complaint.

We won't time it.

So. I thought you were sisters. That's what I was telling you.

No, no, no, someone told me that.

No, we.

And then I looked online, you looked nothing alike.

And we did actually have the same surname.

We met at of Leeds Actually, we lived together in our fourth year. But in terms of your question, how we came to start Pimento, go back.

As far as when you met, because I normally go back to like teenage years, whatever. I know Stephen Bartlett goes back to like childhood, but I'm not copying that format yet.

Okay, we're going Stephen Bartlett tonight. All right, so we met at Leeds. We were kind of in similar areas in terms of what we studied. Palm was doing business and marketing and I was doing international business. So weirdly, we didn't actually have a huge amount of overlap in terms of like studying together or like understanding how one another works. So Pimente definitely wasn't born then. But one thing that was very similar about us was final year of university, both of us were very much on the trajectory where we were apply for the grad schemes of the big companies. I feel like when you're at university.

They kind of get back.

Yeah, well, we both did a year out, so I did a year out at l' Oreal and Winter did a year out at IBM. And when we came back to uni, a lot of our friends had kind of been abroad for a year, but we'd. We were probably the only. We were actually the only two in London doing business placements. Yeah. Australia and. And then we went into final year, lived together and both were kind of going through the same process of applying for grad scheme. We actually applied for quite a lot, the same ones as well. But then I ended up getting onto the ASOS one and Winter got onto the sky one.

Yeah, it's really. I don't know. I was actually reflecting on this the other day. I feel like university is a really poor example of prepping you for like what you actually want to do after university. It's kind of like three, three point plan to success, like get your first or your two one, Apply for a grad scheme with a big name, work there for 10 years, bish bosh, you'll be rich and happy, which is just so far from fulfilling or what you want to do. So it's really interesting that both of us ended up doing grad schemes at Big Corps. I did commercial at sky, which doesn't sound nearly as sexy as Palm doing marketing at asos.

Brand and marketing at asos, which I actually, I loved asos. It was a cool company to work for and it's such a young kind of cohort of people who are really talented. But again you're just kind of in this web of corporate, corporate life, corporate world. There's kind of a hierarchy. You're kind of stuck in the same job doing the same thing every day, and there's just very, very little fulfillment from doing all that kind of stuff. But then it teaches. It does teach you a lot of things that probably have helped us in kind of stepping into this journey in terms of. Yeah, just kind of commercial awareness structure is probably a big one as well. And. Yeah, so it's definitely hasn't gone to waste, and we've learned a lot from doing those things. But it was a big jump.

Yeah, I was. Think it's interesting when people go into the Matrix or whatever you want to call it, like, normal life, because I never did that, which is maybe lucky in hindsight, maybe it's not. I dropped out when I was in uni and said I never got a degree, which my parents were very unhappy about at the time. But, like, what did you think you'd be doing? Did you want to do that when you left or had you always wanted to do your own thing and it was like, oh, well, don't know how to do that. Yeah, and we'll figure it out later.

I don't know. I actually don't think I had a plan in place of what I really wanted to do. I knew that. I actually did know that I kind of wanted to go into the alcohol industry. That was one interest I had, I think, from my dad. He was kind of in the alcohol industry and I saw his career and it was quite exciting. And he was always traveling, so I think that's something I wanted from a job. I didn't want to be in fashion. And the kind of premise of ASOS was not really what I believed in anyway. But, yeah, I think starting my own business wasn't probably something I knew I was gonna do that early on it was. It was something that interested me. And I definitely kind of watched a lot of entrepreneurs go through that journey and was really interested in listening to their stories. But, yeah, never something. I thought that we would kind of jump straight out of where we kind of were in our careers and start it when we did.

Do you speak about it at uni ever?

No. And I think when you're at university as well, like, people don't aspire to be entrepreneurs because you're very ring fenced into thinking. Like, when you're at lectures, you've got people coming in to speak to you from, like, Deloitte and hsbc and there's nothing.

The big four.

Yeah.

There's no one telling you, like, there are these really cool Autonomous, unconventional ways where you can earn an income. Ultimately, it's kind of like this is what you need to do. You need to go to the big four. You need to stay there for like 10 years. And like, that is that there really is, like no insight in how to be entrepreneurial or like putting a spotlight onto successful entrepreneurs. It's like, very interesting when you put your hindsight hat on and you have a look at what was taught to you and where you are now. And I think that's ultimately what probably leaves us feeling pretty grateful that, well, Pimento was a lockdown baby. Ultimately, it was. I feel like when you're with your laptop in its rawest form and you strip away corporate culture and all of the glamour that comes with working at corporate, I mean, sky was an adults playground. It had a gym, it had a beauty salon, it had laundry facilities. You literally didn't need to leave. And during lockdown, when you're just with your laptop and it's your job in its rawest form, I think that's when you actually really look at yourself in the mirror and you're like, oh, my God, this is actually so monotonous and unfulfilling. And you realize that you actually need to be really proactive in doing something else to get out of that kind of relentless cycle that the corporate jungle is, I guess.

Yeah. And we kind of took, when we came up with the idea of this, we took it from idea to launching a product within six months. So we'd never kind of sat around and planned for what we actually ended up doing. It literally was just one day. We were talking and complaining about how bored we were and how we were getting no fulfillment and this is not what we want to do. And it just kind of. We were living right next to each other at the time, so in lockdown, obviously, couldn't go out. We were drinking lots of kind of margaritas, spice margaritas on the balcony. And it was honestly one night we. We kind of had left each other and ended up calling each other and we had discussed on the day how spicy margaritas and picantes are so hard to make. Everyone always gets them wrong. Why can't we just buy it in a bottle? And we were kind of joking around with it and all of our friends were drinking it as well and laughing about, like, how someone would make it too spicy, someone would not make it spicy enough. It was just chaos. And then, yeah, we literally just phoned each other off and we were like, you know that thing we were talking about earlier about how nobody puts it in a bottle. Why don't we just do it? And that was literally it. And we just decided there and then that we would.

Did you ever, like, have an experience where you exposed to like the potential? Because I dropped out. I ironically did entrepreneurial business management. Right. For six weeks.

Yeah.

I was 18.

I'm glad you got a dose of that. We have that at uni.

No, it was really funny because none of the lecturers had ever run a business, but that's the thought sort of thing you look at in hindsight. And then I did a placement in Mayfair in an M and A brokerage when I was 19, not knowing anything because I always wanted to be like somewhat different, but I didn't know how people actually started businesses. But then I saw people that were successful, that weren't celebrities or footballers and I was, oh, wait a minute, this can't be done. He's got a nice car that I like, Something like that. And that was the first, like seed. And then I started a shit clothing brand when I was 19 and the rest is history. But.

I actually never had that. I think, I think it was more kind of the fulfillment in what I was doing. I didn't really have that much interested in it. I wasn't that passionate about what I was doing. I've never been that bothered about like, obviously money and success is you aspire to have it one day. But I don't that for me, I don't know about you, but wasn't the driver as to why we started it. And also I don't think we kind of started the business knowing exactly where it was going to go and what the purpose was. We kind of. We did have a vision and a plan and understanding of the market, but we kind of definitely went off the fact of we knew what we wanted to make as a product and that's kind of what we ran with instead of deciding we were going to launch like a million pound business.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I think it was, it was interesting. And launching as quickly as we did was probably the best decision because it's kind of meant we have developed as we've gone along. So everything we kind of started with has changed at this point. Probably nothing's the same in terms of like suppliers, ingredients, recipes, everything's different. And actually probably starting before we were ready was an amazing decision that we kind of jumped into because it's led us to this point by just literally meeting people, developing as we've gone and going from kind of strength to strength as a Brand.

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Yeah.

I feel like the fast paced nature is definitely something that we've carried into all of our decisions and it's why our kind of proposition has evolved so much. Like Alice said when we first launched, we were ultimately inspired by the Soho House picante and taking something exclusive to a members club and commercializing the proposition. There was definitely a piece of like commercial understanding. Like Tequila is having its resurgence in the UK at the moment and the ready to drink market's also exploding. So there was definitely elements of that that were plugged into it where if you do do something right and we were launching on the edge of lockdown, which was a really interesting time as well because you could capitalize on people being at home and them being a little bit more adventurous with spend. But also the market was just about to open again and people were a lot more receptive to new products and all of these lockdown brands and things like that. And we watched our proposition evolve really, really quickly. When we first launched the Spicy Marg, we were like, okay, what are we going to do next cocktail wise? And it kind of forced us to be like, no, there are loads of classic cocktail brands out there, but going to be totally tequila focused. So we're the only brand in the UK that focus on tequila based RTDs. Ready to drinks. If you're wondering what RTD's means.

Winter loves the Cantonese tequila before.

Well, yeah, so I think also taking.

I just knew it was the spicy thing at. So I have.

Yeah, I think taking it back slightly as well. So we traveled to Mexico and that was where I guess the interest and also the knowledge on tequila kind of formed for both of us because there is such a knowledge gap in this country due to our shock culture. So people think they hate tequila, but actually probably the majority of them don't hate tequila. It's literally just because we've grown up in a culture and a society where you go out to a bar and you shot the cheapest thing on the shelf, which is normally kind of Sierra or Jose Cuervo. And people end up kind of doing that later down the night when they're slightly drunk. So they wake up really hungover, probably being sick, and then they blame it on the tequila.

Yeah, it's never a taste drink, is it?

And it also gets like. If you grew up shotting gin, we'd probably, probably all hate gin. But it's just kind of behavioral and cultural that's ingrained in our kind of perception of the spirit that's actually beautifully complex and is so kind of. It's the cleanest spirit out there. It's kind of grown over a period of eight years. It's got no kind of depressants in it, it's low in calories. If people start to balance it correctly and drink it in the correct way, the perceptions really start to change quite quickly.

But whilst it is a perception as well, I think people's perceptions are very reflective based on what they've got available to them. So if you go to a convenience store or a Waitrose or a Tesco's, you will see 25 gins and probably three tequila options. Just because there is no variety, there's no good quality tequila available for people to try. So like Palm said, you've got Sierra, which is the tequila with the red hat that probably haunts people's dreams. And that's what gives tequila a terrible reputation. And that is literally why when we're speaking to our tequila producers, we work with a brand called El Tecaleno. The thing that frustrates the most is kind of people who produce poor quality tequila that as a result gives it a really, really, really negative reputation. Because people associate tequila with something that tastes like paint stripper that makes them feel like hell in the morning. But you'll actually find if you swap over your gin and tonic to a tequila Soda, lime. There is literally no hangover the next day. You don't get any anxiety or anything like that.

Yeah. The way it's distilled, if you genuinely try it one day, drink a good quality tequila with soda and lime all night, you will not wake up. You won't wake up hungover or even sip it.

It's traditionally. So the way you're traditionally. The way you're traditionally meant to drink. Tequila is at room temperature, not even with ice. And it's a sipping drink in the same way that you would get a bottle of red and drink it at dinner. That is the exact same way in which tequila is meant to be enjoyed. Not something to be shotted, something to be sipped and savored.

I actually didn't even, like I said, didn't know this tequila in this originally, obviously this one previously, but now you say it, I notice it.

You can taste it. It's also. I think people don't. In this country don't realize that it's a protected spirit. So it's. It's kind of like champagne. You can't get it anywhere other than tequila in Mexico.

Oh, shit.

You have to.

Yeah.

So tequila. Tequila is the place that. That it comes from, but you won't. You can't get tequila.

Did you go there randomly or when you had the idea?

No, when we.

It was like a couple of years ago, we traveled to Mexico. I think we're in our second year of university. And that's where we tried a lot of tequila. And we were like, it doesn't taste like paint stripper. It tastes amazing. There's loads of, like, mezcals as well, which are more kind of, like smoky, a little bit more of a, like, whiskey flavor profile. But it was. Yeah, like Alice said earlier, it was then that we realized it's got a.

Bit of a whiskey.

It's got a little. That's the Scotch bonnet and a jalapeno.

And I'm just noticing it now because I'm pretending I'm a connoisseur.

Yeah, no, no. And it's really interesting when we. And that's kind of one of the reasons we do a lot of events and tastings so people can start to try the product. Because also the feedback for us is so interesting when people kind of describe what they're feeling or what they're tasting when they start to drink it. Like, lots of people think it's got ginger in it because of the kind of warming kick that you get down your throat, but it's actually the chilli extract.

Or people shudder before they drink it, think, thinking they're going to hate tequila, but then they actually realize they don't hate tequila, they just haven't tried good quality, well balanced tequila.

Yeah. Watching people try our product is the funniest thing because their face tells an entire story. They start by literally snubbing their nose at it, telling us how much they hate it, looking like they're about to kind of gag and then they smell it, kind of wince, try a bit, sit there for probably like 3 seconds and then decide that actually it's really nice and they'll be like, okay. And then they'll take another sip.

You tell them it's a picante rather than just straight tequila, people.

Yeah. And a lot of people don't know what that is. To be fair.

Not everyone's in southwest London, are they?

Yeah, I think picante. So we are products actually a spicy margarita. It's not necessarily picante and picante at Soho House they kind of mix it in a slightly different way. They're very similar.

It's got coriander in it, which palm hates.

I don't like coriander. So that wasn't allowed to be in our product. But yeah, no, we, we based it off the spice margarita, which. Well, a Tommy's spicy margarita. So that's made with kind of agave instead of triple sec. But yeah, it's really, it's a really lovely balanced product. And then obviously you need to try the other one, but it's cucumber, elderflower and mint.

Did you order one?

No, it was sold out on our website. Two more of these coming, then two more of these bad boys coming.

Yeah.

Hope you like spice.

So you like the drink. Basically you go to Mexico, finish your jobs, whatever. How long do you spend in grad jobs before. Until you decided.

So yeah, we both did grad schemes that were two years, so six month rotation. You actually finished a bit earlier on yours. She was too clever for hers. I was clearly not. And then we, yeah, we're there for kind of six months in full time jobs and then literally we were, we were actually, when we launched in March 2021, we were both doing full time jobs and this on the side for six months until we decided to kind of quit those jobs.

Yeah.

Because I think we didn't really know where it was going to go and it took off very quickly for us which was. So we were lucky. We'd kind of had savings, both personal savings that we'd clubbed together and that pretty Much funded up, funded us up until the point of launch. Literally probably like launch day.

And our monthly salaries were just being injected straight into the cash flow.

So that was kind of the funding that we had. And then we got to launch day and we didn't have any money left. So it was kind of right. How do we launch this product with literally no money? And I think that was kind of where lockdown played in our favor a bit because we could guarantee that everyone was at home. Influencers, we knew kind of the power that they had, but also because of COVID a lot of them were looking for new content just because they couldn't go to bars, they couldn't go out and about. There were no events happening, so it guaranteed everyone was gonna be at home. So we literally just packed up, we spent kind of two days, and if.

You could have seen us, we literally had a paper shredder. We literally. It was so scrappy. But in hindsight, I think it was the best way to do it. Because if you can launch a business with absolutely zero resource and no budget, I mean, you just. I think as the business grows, you learn to operate on just being like stingy with cash, which is ultimately, like, never a bad thing. And I think the way that we launched the business, a lot of brands prob would have pumped like 50k into it, but all we did was reach out to 50 influencers. We handmade some really beautifully curated gift boxes with our spicy margarita in it, some spherical ice cube molds, some pampas, bunches like all like, it was just too beautiful not to Instagram essentially hand delivered them all on launch day before we had even like, got the website up and running. It's quite a funny story. And then we got the kind of likes of Connor Maynard and Maya Jammer and like Grace Beverly, all of those people posting and the Shopify. When someone's purchased off of Shopify, you've probably heard it, it's like literal, like crack cha ching. And that just kept on coming through. And it was honestly like Christmas Day.

Yeah. But we. So we. We hand delivered them in the car. We'd kind of split it between us. My brother was also on the case. And we kind of delivered them all on the same day. And we were like, right, we'll deliver them all. And then I guess people might post, might not post. We had no idea. And we were so hungry because we'd been making these boxes for like 48 hours. And so we decided to stop in the McDonald's queue and get some breakfast. And we Were literally like in the queue, in the drive thru queue. And all of a sudden I think it was Sarah Ashcroft posted and she's. She's a really big influencer.

And how did you get the address? Do you know these people?

We just reached out to them over email and Instagram. Like a really quirky bespoke message. And they were like, oh, my God. We love. Actually, you know what we did in the subject line? We put, if you like picantes, you'll love this. We just kind of capitalized off of Soho House marketing. Free spend for us.

Yeah. And I think also the nature of our product, like a tequila cocktail is quite kind of cool. It looked good. The branding was like, everyone liked the branding. We sent them on a picture of the product and they were interested in trying it. But yeah, we were literally in the McDonald's queue when everyone started posting it. And we hadn't actually launched the website yet. So we were suddenly like, shit, we need to go home. We were like, we don't know how.

To put it to live because we had just had it on the.

Like, I just think we had no expectation. And we just hadn't finished. I don't know why. We didn't even finish the website. But we did it.

I think we had it on the wrong setting where you could only put through, like, fake orders or something to like trial it. And we just couldn't for the life of us figure out where the like, go live button was. And people were like, posting it. We were like, oh, hell yeah.

We went into severe panic. And then. Oh. And then I think we. Yeah, we launched it. And then there was like so many things wrong with the website for the first hour. We literally spent just trying to fix. Fix it. So all the orders were coming through. Okay. And then suddenly we just both sat down and we were like, oh, my God, there's just so many chittings.

Yeah. It was really like. Because we had no idea what to expect. Would it be 20 ended up being like 500 orders in the first, like, month. Yeah. Which was just so good, like beyond anything we could have expected.

Go back before that then. So two years in your jobs, whatever.

Yeah.

Was there a specific point where you said, all right, fuck it, we're actually gonna do this now you mentioned you.

Sat on your balcony drinking, so that was during.

Because I feel like so many people, we. 99% of people have ideas and just never do anything with it.

Yeah. And I think this is what the interesting thing was. I can remember when me and Palm were On the phone in the evening.

Was that your surname?

Oh, yeah.

The whole time.

My surname's Palm and everyone calls me Palm. I actually don't know where that even came from, but one day someone didn't and stuff.

Yeah, I always do that. I should offer context, but it was really interesting because you're spot on and thinking, like, people have ideas and they don't execute. I think the timing worked well because we were in lockdown and it's not like we had social things to distract us in the evening. I think we just, we needed something to kind of like reignite that fire. Like, life was so repetitive. Like, I feel like I've almost like blocked out those three months of just staying at home.

It was a strange time in hindsight.

But what was so refreshing was the kind of juxtaposition of having, like your corporate job that was becoming more and more like, mundane versus, like, literally understanding the infrastructure of how to build your business from, like, trademarking, like registering your business, like wearing your sales cap, your accounting cap, your marketing cap, understanding VAT duty value. Like all of these things that no one would ever, ever, ever, ever teach you, whether it be at school or university. Like, it was interesting having them side by side. And I think the more and more we kind of realized that it was a very feasible thing that we can do in terms of getting the bottles, like finding someone to produce the liquid for us, understanding that we actually had the funds between ourselves to order in the tequila at a very decent price and actually get an MVP of this product out there. The more and more real it became, the more, I think, urgency that we were kind of met with. And then I think off the back of launch and seeing the kind of success that came from there, the six months of juggling the two and actually being like, okay, right, we need to make Pimente a real business so we can use that as our kind of full time livelihood and not have to juggle the two anymore.

Yeah. And also when people started to actually like the product, that was the other thing. We, we loved it, but until people started drinking it. And then the feedback we were getting off the liquid was incredible. Not only from kind of friends, influencers, but also industry people. And I think that was kind of the big game changer where people were like, this is really good and you're kind of onto something here. And so then we were like, maybe we are.

And it's just kind of like it was a proof of concept thing. Right? Like, people can have an idea and you can execute it. And you can say like, okay, here's. I think our first round was 1,400 bottles. But off the back of actually starting to pick up some momentum and doing these trade shows and events and seeing mass audiences being like, this is amazing. And the experience that you're creating at these trade shows and these events is really, really cool. That's kind of when we got the confidence to be like, right, we need to be a little bit more ballsy. And that's when we started being a little bit chaotic.

Yeah. A bit too ballsy.

Yeah. It was actually, I think the one deciding factor that led us to quit our full time jobs was an event called the Big feastival. And essentially there was a tequila brand that was a big feast of all one year. And I think they turned over 70k at the event. And the pitch fee to attend the event, just to attend the event was 25K. So we kind of sat down and we did the commercials. How much would we have to sell to kind of break even versus the pitch fee? And we were like, if we can make this work, we're gonna have kind of enough revenue to kind of give us six months more Runway. So this was a full time, a full time job in itself. Pretty much having to create a 360 bar, 10 by 10 meters. That's even bigger.

It was 13 by 13.

13 by 13 meters. We needed like six staff. We had a whole like Qatar teepee tent that we needed to fill. We had never run a bar before, but we knew that if we did this right, we could make so much cash.

But also at this point, our liquid was just in 50cl bottles. So that was also the other challenge. We were kind of like, how do we.

Is that the one we just had?

Yeah, that's obviously our standard bottle. But we kind of had the challenge of, okay, there's how. What was the footfall? 60,000.

Yeah, I think it was like something like that. Like three days or something.

Yeah. And it was kind of like, right, how do we actually turn over the drinks so quickly that we're not pouring out bottles and then wasting the glass? So we did some research and we figured out we could basically put it into kegs. And you can just put ready made cocktails into kegs, which was a whole new concept to us.

Like a kind of like beer tap, essentially. Just literally whacking a 30 liter keg. 300 serves in one.

Yeah. We explored it with our production lab. We were like, how do we do this? They were like, it's actually quite Simple. It's the same process, but you just put it into kegs instead of bottles. We looked into how we then connect those kegs to a tap and there were these things called Linda machines which are like self cooling machines. You just kind of pull them out, plug them in. So we bought two of those and that was it really. We just.

I know, Wait, wait. The best part is at the time we made the decision to attend the big feastival, I think we had 12 grand in our bank account and the pitch fee was 25k. So we put the 12 grand in our bank account forward for the event and then we paid the other half on our Amex, which is obviously fantastic.

You know what, we actually got a business Amex to pay the rest on the Amex, but because we hadn't had it long enough, we didn't even have the limit, but the limit was too small. So we were day by day trying to increase the limit by spending everything that we could spend everything we could on the Amex. But then by the time it came to pay the actual fee, we still didn't have a high enough limit. So I had to put up my personal Amex to pay the rest of the pitch fee for us to be there. And that was how we kind of like crossed the line by putting all the money down. And then we were kind of locked in. We were like, okay, we're ready to go. We're going to do this. It's going to work. We've mapped out and we kind of figured out obviously. Winter said we worked out the commercials, we knew how much we had to sell. And we were like, this is very feasible. All of our friends said they would come and help. So we were like, right, no staffing costs. One of our friends stepbrother's an amazing DJ and he's now kind of been on this journey with us as well. So he said he would DJ for us. We were kind of like, okay, we've got this set up to a tea. The last piece of the puzzle was getting the stock ready. So we had to get kind of was it 30, 30 liter kegs made up for that event in terms of what we'd forecasted.

Transport them all down there ourselves to the rest of the build that we were setting up ourselves. No, like build or break teams with these like big men to help you put things up. Just me and little old Alice and our best.

Everything was planned and we were like, okay, we're actually nearly there. Like, I think this is going to be okay. And decided it was all quite stressful and we hadn't really had a break since we started the launch and since we quit our jobs. And so we decided one weekend we were going to go to Spain for like a little weekend away. And while we were in Spain, we had. It was the following week we had our production day that we had to go to Glasgow for. And we got this call when we were in Spain and it was from the guys who we buy our tequila from. And they basically said that, no, I think we'd actually checked with them. We were like, just checking everything's okay for the delivery going to Glasgow. Is it all going to be there because they need it by this day. And they literally replied and said, we don't have your tequila.

700 bottles of it.

And so we were like, what do you mean you don't have our tequila? And they said, well, there's a tequila shortage at the moment. And it was because a lot of celebrities had been ringing out tequila brands. There was kind of this demand gap, so they just couldn't get enough tequila over into the country. And they'd given away all of our tequila for the production round that week to a basically a bigger supplier. And obviously we were just a little kind of fish in the pond, so we were just not important to them and they just gave it away and that was that. And they just said, yeah, sorry, there's nothing we can do. And so then we went into sheer panic mode because we'd obviously just risked all of our money to do this event that we now didn't have any stock for. And so we were like, what are we actually gonna do? We were in Spain, so we couldn't even like try and sort it out or go to anyone. Also, Covid was like, still kind of playing a game in terms of people weren't really back in work full time.

And hazard a guess at what we. How we overcame this horrible, horrible mess.

You went. You made it yourself or some shit.

Yeah, we flew to Mexico.

We had to do the supermarket sweep. But whilst we were juggling our full time job. So, like, in between all of our calls, I can remember it vividly. I was like, l having to lie to my manager. No, we literally had to go to all of the local Waitrose, Tesco's, Sainsbury's to find the specific tequila brand that we used, which obviously tanked our margins because we were buying it on shelf price rather than wholesale price. And we were literally driving far and wide. We needed hundreds of bottles.

Yeah, honestly, I'm pretty Sure. I went to most of the UK Waitrose supermarkets.

And then the same thing happened with the agave.

Yeah, if you need it, there is.

A global shortage of it.

But we were phoning up every single Waitrose. We were like, how many bottles of this do you had? They were like, hey, six. We were like, hey, reserve them. We're gonna come and get them. And then I'd drive and I'd go get them. Winter was like calling. I was in the car. We were both. I was. I think I was calling in sick at work because I couldn't go in.

I mean, we were sick.

And we were trying to find this tequila. Anyway, we. And also at the same time, we were calling up every kind of account or distributor we could, who were supplying wholesalers and anyone, bars, everything that you could think of, we called and nobody had it. And also that was the problem was that so many brands kind of couldn't fulfill their stock that they were then going to the brand that we were using. So even though there was kind of stock in the country, it was already allocated to these kind of larger bar accounts and chains. And. Yeah, and so we literally went to every single Waitrose and Sainsbury's and Amazon, got as much as we could, we filled the car and then we managed to get kind of one large side order from an account for another brand. But obviously we'd never made our drink with that other brand before, so that was like a complete risk as well. And then I literally packed the car up and drove it overnight to Glasgow to meet our production deadline. And that's how we met.

And what happened to the stock you'd actually paid for?

We had it. So the way it worked was.

I can tell it put that into bottles or what?

What do you mean?

Like instead of kegs for the event, did you just use that later or we.

So that was for the stock for the event?

Yes.

So did you just get that later? Then they refunded?

No, no, no, no. They just. They gave it away to someone else.

We never paid for that stock because it hadn't actually been dispatched to us. So it was like they've kind of given it to another account.

What the fuck is this? Space Goods, spacegoods.com, rainbow Dust, version one. My newest entrepreneurial econ brand venture. I spent six months in the trenches building this shit from scratch. We launched six weeks ago. What's it all about? The next generation wellness brand with a long term vision to essentially consumerize the pending psychedelic consumer goods market, which might sound absolutely Ridiculous. We're not quite there yet. The market's massively illegal. But what is this? Rainbow dust version 1 is an all in one mushroom and adaptogenic blend designed to unlock your supernatural self. Essentially experience a sharper focus, sustained energy, zen like calm throughout the day. And it's an all in one powder. Tastes like fucking hot chocolate. Tastes delicious, works great, looks great, feels amazing. Essentially the broader concept here was to legally imitate a psychedelic microdose and like I said, experience those symptoms. You can mix it with anything. Brownies, bake brownies with it, mix it with your coffee, have it without coffee, replace your coffee, put it into a protein shake. It's super fucking versatile. It tastes great. It replaces the stack of supplements I was previously taking. But you need to try this shit. It would definitely change the way you work, get you into that deep work flow. I obviously think that myself. Plenty of a thousand plus first customers think the exact same shit. It's not just a pretty packaging, it actually works really well. Keto, vegan, all that good shit. Trust me, you need to try it for yourself. Let's scale this shit to the moon. Spacegoods.com get on your rainbow subscription and see how you feel. Let's do it for the boys. Spacegoods.com. Right, we're back after our little usual drinks break. That was 35 minute delivery, which is quite impressive. On what is it? Quiver? Under an hour, which is Bodo's competitor, which I'm using so that if they listen to this. Apologies. We've actually got two more of the drink because we damned the whole thing prior to starting to film. So I'll do a little zoom in. 500ml doesn't go very far.

Well, it's meant to be a short drink, so I'm 100.

I'm good at drinking things.

Yeah, we have like pints in here.

But yeah, that's like a big, big wine glass.

Say one bottle would serve five.

A sipping drink.

Right.

Which is plenty.

And how many bottles would you get through with? 5? I mean, I guess it depends how much you're drinking, right?

Depends how much you're drinking. We can get through a lot.

So is that what a cocktail that you buy in terms of like blended percentage is meant to be?

Typically in a bar it would also be 15%. So we like to pride ourselves on having bar quality liquid. So the difference is indistinguishable between what you would get at a bar and in the bottle.

Yeah, they're classed as high ABV cocktails. So that's kind of where the market's moving into more kind of premium.

So it's slightly stronger than wine.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Because I'd actually never consciously seen like pre bottled cocktails. Is that a new concept? Broadly.

So a lot of ready to drink. So RTDs have typically been in cans, but any, like premixed cocktails, they have a really bad reputation just because people think they're quite synthetic, high in sugars and sweeteners. And typically the branding on them's not very premium either. So if you have seen them, you've probably thought these look like hell and.

They'Re probably really unhealthy that I just told you about. Which.

Yeah, interesting.

They're similar.

I'm not sure they're. I'm not sure they're across retail, but they've got.

I saw them because they're on LinkedIn having done winter Wonderland or something.

Oh, yeah. They do lots of events. They've done a few of the same events we've been at.

Yeah. It feels like they're more of an events focused proposition. And I guess events are great for being like a vehicle to drive brand awareness and obviously great revenue drivers. But for us, ultimately, like, we're a retail proposition or on trade as well, which is kind of like bars and restaurants.

Yeah. So go back to. I feel like we skipped loads because you're very good at telling stories.

Word vomiting on you then. So. Sorry.

Well, no, it's. You mentioned six months of like doing both jobs. I assume that was the period when you were obviously developing from idea to actually have a product.

Basically, yes.

So what was that process? Did you know anything about how far to make a drink?

We. Yeah, we always start with Googling anything. But I think we knew how to make a good cocktail in our kitchen from fresh ingredients and we knew what tastes good. So that was ultimately where it started.

With the focus groups.

Yeah, we literally made them in our kitchen from fresh ingredients from the local supermarket. And then we used to bring our friends over and get them to try alterations with different kind of tequila levels, types of tequilas. So there's obviously like Blanco, Rosado and Nejo and they're all kind of like different aged tequilas, so different types of those, different spice levels. Agave is kind of the element you use to sweeten slightly. So there's no sugar, but agave is like a natural sweetener. But that. Yeah, different levels of that. Try and get the balance correctly. And then we did kind of three rounds of focus groups, I think, until we got to a kind of final iteration. And then we. Oh, Tokyo.

Spicy mug.

I don't know who. He's not gonna like it. He's a posh dog. He likes spicy mugs.

I think we've realized. Sorry, I just want to get back into the story.

So we took. We had our final iteration of our first drink and then we kind of were doing some research on how we created a commercial iteration of that and a shelf stable product. Because obviously using fresh ingredients, your shelf life is only going to be probably a month or so after it's opened.

And retailers won't look at you. If you've got anything, retailers, probably 12 months.

Because obviously, like it takes a while to kind of get on the shelf and then once you're on the shelf, they need to sell through. So any stockhold needs to kind of be within that six months shelf life at least. So, yeah, we took it to a liquid lab in Bright near Brighton and they kind of helped us to commercialize the recipe so achieve the exact taste we had in our kind of fresh cocktail with extracts and with kind of different, different versions of different flavorings. But that still tasted as good. So that, that took a while because obviously we think taste was such an important element to get right. So we had to make sure that it was. Yeah, I think like, you know, branding, branding is one thing, but it has to taste good at the end of the day. And I think that's the one piece of feedback. We've always been so kind of over the moon with that. Everyone loves it so much. Also, people that don't think they're gonna like it do like people say they hate tequila and they hate spice and then they try this and they love it. So yeah, we took it to a. Took it to the recipe lab. They helped us to commercialize it and then that was it. We kind of managed to find a production lab that would do. It's hard. They all have minimum quantities, so you can't just produce like 200 bottles.

It sounds like a very similar process for me making this machine.

Yeah, you have to shop around, find someone who's going to kind of fit your price point, who can do a smaller run, which is really hard. We also had a slightly, I guess, unique bottle shape. So we didn't have a round bottle and. And that meant that we had to kind of hand label all the bottles or we actually went and bought. Yeah, sorry, we went. We found. We found a really lovely, gorgeous couple who had a chili. Chili jam brand. Yes. They were moving to Spain and they had this label Machine. And we found them on a Facebook group like it was called the Food Hub Community. And it was basically just a group of people that have their own businesses or people in the same industry. And we kind of, yeah, just wrote on there being like, does anyone have a label machine? And this couple said that they did that would label those bottles. So we drove to go.

So you couldn't, you couldn't get the supplier to do all that?

Well, you can, but we weren't doing a big enough run.

Right.

Yeah.

That shaped bottle doesn't fit in their automated line. So every single time you put new bottle, you need to adjust the mechanics of how it will, like label it. And because this is flat facing and square rather than round, there are like all of these nuances. And we did get told they said, you will struggle with that bottle. But we were like, you know what? We are a new brand like it is.

And why did you do that bottle?

Because there was no other shape like it on the market. And we thought it was like a really great differentiating factor. And to be honest, we were like, if we do need to change the shape of the bottle further down the line, fine. But what's most important is we launch with a standout bottle that really kind of like aligns to the premium nature of the brand. Because I think launching a ready to drink brand pre mixed cocktail, we only had one opportunity to get it right. And there really, really aren't that many retail ready pre mixed cocktails. So we needed it to be able to sit next to a gin or a tequila or a bottle of wine and not look out of place.

Getting psychedelic vibes from there. From the lady.

Yeah, well, that was the other thing we had. We'd kind of decided on the branding before we actually found the bottle. And I think that was such a big part of the image of the product that we needed it to sit right. And I think because of the nature of it being kind of portrait.

Did you do the branding or did you.

So we worked with an artist who. So all of our. All of our bottles have hand painted pieces on the front and the back. So they're different and they're collage style. So they kind of tell the story of the brand. And lots of the elements will either be related to kind of the roots, the culture, the ingredients, parts of like our story in there so we can kind of depict little bits and tell. It's a really nice talking point as well.

Which part is your story then?

So you can probably see Frieda in there. So that's the female empowerment angle. Then you've got the jimadors in the background. So that's how you hand harvest the agave. If you kind of look a little bit deeper, you'll see the limes and the agave plants. And we kind of like to say the more you look, the more will be revealed, because every single element in there has been chosen for a specific reason that either relates to the story or the ingredients or in the future.

Of Mexico when we traveled. Like, certain elements are kind of, like, from our travels there as well, so it's really cool. And then the other one has a completely different look and feel. So it's very kind of mystic and ethereal.

So what flavor? We should have brought it, but whatever.

Sorry.

That is my soul.

So this is like the.

I did my part, and I bought this.

Is that one spicy as well?

No, this one is the flagship, so that's spicy margarita. The second is called the cucumber and elderflower eclipse. So the reason why we launched this one is because it's got flavor notes that are typically more accessible to the mass palette. So it's tequila, cucumber, elderflower, and mint. So those are kind of flavor notes that you would typically associate with a gin. And people hear those flavors, and they're like, mmm, that's so nice. And you wouldn't expect it to be paired with the tequila, but the way it's balanced, it is so refreshing. Like, you cannot taste the tequila in it. It almost tastes like a health drink. But it is 15%, so it's super dangerous. But we like to say the eclipse is to kind of, like, start the day. It's a really nice one. If you're a little bit hungover and you need something refreshing, this is a really good parity.

Yeah, it's summer. Barbecue is perfect.

Yeah, it literally tastes like summer.

It's just, like, locale, relatively.

Yeah, pretty local.

Like 8, 80 cals per serving.

Yeah, it's not bad. I'll definitely drink it for a bottle.

We also brought out magnums in the summer just because they're a really nice talking point when people want. So it's 1.5 liters rather than 50cl, so it's a lot better for sharing. So that's something that we'll probably bring out in summer again. And we've also got a cool idea for.

I think we've got a cooler idea.

We've got a cool idea.

We won't reveal it here, but they sold really quickly. People love it because it's just Just a really nice sharing drink and it's something different and I think it's quite. It's cool. It's cool. Yeah.

I just thought of something which is like definitely not where we were going. So let's ask you. But I see loads of like non alcoholic drinks coming out and like feels like this depending on what you read. It's like a movement and people aren't drinking as much. Blah blah, blah. Like what do you think of that and do you think that's just obviously that part of the market and because I guess the fact that you said this is less hangover appeals to me straight away because it's kind of. I still like to drink.

Yeah.

But I think people just don't want to feel shit the next day.

I mean you go depends on what you drink, right?

It does.

I think there is a kind of huge movement towards the drinking and moderation piece at the moment. So you're seeing a lot of low ABV products coming out. So they're not totally like alcohol free but they're kind of playing in that like 8 to 12%. And people make a really interesting point that alcohol is the only drug that you have to justify not drinking. And I think it's that kind of people do it because of the anxiety that comes off the back of it, the fear of not remembering what you've done, like all of those. So I think it's a combination of the health benefits but also a lot of people I think as you get older and you're kind of like inability to handle a hangover in the same way because you're not indestructible, how that kind of sits with you. A lot of people either like to remove alcohol from their lives or they want an option that means they can still get a really light buzz without the effects of kind of memory loss and. Exactly. So it's interesting because we're on the 15% mark. Like you said, we're similar to a wine but we definitely don't fall into the low ABV spins.

We actually did at one point trial a non alcoholic cocktail.

Don't see a point.

Well, we did it because we. No, I think it, I think it is. There is definitely a market for it.

100% like Clean Co and.

Yeah. But there's also the reason we did it was because we were doing these events and we wanted an option for the non drinkers and obviously we had soft drinks available. But sometimes it's nice to have a cocktail that they can drink as well as kind of what's our offering on the menu. But we kind of. Yeah, we did a few rotations, and they were really nice to be fair, but we were just kind of. That's not what we're about. And our kind of purpose and mission as a company is to liberate the way that people enjoy tequila. And that didn't fit into that narrative. So it's not something we may never do. It's just now that wasn't the right time. And, yeah, we kind of had more products in the pipeline that we needed to put focus into.

Yeah. And just because there's a market for it doesn't mean that you need to step into it, like, put all of your energy into what, you know, works and what's good at. I mean, at the end of the day, if everyone was there, like, I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do this and this and make all of these different, like, recipe iterations or try and serve things in, like, multiple different SKU formats and things like that. Like, you wouldn't have a streamlined proposition at the end of the day.

And there's people that do it really well.

So it's kind of like Three Spirits and Pantier and Everleaf, all of those guys. It's like, that's what you're famous for. This is what we will one day be famous for. Let's not over complicate it.

Let's stick to. Yeah, we're always bad at doing.

Not saying everything.

People like to do it and everything.

Yeah, okay, Paloma, fine. We'll whack one in there. She was like, no, stop.

Yeah.

And then once you had the product and you launched.

Yes.

You see what was, like, you full time from that point onwards?

No, we were still juggling.

Still overlap.

Yeah, still juggling. Sky and ASOS for six months.

And after you launched.

After we launched. So, yeah, we launched in March, and then I think I quit a month before you. We ultimately needed to quit a month before the big feast of all event that we had poured all of our entire bank account into, so we could actually plan that and make it work. But it was a really interesting transition. Right. Because I don't know about, like, your parents, but my parents were very much kind of brought up thinking that corporate hierarchy, that's the kind of way to, like, my dad's businessman. That's how he made his money. So me trying to say, hey, mom and dad, I am quitting my job to sell tequila was not the easiest sell. After we launched and we had some kind of, like, commercial trading like, figures behind us. It was a little bit like, okay, here's like a snapshot of what we've done on this much budget. Like, imagine what we could do if we had like XYZ and almost having to build this story around, like this entrepreneurial path and like the side of fulfillment. And it was really difficult to get them to understand that, but, like a huge part of it. Even though I think we were. I was 20, 25 at the time, like, trying to explain that to your parents, where, like, even though I am an adult and I am like, I make my own decisions, I was still, like, I needed to have their approval. Almost like before it was like, okay, I quit. So it was like a long process of like warming them up from when we were going through concept to ideation, like Palm said. And when we launched, that was like a good turning point. And then the big feastival, which was the event we put all of our money into, like, that was literally like showtime. It was like magnifying glass on it big time. Like, what was it?

It was also just make or. We had a strategic advisor. He's actually been with us the whole journey. He's kind of the only person probably from the industry that's guided us from literally before we even Pimente. And I remember we'd already put the pitch fee down and we said to him, should we do this or not? And he was like, no, girls, don't do it. Don't run before you can walk. And we were just like, right, we're going.

We were running before we even asked.

But it paid off and it worked. And I think I had another point on your question. What was your question?

We just digressed every time.

We always digress.

When did we quit? That six month period of working. And then I started talking about my parents therapy session.

Always ended up then.

And how did that make you feel? Well, now that you asked.

No, I think it was just a bit of a. It was now or never. If we don't do it now, somebody else is gonna do it. Our product, we know our product works. We're kind of slowly proving that. But it was also the case of, okay, right, the product's good. We had it on our website. We didn't have it anywhere else. We'd done this event. We needed to start getting listings. And the only way that you can obviously get listings. Well, I think also there's a bit of naivety that came with our first few months in that. That area. We had too much faith in that. People and distributors and, yeah, they would help us. Basically, everyone kind of said, you need to get into a distributor or wholesaler, and then you kind of. They'll distribute your products for you. But that's not the case. You have to kind of get that. It's all. It's almost like chicken and egg, you know, you need like 10. 10 accounts that will say. They will list you. And then you kind of go to that, the distributor or the wholesaler and say, right, I've got these accounts that are interested. Will you list us? And even then, it's not a guaranteed entry. But getting those leads is literally you walking into every shop, like bar, restaurant, anyone that will kind of listen to you.

A lot of feet on the street work.

A lot of feet on the street. Actually, we. Our first day of Feet on the street, do you remember, wasn't quite literally walking space. Yeah, yeah. You just have to walk in. You walk into anywhere. So we'd actually never done. And I guess that's the other thing. We'd never had background in sales or anything like that. Like, my background was a marketing hustle. In commercial, when you start your own business, you suddenly have to wear every cup under the sun. We'd never been in sales roles before, so we actually didn't even really know how to even do that, apart from, obviously, you believe in your product and you can go and talk to someone about it. So we decided our first ever day of feet on the street sales, we were going to do it together. We attacked Fulham because there were a lot of independent food and wine shops, like more premium supermarkets, that kind of thing. So we went into this bottle shop and it was the first one we'd ever walked into. I'm embarrassed.

I feel embarrassed.

Definitely gonna laugh telling this story because it was so funny. We walked in and there's this guy sat there and we said to him, are you the kind of store owner who's the decision maker? We're interested in potentially listing a product here. He's like, yeah, yeah, that's me. I own the store. And so we did the usual spiel. Told him about the brand, about the product, about us, why we started everything. And he obviously then naturally asked if we had samples. And so we did. We had them in the bag. And Winter pulls out the bottle and puts it on the table. And I clocked immediately and she hadn't. That there was a used earplug. A used earplug attached to the bottom of the nozzle.

It was covered in makeup as well, because it had been in the bottom of my bag and it was really gross. And I literally just.

Why is there earplugs?

Well, she obviously, it was her bag, that she'd been like, her handbag. You know, there's all those random things in the bag. And she. I don't know. She'd been wearing earplugs when she was sleeping. So they were in the bag and the shop owner had clocked it. I had clocked it. I went into panic mode thinking, oh, my gosh, there isn't a used earplug attached to the bottle. It kind of fell on his desk. Winter, in the background, is still talking and chatting away about tequila at the time, at this point, not listening. I could tell he wasn't listening because he was too concerned with this earplug that just fallen onto his lap. And he kind of, like, flicked it back at Winter. I was so embarrassed. I was just like, why are you flicking my back? No. And Winter hadn't clocked, so she didn't realize what it was. She literally looked at him and just went, ew. And just flicked it back. And then I was like, no. That's what come from your back.

Yeah, of course I didn't think it was mine. I was like.

And then I was like, no. When I was like, I think that's yours. He was like, yeah, I think that that's yours. And then she's like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry. And then we got listed and it's.

Selling really well and it's all fun.

Yeah. We actually surprisingly got the listing.

That is a niche story.

It was so funny.

And I remember on the day, though, you sorted it or what.

So afterwards, because he kind of liked. He then tried the product and then he kind of listed it after that. But honestly, you couldn't write it. It was like the first ever shop we'd walked into to sell our product. And that happened.

That's funny.

But, yeah, but we. But since then, it's gone uphill. We're in Selfridges now. That was a big, big, big milestone because that was 18 months into launching the brand that we got listed at Selfridges, which was a big achievement. Like, lots of brands really struggled to get in there. And it's hard. I think we were. Yeah, we. I mean, you were hounding him.

I am a serial professional harasser.

Serial harasser.

Hunt these people down, look at their name badges when we're at all of these trade shows and I'm like, you. Yeah, that's who I need.

I think we were lucky because also Some of the events, events we'd done, you need to come to one. But they are. If I don't blow our jumper. But they are amazing and we just create this energy that nobody else manages to create. And all the bigger brands, we don't really spend much money on our activations. The pitch fees are high enough so we just do it really simply and just kind of make it look cool, make it look tropical, have a really kind of rustic setup, get the DJ there, get like a live sax and the drink, drinks sell themselves. So yeah, we have been lucky that lots of the buyers for these places have kind of met us there and we're obviously always at the bar. So we're kind of there chatting away the face of the brand.

We strategically invite them and say come.

On down, we'll be here on this.

Day with a drinks brand. Like I know nothing about this market. For me it's always been Instagram, like very dtc. I spend lots of money on that, which is that works. But it's kind of boring because it's all online.

Yeah.

What was your plan like when you had the product? What is a typical marketing plan for a drinks brand? I mean, is there one like a sales plan? I mean what's the route?

I think we were a little bit naive when we first launched because all we had thought about was D2C. We were riding on all of our website sales. As the proposition evolved, we realized, okay, we need to get brand awareness and this can't simply be done by Instagram. So we started going to trade shows which are essentially places like Hampton Court, the BBC Good Food show and they're essentially the. Yeah, so they're like all of these like really beautiful, like a well known places and you literally will have people who like small brands, large brands who are activating and it's a really, really good way to kind of get like 5 to like 10,000 people who are walking around with the purpose to kind of like buy gifts for gifting occasions and things like that to get eyeballs on your brand. And then off the back of that you can start to kind of upgrade to larger events. I'm not sure if you've heard of like Taste London, one of like the largest food events in like London. Amazing parks in Regent's Park. You've got all of the biggest food brands, all of the biggest drinks brands, you've got patron there, like you name it. Like every single like large restaurant in London, they ever stand there. So that's typically what we were kind of like doing From a sales and marketing perspective.

And you sell in there or you.

Selling there and then you're also running bars there. So you can either sell the 50cl bottles which are obviously great to convert customers into kind of loyal customers because this is the product, or we're running bars there, which is like we mentioned, we've got the kegs and we serve the product on draft. We create that cool experience. So that's where we were like naive. So the first like six months of us trading was very events focused, very trade show focused and purely D2C. But you can't build a commercial plan off the back of events. That's not monthly recurring revenue for us. Like events are very seasonal, don't get me wrong, you can have them at Christmas and in January. But ultimately we are not an events company. We use events as a vehicle to drive mass awareness. Great for revenue. But ultimately we are a retail and on trade brand. So we need to get these bottles on the shelves of Waitrose, Ocado, all of the cucumber speedy delivery apps behind the bars of kind of high footfall places. So that's something that we started to realize, I would say six, seven months after the summer period of launching the brand. So that's where a distributor comes in. So the distributor essentially will proactively push your product into all of these places. But ultimately they're only going to push products who have got really high margin and really high awareness. So you have to be super careful about which distributors you choose to work with and their relationships in the market and things like that. But essentially they will facilitate you selling your stock. So they've got holdings at London City Bond. So if you work with alcohol you need to have a shed ton of licenses. So me and Alice had to do loads of exams. You need a personal license, an alcohol wholesaler license. There are all of these duty suspended sites that you need to store your products at so people can like sell them legally. Premise license, all that sexy boring stuff. So that is like our huge focus for this year. Last year was hugely events focused because we were still doing a lot of brand building and we made great revenue off the back of it. But this year it's monthly recurring revenue in retail and on trade.

And we're still doing the events because getting these listings we then need to achieve rate of sales. So we still need people to understand what the product is. And I think we were talking earlier about ad spend, but we can pump all this spend in the world into ads. But actually selling a product that people think they don't like is really hard. You're selling a tequila based product, people think they hate tequila and unless they can actually try it, it's really hard to kind of get that conversion. So I think that's how we struggle. So that is another kind of.

Have you done any of that, like Instagram TikTok ads?

Yeah, we've, we've done. So TikTok's been difficult because of we're an alcohol brand and that their kind of rules and laws are, are still kind of developing as we speak. But you've never been able to like fully promote alcohol on TikTok. At first you couldn't even post about alcohol, but now it's kind of a bit more relaxed. Facebook and Instagram, we do paid ads which do we get positive return on ad spend. But yeah, mainly we haven't really put too much focus into that. We're on Amazon and we do PPC spend on Amazon. We have a really good rate of sale there actually. But yeah, events is kind of was the focus at the time, I think just because of the nature of proving out what we'd done was good. And also we had that product for the first year and then we launched our second product literally like a year after we first launched. Yeah. So we launched that in March. Yeah. 2022 and we only had two products. So that again, that was kind of. And that one was less known. It's not. It's a very unique new flavor to the market. So whereas this one we can be. We can say spicy margarita and people know what it is. The other one's completely new so people have no idea what it is but when they taste it, they're kind of drawn to the flavors.

Yeah, no, it's nice. This is going down.

You just finished your second glass. How you feeling?

That's all right. I'm looking forward to my non hangover tomorrow when I get through four of these in the next. So you said you're raising money recently or you have raised money recently?

We just closed our pre seed round. Yeah, we were bootstrapped for 18 months which was pretty, pretty good going for just the two of us. But yeah, we've just closed our pre seed round at just over half a mil.

So where'd you spend that as a drinks fan?

Wow. This is what we've actually been planning with a consultant. Just because we've got a lot of money. Like we said earlier, we want to spend as though we're kind of operating on low budgets because we've proven out what we do in terms of activating and what we kind of pump into the event space and like our image as a brand doesn't need to be in excess. So our huge, huge, huge focus is. Is growth through retail and the on trade. So it's gonna be on production, making sure that we've kind of got to work backwards in terms of what kind of total sales rev is for the year, understand what production's gonna be. We've got a lot more cash to play with in terms of digital ad spend. We've always been very conservative. So I think we've got a little bit more leeway for test and learn in that space. And ultimately we've got the opportunity to say yes to a lot more things that come cashflow wouldn't have allowed us to do. So we can activate in some of our new retailer stores, which is going to be super exciting. We're growing through distribution as well, which means that we've got other people that we can kind of employ to get feet on the street and start pushing out our brand. Because previously it was just me and Alice. We're hiring for namrell, which is the national account manager and a marketing exec as well. And it also just gives us more cash to kind of get expert advice.

Also, we didn't have a salary for the first kind of year of training.

Yes, of course we'll be paying ourselves.

So we'll be paying ourselves. And it was never because we couldn't, because I think we actually probably were able to. But it just at this time didn't make sense. We were kind of always conscious about reinvesting all of our money into the brand and kind of getting it to where it needed to be so that it was ready for investment and so that we kind of got the right people on board and. And we went through angels and kind of got some. Two of them actually. We met at some of our events. But yeah, it's people who are kind of super interested in the brand. And it's very weird. We've met people along the way who some people have told us what we're doing is not going to work and have actually kind of put us down slightly. But that just only motivates us to work harder and be better. And then we've met other people who literally off of one conversation are kind of investing invested straight away. And they have been so amazing. And some of the kind of most passionate advocates of the brand that you could have ever asked for.

I think that's like a tell with investors as well. Like the ones who ask you hundreds and hundreds of questions, like there's a 90% chance that they're not going to invest. Like if someone understands that, if someone understands, like the market, your proposition, your product, I mean, ultimately investors are buying 50% into the brand and 50% into to the people. Right. So you can tell immediately off. I think it's like, you know when you go on a date with somebody and you're like, you can tell within the first two minutes if you like them or not. Yeah. And like, I think that's one of our biggest learnings. Like if they're not the right fit, say no. They're going to be attached to your business in the same way that like your other half is going to be attached to you for the rest of your life. So anyone we brought on board, like, we had to make sure that they were adding something new. All of our investors are super, super diverse in terms of what they can bring to the table and what support they offer. But yeah, the investment journey was super, super interesting.

But that was a weird one as well. When we started that journey, we literally had to Google investment for small businesses because you just don't know where to start. And it's such a weird game. There's so many options out there. There's angels as VCs, there's funds, there's kind of accelerator programs, all of those things. And there's actually very. Even though there's so much information out there, there's very little information telling you what you actually need to know. And also just understanding that world of investment is very difficult. Do you have any kind of like.

Family members, friends or whatever that would come from that world of entrepreneur realism?

I think it's weird. There are a lot of people who can offer their opinion on what you should do. But the one thing that I always say is I'm actually really grateful that we went into it totally blind because I feel like learning these things bottom up is so important. Understanding the different equity mechan, the infrastructure of how to build a business financially and like paint a narrative around where you are currently and where you're gonna be in five years and then ultimately get financial buy in from like external people who aren't just like within your immediate family is probably the most valuable lesson that, I mean, I've personally learned on this journey. Like, I feel like if I can value my business, like do all of the cash flow projections understand, like where our commercials need to be and then ultimately sell that to another person who thinks that it's credible and I can really kind of like stick to a plan. I mean, for me, I feel like that's the most valuable takeaway that I've got from everything that we've done in the last two years. But also just because I quite like numbers.

Yeah, she likes numbers way too much. I really don't.

I'm not a numbers person at all. I just like making.

But I think that's, that's, that's really good about like, the two of us is that we're. We have a very, very aligned vision for the brand, but as people and as skill sets go, we are so different. And so she's like, amazing at things that I'm just not very comfortable with or they're completely outside of my realm, AKA I've never had a co founder.

Well, I have actually had a clothing brand when I was like 20. But.

I think we're so lucky because even having a co founder, starting your.

Own business, I like the idea of it. I just never met the person, the right person.

Yeah, I guess you. I think you have to pick them very carefully or you have to complement each other in certain ways because if, like, if we were the same person, it wouldn't work because that's just. Yeah, you just end up clashing. But I can imagine it's very lonely as a solo founder.

Who do you call up when you're like. If I'm like having my heart palpitations, as I do most mornings, I'm like, alice, talk me down. Pimento's going into the ground. Help me. Who do you call?

Well, I guess now I've just got a lot of mates and yeah, you said that you've got recently, like investors and stuff. But yeah, previously it was very lonely.

I mean, I must say networking has been the biggest, most valuable thing to kind of build that out within the industry and being part of founder groups and things like that. So we're part of a WhatsApp group that's.

I'm in so many of them in.

The kind of like 30, 40 founders for drinks industries. But I will say that it's is. It is very valuable and it's so nice that people are willing to help you because they've all been through the same journey and ultimately you're all trying to achieve the same thing. But yeah, definitely, like, that's kind of how we've got to where we are today, by people just being kind and giving us advice when we needed it.

It's all knowledge.

Yeah. Putting us in contact with the right people. And so we are very lucky to have met.

You want a topper?

I'm okay at the moment.

I'll have a little.

I just drink it too quick.

It's so good.

It's very Moorish.

I'm just tall, so you're tall.

So you drink it quickly.

You're tall.

How does that affect your. Your drinking?

I'm like a large person, so I feel like it doesn't do. I mean, it's like it doesn't. My tolerance is quite high. Oh, wow.

Oh, another one gone.

Yeah. Well, we've got one for show still.

How long will that one last?

Yeah. You said your vision is aligned. What is the vision for the brand? And has that evolved since the start, since you, like, realized it was like a real thing rather than just an idea?

Originally, I think when we first launched, it was always really interesting because the flagship product was the spicy margarita. Are we gonna kind of do classic cocktails or like, what are we gonna do? And we realized there are a lot of brands in the market who are doing classic cocktails, and that's fine. They're nailing that proposition. But we need to differentiate ourselves in some other way. That's not our label because I guess that was the kind of, like, standout piece. So for us, we wanted to have flavor LED cocktails that were kind of super bold. And I think recently we've kind of come up with the new space that we want to go into is we want to own the whole tequila ready to drink category. So we've got our spicy margarita. We've got our Eclipse, which is the one I didn't bring. I'm sorry. We're about to launch our classic margarita. We're going to do a. A tequila espresso. Then we're gonna do a Paloma probably. We're also toying with the idea of maybe separately doing a tequila soda line, because there's no one nailing it in that space. So we just want to own tequila and cans, right? Yeah. We're about to launch our cans as well. We're telling all our secrets here. Well, yeah, I mean, the cans are gonna be like, it's gonna be known to everyone in the next couple of weeks. But for us, the can proposition is really important because it opens up loads of new route to markets. It's the to go avenue. Currently, this is a glass bottle, so people need to kind of take it home. The cans will be amazing for stadiums, airlines, grab and go. So it's a whole new area to learn and experiment with. And I'M super excited to kind of understand how that operates versus the 50cl bottle. But ultimately, we do need to still be really streamlined in our vision. So to your point, Tequila ready to drinks is what we want to do. But also, I think it's really important to note that we're an experience LED brand, so we're not just another cocktail on a shelf, which is. Which is what a lot of cocktail brands do. Just kind of get them. And that's that when people drink our cocktails, we want them to associate it with travel and luxury and freedom. And ultimately we build that connection at our events. So that's why we have this really, like, rustic boho setup. As Alice mentioned, we've got the sacks, we've got the deck chairs, we've got the dj. And it's just this really amazing, intangible feeling that you can't put your finger on. But, like, that is what we want people to feel when they drink our.

Drinks, come to one of these events.

Yeah, we build such a strong community. People come to our events year on year now, and they kind of remember us or they'll talk to us on Instagram, and they just can't wait to see us again. And they literally will spend the whole weekend at these festivals at our bar because they just. They love the drinks, they love the energy, they love the people. And I think a lot of them just say how refreshing it is to have a brand that. That's kind of bringing that newness and just doing something that's a little bit different and kind of connecting with consumers in ways that other brands have not forgotten how to do, but kind of lost their way in a lot of money, I think. And so they can. For example, at Taste of London, Patron had spent, I think it was nearly like 300,000 on their activation, and we'd spent about 5 on ours. Not even. And theirs was completely. Not completely empty. But it was. It was pretty dead the whole weekend in terms of just, like, influx of people coming out, getting drinks, leaving, moving on. Whereas, like, for us, we were a bit more of a destination. So people would kind of come with their friends, with their groups and stay there. And I think that was definitely, like, something we realized that actually the experience. And also cocktails, when you go to a bar, that is kind of part of why people have a bit of a negative perception about ready to drink cocktails, because they're kind of like, oh, I'll go to a bar, I'll spend this much money, and I want to go there for the experience. But I didn't get that with it being in a bottle or being in a can. And it's kind of. Yeah, I think that's what we're kind of just trying to build that connection a little bit more with, is that you can actually have that. And I think once they start to realize the quality of the liquid is just as good, there are other ways that that experience can come. And whether that's in social occasions, at dinner parties or. Or for example, when we sell the bottles in our. Just like a small thing, but in our leaflets that come with the bottles, there'll be like a playlist that they can have with that drink and just little things that start to kind of build that up when obviously, because not everyone can be at one of those events. So it's. How do we bridge that gap and kind of change that narrative a little bit more so that people at home can experience that too.

Do you associate yourself with the brand a lot as a. As a duo? Are you the face of it? To an extent. Do you want to be or do you want to be removed?

It's a weird. Really interesting. I think so.

We've had a lot of don't.

Yeah. So I think the founder led angle for us right now is really working because we're a startup and people want to understand the hardships, the nuances, and we're not shy about speaking about those on LinkedIn. And I feel like people have more accountability towards a brand if they know the founders, if they know the people behind it. If you're the behind it. If, for example, you saw our product on the shelf versus another Premix cocktail, but you have met us or you've seen articles about us, you'll be like, oh, my God, I read that article about those two girls who did this thing and suddenly you've got this weird accountability to the brand that I guess you didn't know you had before versus a really big brand. So I think right now the founder led angle is working for us because we're still two years in and people love hearing about our story and how we did it. And it's quite kind of like, I guess, inspirational in certain ways. Like two girls who are like 25 quit their corporate jobs at XYZ.

Yeah.

As we grow and the proposition evolves and we become more of a mature brand, is that something we'll have to change?

Yeah. But for now, people also like the fact that we're two female founders. The alcohol industry is very, very male heavy in terms of founders and kind of the dominance of men in the industry. You won't actually. We really haven't come across. We obviously have come across across a few, but not the majority are men. So I think that is a big point of difference and why people kind of quite like the brand. And it's. Yeah, it's definitely. It's definitely part of our story. Some people think we should lead with it more and some people think that actually the way we're doing it is really working in terms of like the experience and almost like the kind of articultural element of the heritage and the roots of where it came from is better to lead with. So we, I think we've never. We've always been in a bit of a middle ground in that sense where we could push it way more. And when we do push it, it really works. Like the engagement we get when we have articles about the two of us is crazy.

Yeah.

And so then those days, we suddenly change everything. We're like, right, we need to be more founder led. But also it's hard.

It's hard.

Like, it's hard when you're doing. You're spending every single day. We're always so busy to then figure.

Out how you clone and be launching our new cocktail. It's like.

Yeah, I know. Also, it doesn't really come so naturally to us in terms of the whole.

You're good on the pod.

Oh, yeah. I mean, we can talk famous talk big game online.

You can't say anything. It's like one word answers makes my job very hard.

Oh, gosh. Yeah, I know.

We definitely give you more opportunity to be involved in our conversation.

Do you have anything to say? This is meant for your podcast.

I prefer when I just listen and learn and the audience do as well. Do you think being female founders is like, net helped or not helped? Because obviously a lot of people say, like, there's plenty of stories that people like Grace Beverly talk about it a lot. You know, maybe it's held them back and they've been like, judged or whatever.

And I mean, I've got a bit of both.

I've got an interesting view on this. So I think on the side of. Has it helped?

Yes.

But is it for the right reasons? I'm not sure. So obviously there's that big stat going around that 1% of VC funding goes to female founders. So obviously you're now in this situation where there's this kind of quota that needs to be filled to match up the numbers in the same way as like a lot of areas that you might imagine whether it's like kind of like underprivileged people and things like that, you're trying to like balance it. It sometimes feels like a little bit of a numbers game. So whilst I think being female founders is fantastic, is there a more controversial outlook where people are more interested in being advocates of female founders because they know that they need to kind of. Yes. So I think that's really interesting way to look at it if I was being super negative. But I mean all of our investors are men and they're huge advocates of female founders from a really genuine place. So I think that's amazing. And then in terms of it helping us on our business journey, we've only ever had one really negative encounter with male, I guess, trying to help us grow the business. Most people are very forthcoming with sharing their contact book and helping the business grow and being genuine advocates. Some people that we've encountered have been incredibly dominating transactional, demanding equity and things like that, which is obviously the most precious thing to anyone.

It's like, and I was just taken, just, just kind of taken what we've done and been like, no, that's wrong, that doesn't work, that doesn't make sense, nobody likes that. And then just tried to change the whole narrative literally overnight. And we both, we were so confused. We just thought what is he trying to do and why is he saying all of this? And then interestingly, we actually spoke to somebody who apparently didn't get the brand at all and they, they absolutely loved it and we were just like confused.

Yeah, I think that the last message we got from him was good luck closing your funding round with like your current brand.

And then he laughed at our valuation. Just, he literally just laughed in our faces and thought he went, haha, how have you got, how have you got to that? We were like, from our sales data that we can prove to you. Yeah, it's just, you know what, if anyone, if anyone ever asks us questions about anything about our business, we can back it up. We can back up with the numbers, we can back up with data. We've got the commercial kind of stats to prove it. We know the market values of all this, all the kind of industry categories that we're operating in. So ask us a question, we'll answer it. If you're, if you want to know, then we'll tell you. But yeah, it's just kind of a shoe, I think, I think that is also a pre judgment sometimes about females is that they, they can build a brand and all this stuff they don't know the numbers. And that's. That's not true. You know, like, you can't. You can't build a business in this industry if you don't know them. And if you're. If your margins aren't gonna work, then you're not gonna make it. So I just think, yeah, there's a. There is a preconception, but then. But, yeah, I don't know. I think luckily we've.

We've had an empty bottle with, like, I don't know, a receipt of the fucking funding rounds.

Literally.

She actually watches all of our Instagram stories and reads all of the LinkedIn posts and things like that. So he knows. Should I give him a little wait for the camera? Hello.

There's always going to be people that put you down, but like, I said, it just. And I think also, like, it's. When you go from being. It's. It's the same goes for personal relationships. It's kind of. You go from being in a secure job with a constant salary to then stripping back to absolutely nothing. You kind of, in a weird way, lose your freedom, your social life a bit, because you go from having a 9 to 5 to working more hours than you've ever worked before. You don't have the money to go out, you don't. Can't go on holiday because you can't afford it. Just all these things and it kind of puts you into a realm of life that you left behind a long time ago. And then suddenly you're back in it deep. And our university friends have. Honestly, I can't even tell you how amazing they've been in terms of helping out our events. And kind of when we couldn't afford to staff them, they would literally be behind the bar pouring pints. They've done everything for us to kind of just be so supportive.

You hear really sad stories sometimes of, like, if your friends are launching a business and things like that, that they suddenly kind of, like, lose interest or they stop asking, or there's kind of an element that's like, oh, like it's actually succeeded. That's, like, a bit annoying. And you kind of feel that. I don't know if you've ever had it. You've started, like, loads of businesses. I don't know if that's, like, impacted for a while.

I definitely had it when I was younger and didn't have any proof. Then when you start doing all right.

Everyone shuts up and you see that's when it is. And I think that's it's good and bad, but I feel like.

But then by that point you're over it because.

Exactly. But yeah, maybe I'm still not. But we're fortunately been in a position where our friends have been like our biggest chillies. So we're super lucky in that respect.

Yeah. It's interesting. How big do you think this can be? Like, what is your end goal with it? Or is that. Do you even have one right now?

Yeah. I mean, technically for alcohol brands you'll look to exit within five to six years. That's being very optimistic as a scale up. So that's reinvesting everything that you make into growing the business. So we don't just foresee ourselves as being a UK brand. So the US market is where it needs to be in terms of tequila. And I think the UK is always like three, four years behind and tequila outsells whiskey. It's their best selling SKU out in the us. So if we follow the trajectory. Yeah. So if the UK follows the trajectory that the US can do. Madre mia. I feel like as soon as you enter US territory, your potential exit value goes from 5 to 10x to anywhere between the north of 20. So we're just kind of mastering the UK footprint, then we're going to be more proactive in approaching European markets. If anything comes towards us, we'll obviously approach it on a reactive basis rather than proactive. And then we'll look to markets like Australia. But US would require like at least two more fundraisers before we could even facilitate distribution and production. But it's really frustrating because product market fit has already been proved out there. Like we've got a product that that market would absolutely love. But in order to master the US market, you need the spend, you need distribution. You've only got one chance to make a really fantastic impression in a market like that. And there are brands who are huge. Like, I think Dashwater tried to enter the US and did a fantastic job. So it's something that you need to kind of tread carefully with when you're looking to penetrate it. So I mean, I think. Who was it? Duppy Share? Not Duppy Share. What was the Don Papa Run. Don Papa Run.

They just sold to Diageo for 75. No, 226 million or 300 something.

Oh, God, I don't even know. But their like initial plan was to exit within like four to five years and it took them to 10 to 12. So that's the kind of like benchmark.

For like 10 years, two years, not bad. Though, is it?

Yeah, well, I imagine, I wonder what stake of the business they had at that point in time to get to.

That level of growth. You've got things like Seedlep who did like six years. Yeah. And then if you can get. Which is like conversations we've had before but if you can get endorsement from celebrities it fast tracks you and you can.

Who would be the perfect celeb?

We have spoken about.

Yeah, we've spoken about this.

Got a few. So I'm, I, I think Harry Styles.

Yeah.

Interesting because I think that he, well he's so current. He's also our age, he's from London. He, his audience is actually female based and our audience, our audience is 70, 30. But he has such an influential audience. But then, yeah, so I, I and also the global presence he has at the moment and is just growing in is insane. So he would get you global reach but he still kind of has the links back to the brand. But then we've discussed people like Dua Lipa, Hailey Bieber. I like Dua Lipa obviously reaching for the stars here. But yeah, you've got like for example Ryan Reynolds and Aviation Gin that sold for. That was like 300 mil.

Was that his brand or was he just.

No, it's endorsement.

A lot of these celebrities, for example, have you heard of, of Onda which is a tequila salsa. Shay Mitchell, she's.

Oh her.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So she, so what's really interesting is a lot of these celebrity endorsements that they come on board as a founder.

They come on.

Yeah. Because ultimately like these guys won't get involved unless they've got one, a really large equity stake and two, I think for them it's like a huge, like it's purpose driven as well.

Right.

They don't want to just be the face of a brand. Like they do want to be involved but ultimately what they can do, they can like 20x your sales or something. Ridiculous. And would you rather have, I mean the question then becomes would you rather have a large percentage of a slightly smaller business or a smaller percentage of a potentially huge business? And I think the latter comes into play when you can reach global scale and global distribution and things like that. So those are all things that we have 100% thought about and we've got a couple of connections in that space as well. It's all about ensuring that. We just need to nail our commercial plan for this year before we can start thinking about exciting things like that.

But yeah, I've spoke about this before. Like someone said to me, how would you get Emma Chamberlain, I mean, shit example because she has a coffee brand, but someone like that. It's an interesting thought.

Yeah. It's all deals though.

It's all you can get foot in the door.

Big kind of entertainment conglomerates making these deals and if you've got the right contacts and they also. We've already, we've already kind of spoken to a few people in the space just to understand a bit more about it. And a lot of these celebrities have certain areas that they would and wouldn't go near. So some are kind of. Some said, you know, like they wouldn't touch tequila because they've got a friend who's kind of already has a Tequila brand or some said they'll only do organic products. So there's. They kind of. I think a lot of these celebrities already have thought about it and they know what they want in terms of if somebody were to approach them, what route they would go down, which is quite interesting.

I guess the overarching question is why would they choose. Choose to work with your brand versus create one from scratch. So you've got to have something super special for those guys to want to buy in. And then also these guys are what, making like millions per concert? Like what's the equity incentive for these guys? So it's an interesting one. I think it'll be really interesting. I think it's like a must have in terms of entering a market. Like the US having mastered the UK market and the EU market is by no means a benchmark, but how successful you'll be in the US So. So it's interesting for sure. But to answer your question, what was the question? How big do we think this can be? Hopefully, I mean the dream is us, but a couple of years off.

Yeah, yeah. I think globally owning the Tequila R to D space would be an amazing achievement to be able to kind of nail. I mean our mission applies to everything. It's like liberating the way that people enjoy tequila. And I think there are some markets that, that are achieving that already. And there are other markets that we can really kind of, if we can nail it here, we can kind of replicate that model and do it in those markets as well.

Yeah, it's an education piece ultimately. Right. In the same way that tequilas are shot here, it's like the same in the EU and things like that. So it's just kind of like a. Yeah.

We spoke to someone today as well who is kind of talking about the Middle east and Dubai and saying how Actually like single serve RTDs are suddenly breaking in and it's, it's the right time to explore those kind of markets. But then there's so many complications that come with that because a lot of the distributors are kind of owned by the royal family there.

Will it always be Tequila centric?

Always, always. The only thing we have thought about is exploring Mezcal. So like agave based spirits.

But do you like Mezcal? Why is that? Okay, so Tequila is.

I'm not much of a cocktail guy.

Tequila is a type of Mezcal, but Mezcal is way smokier, oakier. It's very similar kind of to a whiskey. There's actually this incredible new product. They're called Magente. My God. It is just. You just literally drink it straight. You don't need to mix it with anything. It is just pure magic. And Mezcal is really up and coming as well. So I definitely wouldn't be opposed to having like a Mezcal based cocktail just because it's got. It just offers like such a unique flavor profile. Like there's nothing else. Like no one's really mastered the Mezcal space in the UK yet.

The Mezcal Negronis becoming quite popular. Do you know what Negroni is?

Yeah, definitely prefer these.

Yeah, yeah. But no, I think Tequila. Tequila, always Mezcal. Maybe in the future, but I don't think we'd ever expand to another spirit. Yeah, there are brands in the market doing a really great job at kind of nailing the classic cocktail range. And, and also we learn a lot from those brands. So it's. Yeah, it's just something that we wouldn't do.

Do you think you're motivated by money or like building something?

Building, building something.

So I think about this all the time, I think, and I discuss it with my mates, really. And I'm like, I always think, well, if I had a billion quid, I'd probably still want to build a mushroom brand.

Yeah.

I think the nature of a scale up is it's like long term rewards. Like in the short term, like as a founder, you're never going to be like on the same salary as someone who's working at a tech company or like a corporate or anything like that. You reap the rewards when you exit the business. So your focus kind of has to be on building because if you don't build successfully, you don't exit successfully. I mean, a huge part of it for me is of course building, but like I'm hoping to have that like financial benefit When I'm in my, like, early 30s. But, like, right now, I've very much accepted that I would rather have my head down for the next five to six years and not be doing, like, we can still very much, like, manage and do all of the things that we want to do, but we'll reap the benefits slightly later and they'll be a lot more lucrative because we've had our heads down rather than, I guess, just.

Yeah. I think also this. We're still in our kind of late. Late 20s. I should say early 20s. 28. How old am I? 28? Yeah.

I'm 27. How old are you?

Just turned 27.

I just turned 28.

I feel old.

I know. I think that's the first time I've ever said late 20s.

Anyway, I shouldn't ask. Rude, isn't it?

Well, it doesn't matter anyway. I'm in my 20s.

Not easily offended.

But we, I think, yeah, having also, like, none of our friends are stupidly rich and we've also been now doing this for two years or nothing. Like, money isn't the motivator here.

We like bringing our tequila to the pub in a water bottle and smuggling it in. That's fun.

Yeah, exactly. It's like a challenge. How far can you get in the month with no money? But, yeah, no, obviously, one day, I think all this hard work, it would be amazing if it could pay off into a lovely sum when we sell. Hopefully sell. But, yeah, I do think it's building something meaningful. 100%.

Where do you think?

What do you think?

What, as in, like, the goal.

Do you. Are you motivated by money or building something?

Yeah, both. I think when I was younger, and I think I've discussed this a lot. I mean, I don't know if it's like more of a guy thing or I just wanted a nice car and then I got a nice car in my early 20s. Realized that was really fleeting.

Yeah.

Obviously there's levels to it. I haven't made 100 million quid or whatever, but I've done all right. And then made money, lost money.

Yeah.

Like, done everything that I'd want to do when I was younger, traveled a lot. Definitely more is now I still want to make, like 100 million quid and build a massive business, but I actually want to be respected for building something cool.

Do you feel like your vision of success, like, what you define as success has changed as you've gotten older?

Oh, yeah, definitely, yeah.

Same Hundred percent.

I feel like I've. My brain is fully Formed a bit more now, 100%. I used to be so like flash and arrogant, basically.

Did you?

I think probably everyone is to an extent.

Yeah.

Especially when. Yeah. I don't know, like, I dropped out of uni and was like, I want to prove to people that I've got a bit of money and, you know, just whatever. Buy stupid cars and post shit on Instagram.

Songs of Instagram.

Yeah. But I think ultimately, I think a lot of people got the wrong. Wrong end of the statement. Me like people from unions. Because actually I'm just like some weird guy that likes creating stuff. That's what it started as.

Yeah.

I used to be 16 years old, drawing logos and everyone would say, what the fuck you doing? Do you know what I mean? And eventually you figure out what to do a little bit. But I'm still very driven by like just the creative side. Like this fucking movie poster and shit. Like We've made this 12 minute 80s movie for a product launch. Who the fuck does that?

Yeah. Well, I think it's so cool. That's one of the coolest things about your business.

Yeah. I get more most excited by that. So I think business for me is just a vehicle to keep playing as if I'm like a child.

Yeah. I feel like everything. We always see that, like everything's possible. We could go in any direction with our business and do anything. You've just got to be bold and reach for the things that you think are impossible because they're probably not just.

Having the right people, the right learnings and the right kind of like mindset behind it. Because that's ultimately the only thing driving all of your businesses forward. It's just you. You said you're a solo founder. Every single thing that comes off the back of it is by your doing. Right. You see the convers or network networking that you've done and like same for us. Which is why I think people are such an important part of building something fantastic.

Yeah, that's what I realized a lot more. I can't do it yourself. Whereas I used to be a lot more. I want to fucking do it all.

It is. Honestly, I'm really bad at like delegating. Like, I love saying I'm so bad.

I just. Yeah, I really need someone to run the business for me so I can just make movies.

Yeah, well, that's Stephanie on the list. I think it's really hard as well because you. We. Well, we do especially, but we spend so much time on kind of admin and working within the business that actually like you have all these ideas, but you never actually have time to work on the business and actually being able to. And we're kind of hopefully going to get to that point now that we're hiring, but being able to get people who you trust and who are better than you at certain things, who can actually manage those kind of day to day admin tasks.

Tasks.

Yeah.

So that we can actually focus on growing it to a point where we know it can get to. It's just literally that we don't have time is gonna be a bit of a game changer for us because that, that is ultimately like when you become a founder, your to do list is longer than the M1.

Yeah.

I feel guilty even doing midweek podcasts these days.

Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like you could actually spend hours working until 1 2am and even then that's not long.

Yeah. I think it's the building boundaries that's almost like impossible. When you like start to eat, sleep, breathe everything, you then start to like get in this weird cycle of like guilt when you're not working and you know you should be doing more. And then you go to sleep and then your sleep's consumed by like negative dreams of what you should be doing. Then you wake up and it's like, I'm not waking up early enough.

I honestly wake up every morning and Winter will have sent me a message and she'll have dreamt about something and she's like, I've had this nightmare and I just have to prepare myself and I think, God, what is it today? And something will have happened to our business in her nightmare. And then I have to spend the first kind of 15 minutes of the day just calming her being.

We live together.

No, I know. Yeah. On the phone or on messenger.

Yeah, just like perpetually stressed. And actually this is something that I've like now needed to get better at because I've gone from being like a really like positive, really like high spirited person to being someone who's like constantly like worrying about every single thing that could go wrong. So I've actually started doing a five minute, five minute journal, which is like.

Wake up, I need to do that.

No, it's honestly really good because it frames your mind because otherwise you wake up thinking, okay, these are all, are all of the things that I haven't done. These are all of the things that I'm stressed about. But instead you frame your mindset as, these are the things that I'm really grateful for. Waking up before anything. These are the Things that I want to achieve today. And then before you go to bed, these are the five things that went really well. Rather than me being like, well, I didn't get a reply to this sales email or like, this and this and this. And that is an element of you that I think needs to have that intrusive voice that's like, do more, be better. Keep working. But that can only be, like, 5% of it. The other 95% needs to be like, reflect on the amazing things that. That you have done and how far you've come. Because every single hurdle that you've overcome makes it that much more difficult for someone else to get to the same place that you guys have. So all of those, like, hardships that you're going through are only going to make it that much harder for someone to come in and do what you're doing even better. So it's just kind of like teaching your brain to think in a really not chaotic and negative way. Yeah, just like, trying to master at the moment.

And like everyone says, the highs, the highs, the lows, the lows. And when you hit a hurt hurdle, which we hit on genuinely a weekly, Weekly basis. Daily basis to add it to the scene, it's kind of just like, right, nobody's going to fix this for us. How do we overcome it? Like, that takes up a whole day of your time just figuring out, right, this is the problem of today. How are we going to overcome that? Because it's probably something that would have really, like, stepped in our way. But, yeah, I think that that's the thing, like, when we've come from industries where you never really have to do with the problems. And suddenly when you're running your business, anything can go wrong, and it always does. And it's not. And it's just like, be calm. How are we gonna. How are we gonna get past this? It will be okay. It seems like the world is ending and the business is gonna go down, but it won't. And like Winter said, once you overcome that, you kind of look back and you're like, okay, I can do this.

Yeah, it's crippling, isn't it? I think people don't, which is the majority of the world, they'll never start their own thing. Never know.

The stress you feel when something goes wrong is horrible. And the emotion as well, because you just think everything you've worked for, all the planning you put in place, just everything you put in place to make it go right. And we always try and be. We always try and be as you can. And honestly, it never works.

Ever.

I don't think we've ever had a launch or like a plan in place or a partnership that has gone solely together.

It can go wrong.

It will, it really does. And it makes you stronger eventually. But yeah, you just kind of learn along the way that it is tough. It's really, really tough.

And I think to your point, you said like, if only like everyone knew how crippling it was, it would probably be like quite off putting. Like, people often ask what like piece of advice or like what do you wish you had like known before you went in? And I'm literally like, nothing. Because I think if anyone told you like all of the kind of like hurdles and the difficulties and the nuances of the industry that you were in, it would be like so off putting and there would literally be all of these mountains everywhere. It would be the most like obstructive thing to people, just like getting started. Which is why I'm so glad that we started in an industry that we didn't know. It was a blank canvas and it just forced us to be like super, like exercise creative problem solving and just be really unconventional in how we tackle the space. Because I think if we knew more, it would have just been a totally, totally different product.

Yeah, there's a massive problem and I spoke about it so many times of like Instagram and YouTube entrepreneurs that just sell this bullshit dream of like Lambos and Dubai to the next generation.

We're making 100,000 revenue a month. Look at us. And then it's just like, it's just.

Like, it's all bollocks. And then you look into that person, they've never filed a tax return and they're basically a fucking fraud. I mean that's usually the case.

There's a lot of corrupt business. And we've also seen, I just mean.

Like gurus, like particularly. And there's probably, I don't know if there's like female versions of that as much, but there's a lot of like drop shipping guys.

Yeah, I guess I have plenty of them.

Yeah, yeah, a lot of them.

They're targeting me. They're like, listen to my five minute course. And I'm like, yeah, it's just not weird, is it?

No. And I think especially for a product based business, it's a completely different game. You can't just be drop shipping and making money.

I also think building a product business is the. Building a product brand is the coolest thing you can do in, in the world. In My opinion. Yeah, because it's like it's, it's alchemy.

Something tangible to show it's not.

Just take an idea and turn it into a thing that people fucking consume, use, like.

Yeah. Becomes part of their life.

Spending their real human hard earned pennies on it.

You're a fucking operations person and you're a builder. Everything.

Yeah.

You're a fucking lawyer one day. You're like elements of everything.

Yeah. You learn so much.

And I just think it's so cool. And that's why I think most people, I think it's the coolest business you can do is build a brand. A product brand.

Yeah, it is really cool. And it also means you can take, you can take it anywhere and you can kind of. You're the world. Once you have that product, the world is your oyster and you just. That's when you can get creative. Like you said you love making creative films. But it's like once you have that product, the product. Product's the product. How do you kind of like take it into a new realm or, or. And also for us, I think one thing we've always found really good is partnerships with brands that have no link into the alcohol industry. Like how do we capitalize on a brand who has a similar audience to us but are in cosmetics, for example? And actually there's always a link and there's always a way. Like we've partnered with Thursday who are dating out. We've partnered with Wild cosmetics brand. They actually all have similar founder stories for first of all and similar audiences. And they're kind of so supportive in taking kind of things that we can bring even as a small brand to them, for example, like the event side of things in the alcohol space and the kind of entertainment and then pairing it with either their product launches or something they're doing. And I think, yeah, when you get creative, you can find synergy in pretty much anything. You've just got to have the right narrative behind it.

It's just such a refreshing change from corporate bureaucracy and red tape where you can't even get a bloody marketing campaign through the line without the, the positioning of the dandelion being off. Whereas like now it's like, okay, we want to do this like UGC campaign. We want to go like here and do xyz. We drive it all forwards ourselves. And I think that's the most motivating part of it all. Like, we don't have to ask permission, we just need to be like, does it align with the brand? How can we make as much noise as humanly possible on as little budget and like collaborate and.

And we've always been really lucky as well, I think. We've never really worked with a proper agency or anything. We've always found, we've always kind of done a lot of research, found someone or some like a freelance or somebody who's really talented in their field. And that's kind of how we've developed campaigns or we've got photo shoots or we've kind of met people in networking events and then done something with them. But we've never actually gone through the kind of standard, right, we're gonna pay £15,000 for some branding. It's like, let's find someone who's talented and who's a bit different and who kind of believes in our brand and we believe in them and we'll work together. And then it has also meant that, that our whole process from start to where we are now has been a lot more collaborative. Rather than just kind of paying someone to do what they think is good branding or whatever, it's okay. Where does our vision sit? How do they fit into this? We love their style and actually like, can they bring ideas to our brand that we haven't thought of yet? And I think that's why we've always been a little bit different in terms of what kind of previous alcohol brands have done historically. Because there is, is, there is kind of a very archaic, I think, view on the alcohol industry in terms of, okay, let's launch like this sophisticated product. Like, for example, we're probably the first brand in a long time who's put a piece of art on the front of the bottle. Like branding is becoming very minimalist and very sophisticated. But this was something really different and it's something that people point out and it's just kind of like, well, we didn't really follow any, follow anyone in that field. We just did what we wanted, did what we thought looked cool and it worked. So yeah, I think that, I think that's been important as well, like finding the right people rather than just going off like agency recommendations.

Yeah, definitely. I need to do more offline things.

Networking events. I know, we love them, we hate them.

I just want to do a massive mushroom. Like I was saying before, I actually like got quotes from China to do this 10 meter mushroom.

I'm so intrigued.

Where do you get mushroom going? How do we get there? Is it going to be like a mini mushroom festival? Is it just like one big mushroom?

I just wanted to put a hot Mushroom in high pot.

You know what I'm envisioning? It's like a hot air balloon mushroom.

Yeah. Like really big.

Yeah, really huge.

So I realized I've never done something.

Could you find a parachute manufacturer and then get them to sew it into a mushroom shape and then actually use it as a hot air balloon?

Probably. Yeah. I just want to do something really weird and, like, probably get arrested for it because it'll just be good pr.

And then you can, like, chuck mushrooms.

I've just always done, like, Instagram ads.

Mushroom.

Get out of my fucking flat.

Yeah, you should go up and down in a mushroom, Mushroom hot air balloon. And then you should chuck all the dust out or do like a vending.

Machine and put LSD in it. But it's actually just a sample of a new flavor called, like, lemon sugar.

Something just get people to see, like, film people, see who takes it.

Yeah. So I need to do shit like that. A few ideas, but there's never enough time.

Like you said, there's never enough time, but you need to make time for them.

There's never enough time.

Yeah.

Well, I'm gonna ask you a few more questions because we've been going too hours. Oh, we could probably go for three hours, but might run out of time.

What's the time?

What's the time? Half nine.

Okay.

You got another podcast after this?

No, but my car's in the car park and I think it shuts at 10.

Oh, yeah, it does. No, it never shuts, but you'll be fine.

Okay.

Can I just pop the toilet?

We're literally gonna finish.

Okay. Oh, fine.

Well, you can go, but.

Okay, I'll hold it.

I'm holding it. I also need a wee. Where do you see yourself in 10 years? He's still running the brand. Are you living here? That's a long time.

That's a long time. So I. I would hope that we'd maybe sold the brand by then. Like, that. I think if we could sell the brand between, like, five and seven years. I. I've always wanted to live abroad.

Mexico.

No, I've had. I actually. I actually would love to live in, like, Miami or somewhere. Yeah. And we've actually always discussed this. We said if one day we could kind of nail a few markets, like we were in the US And Australia. She would take Australia and I would take the U.S. obviously, we need someone running on the ground here, but, Yeah, I think 10 years time, I couldn't. We were actually speaking about this before. I could never see myself going back to A corporate or a kind of big company and like working for someone else after doing this. But yeah, I think hopefully having sold the business, probably still started something else up and maybe living in Miami.

How about you? Similar or no?

Yeah, similar. I think aim of the game is to hopefully sell Pimente within five to eight years. I think off the back of that would obviously have a huge wealth of experience and maybe it's kind of consultancy angle. I just don't know if I see myself like I feel like I could take all of my learnings and like launch another product. Is that something that I feel like this is like the one that needs to work for me. There's no option if people are like you need to do like four or five or six ideas to find one that works. I'm like no, I've decided this is the one that works. Like this one has to work. So hopefully sell that. I'm of the opinion that we're in the most like risk averse period of our lives. Like we've got nothing tying us down to London so definitely travel abroad. Like live abroad. Like live that slightly more like nomadic work life lifestyle which people think comes with running a startup. But it doesn't. Especially when you've got a.

Still try and do it.

Yeah, when you've got a product mate, when you've got a product based business. No, but when you've got a service driven business, totally understand that you can do your work from elsewhere and then yeah, maybe it's more of a consultancy angle in F and B. Like who knows, like maybe you'll be speaking to me next year and I'll be like I want to launch a whole nother product. But yeah, I'm not too much of a fan of predicting where I'm going to be in 10 years. I know what I want. I know where I want Polente to be in like the next five to six years. But me, like as an individual I feel like I change and my mindset super sporadic the whole time. So as Pimente evolves I'll probably evolve as human. So TBC on that one.

Alright, final question which I ask everyone. It's a bit cliche but it's become a tradition. What advice would you give to your 18 year old self in reflection? I guess for you that includes uni working, everything because it hasn't just been the business.

Okay, I've got this one to a T because I was actually thinking about it the other day. When you're at university, don't put any pressure on yourself to follow these kind of traditional. Well, the traditional definition of what success is, I'm sure like as people are growing up now, that will 100% change. But I feel like people have this horrible stigma that by the time you're 30, you're meant to have a job that you love, a salary that's super comfortable and you're meant to be flying. Put more pressure on finding out what you don't like. It's equally as important as realizing as what you do. Like move around jobs as much as you humanly can do not stay in a job for more than a year and a half. When you stop feeling challenged, move elsewhere. I don't believe anyone can be in the same job for 10 years and be wholeheartedly satisfied. Like build out a multifaceted skill set. You need to understand commercial. You do. I don't care who you are, whatever industry you're in, you need to have a commercial form of understanding marketing. Dip your toe in every single pond. And also just there is no easy path to success or being successful. I feel like everyone thinks you wake up one day and you know you want to be like a famous actress or an entrepreneur in the drinks industry. Like the only way you're going to figure out like what truly fulfills you is not by following the money, it's by following what you love and what you're kind of good at as well. So that's kind of why I was.

A really long winded piece of advice that took me.

Long winded? You've been given some hella long winded answers.

No, I think, yeah, obviously similar. But I think, I think my piece of advice would be to believe in yourself a bit more and kind of nothing is impossible. Like, I never thought that I'd be able to do some of the things I've done at this point in my life and in the timescale that we've done it. And I think you are very siloed to a particular skill or a particular area of interest and actually you're capable of doing so much more. It's just a case of putting yourself out there a bit more and kind of taking the risk to do it. Because a lot of people, so many of my friends I speak to have ideas or they kind of have good ideas actually. But it's kind of just a case of start before you're ready because there's never a right time. And actually you'll learn along the way. And not everything will work in life, but you will surprise yourself what you can do because I didn't think I'd ever be capable of, like, obviously we've done it together, but, you know, like doing what we've done just because I would have thought my knowledge was limited to kind of one single thing. But moving into an industry where you have no experience in launching a product, no experience in alcohol, and getting two years down the line and being where we are, having just closed the funny round, being unselfish, like, that's crazy for me to think about where I was two years ago.

Yeah, sick. Very inspirational, I think. And I could definitely have drank four more of these.

I have a question for you. Are you gonna get more female guests onto your podcast now?

Yeah, honestly, probably just nervous, wasn't I? It's previously always been my mate. Well, not always my mates, but I'm one out of mates now. I would say we're like 60 episodes in now. Nearly.

Yeah. You'll be surprised at how many amazing female found and entrepreneurs there are out there. We've been to a few, like, pitch events with purely female founders and it's incredible. You should forward them so we can. Yeah, we can link you up with some more.

No, definitely. And yeah, because I just started this as a bit of fun, but now I'm just committing to do it every week for like until I. Well, I've done 60 episodes. I had a bit of a break last year for like six weeks and then I was like, fuck it, we'll do it again.

Now you're back.

Now you're back.

But thank you for having us.

Yeah, thank you so much for having us.

Yeah, thanks for the drinks, it's been good. Everyone should go check out the brand.

I'll link it.

You should definitely sponsor the pod, by the way, because we'll give you loads of codes. You prefer this to red wine, do you?

We'll give you lots of little cats.

What does their red wine brand? Sponsoring your pod?

No, but I wanted to make one called Unicorn Blood. Just had this weird idea, too many.

Things, going out of business.

I'm leaving that. I have too many ideas. But yeah, go check out the brand. Really interesting episode, as always. Subscribe. Subscribe to the pod. We'll see you in the next episode. Cheers for watching. Peace.

Bye.

Bye.