Craft & Co Founding- The Story of Botivo

0:15Hello and welcome to the Tomorrow Brands podcast where we explore what it takes to build a brand of tomorrow. I'm your host Ruth Vitock and this week I'm joined by the first ever co-founding duo on the podcast Sam and Emma, the team behind Botivo. Botivo is a brand that feels quietly confident, detailed, measured and deeply intentional so it's no surprise that its founders bring that same thoughtful clarity to how they've built the business together. Let's get into it. So I'd love to hear where you both were before Botivo and then what brought you together? Ruth Dunn. I've worked in hospitality for the last 15 years.

0:50I was originally working in kitchens training to be a chef but then I found a love for bartending and in my late 20s I set up a drink consultancy at an event company called Rum Runner which was all about bringing craft cocktails into the event industry and we quickly made a name for ourselves as making like the best drinks and we found ourselves working for some amazing clients. We were booked to make the cocktails for harry and megan's wedding back in 2018 and and yeah like when our clients started asking for more sophisticated non-alcoholic drinks that was when the first versions of patibo came around and this was before it was in a bottle but it just kept getting picked for cocktail like cocktail menus that are tastings and at the events themselves people just kept coming up to the bar asking what this drinks was and where they could buy it so i knew i had to bottle it so then sam bottled it he was still working full-time on his events drinks business and enter me when i tried at a party and i just got really obsessed with it so that's it's a very basic level i entered as a consumer because i just tasted it and it was the liquid was like nothing i'd ever tried before i'm not the kind of typical non-alcoholic consumer and i'd never actually bought an alcoholic drink before I love the complexity of alcohol the fact that I just fell in love with this non-alcoholic liquid just really surprised me my background is brand building and strategy I worked for 20 years with all kinds of big drinks brands like Heineken like Diageo also Nike and fashion like Adidas as well and Google you name it anyway so my background was brand building and I just tasted this liquid that I fell in love with and then I just wanted to create a brand that matched the craftsmanship and the pleasure that the liquid kind of shouted to me and so I actually approached Sam it was quite funny at a wedding in Mexico so I was looking for him because I knew that this person Sam had created this liquid but I hadn't then managed to find him met him at a wedding 2am managed to put two and two together and then went home the next day and put together a big pitch for how I wanted to be his business partner and come on board and redo the brand and relaunch it and that is how Betivo the brand in bottle as you see today was born I love it it's a great origin story Emma were you looking having worked for brands did you know you wanted to do your own thing or was this like completely out of the blue oh yeah I would say absolutely not and to be honest like sometimes I'm like if I knew what I know now about being a founder would I actually have said yes because obviously it came with all these different elements where I didn't expect but yeah I definitely was not looking to be a founder I was really happy I was consulting the big brands and startups actually I was traveling three months I was consulting nine months had this perfect work-life balance I just had my twins they were like one and a half years old and then just fell in love with Batiba and everything turned on its head yeah when the kids were I guess 18 months or something I joined sam and yeah it was definitely it's definitely been a roller coaster it's amazing and you get obsessed with it when you're on your own business and i think that for me is the challenge is like you can't switch off you don't feel present for your partner or your kids but at the same time you're really excited about going to work every morning and there's a trade-off but it's an interesting one sam when when at the same time had two kids under two as well we both did second came yeah i think just before our rebrand so perfectly timed yeah that is starting a business and having kids that age that is intense yeah it was quite intense it was intense i think every stage of business is intense just in a slightly different way so i think actually at the time it was it was even more intense because i was still trying to run my event company at the same time which had a pretty grim time over covid so I was trying to get that back on its feet trying to get Petit over out into the world and my daughter was around so it was definitely a lot It's not easy now in comparison then I guess Yeah, new challenges Was there a particular moment during all of that when things clicked and you realised yes, this is the right thing?

5:07There were a few kind of highlights I think when we launched the rebrand we had a really positive reaction to it, it felt really different I think I think everyone's probably got different highlights but for me it was I think the FT Alice Lachelles who's the FT drinks writer she did an article on non-alcoholic drinks and she said that Bativo was one of the best things she tasted this year alcoholic or non-alcoholic and that for me was like such a huge accolade because the whole point around the brown was we don't want Bativo to be a drink that you drink when you're not drinking we want people to drink it because it's just a really delicious unique crafted product and so that being that having us called out by someone who i respect so much and who's such like a taste making industry was a real moment and then that was followed quite quickly by grace dense who championed us and mentioned us in quite a few news articles as her sort of favorite non-alcoholic choice or tipple and then obviously lots of amazing stockists came in by the time i joined actually sam had already won river cafe yeah that's like quite a big accolade in itself no yeah that was amazing for me like when the sort of i guess the idea itself clicked for the first time was when like i said the liquid already existed but when i decided to actually turn it into a product the like the idea really just clicked and formed when i started researching the category a bit more i just noticed that there was a real sort of lack of craft in the space which for me was bizarre because as someone who comes from kitchens and bars i've always resonated with products that have an origin, have a craft or a process or people behind the products.

6:41So for me, it was a real light bulb moment when I clocked that. I thought, wow, there's a massive opportunity here to actually bring some craft into the space. And to us, that sort of followed on to why I was so excited about creating a brand around Bativo was exactly that, which is, for me, what makes premium drinks brands still really exciting or that makes consumers really care about them are stories, right? And really authentic stories. and I think what I found as well when I looked around the category and we were creating this brand was there seems to be a lack of quite authentic stories and I think that's quite tricky for consumers because you want to be able to have something to hold on to emotionally and so I think Bativo was such a breath of fresh air because it had Sam who still hand-made every bottle it had Lanik Farm which is this farm where we make it and Lanik Farm has got multiple artisanal like cottage industries on there so it's like a real place and then the liquid itself takes a year to make and it's got no flavorings and no essences and no preservatives and there was just so much richness in the stories and so much potential in a space where there were no stories and so that just felt really exciting to me from a brand point of view as well.

7:52Do you think with part of the reason it's been so successful is for non-AUC creating something that feels like a bit of a treat for all of those reasons that you just mentioned has been what's been missing from the category is that feeling of you're not missing out it's like non-out feels like the wrong term because it's like defining it against what it's not versus all of these things that it is and that's what is going to bring more consumers in yeah so for me my kind of the whole kind of thinking around it was when we created the brand like there's this overwhelming sense of things being very heavy and overwhelming and then for a drinks brand also say oh by the way can you also moderate and hold back and you're not have delicious drinks and just promise you this kind of moderation oh god I don't want to be moderating when everything else is rubbish I want to be having these really playful delicious uplifting moments that will bring a bit of you know excitement to my life and I think we decided that Tiva was a pleasure brand not a moderation brand and in order to be a pleasure brand every single detail around it needs to feel magical right because you have to carve out this kind of treat moment you don't have alcohol in it you need to create an experience that feels like it's like it's special like it's demarcating you from work to the evening and everything around the brand from the packaging to the wax which you have to unravel through to the ritual surf with the orange through to the language we use in the comm so we use a lot of you know enter the next act or like theatrical language which is all about moving into the new stage and it's all about creating something that feels like a moment and I think I do think quite a lot of brands started to do that quite well but I think when we really started carving it didn't feel like the consumption moment was clear or emotional.

9:40Makes sense because you also have a piano which and is pretty iconic and everything's yellow I've got some Bativo socks which I love which what were the small decisions that felt big at the time when you set out about creating that creating what the brand world the whole kind of universe around the brand yeah I think like the creative universe around the brand was there was so much thinking that went into it what we really felt was that we wanted to make sure that whatever we created we were able to bring surprise and delight and magic to people whenever they actually interacted with it so we knew we never wanted to create a bottle drink and a label we wanted to have creative assets which we could then take out into the world and be really creative with so we had in our brand world we've got 24 characters actually that are these amazing characters on the label there's maybe 10 or something including the dog but in the actual world there's 24 and the kind of the whole thinking behind building this brand world with different characters was we felt at the time like the world around on our collect drinks felt very homogenous and actually didn't represent the exciting vibrant life of London 2022 whatever it was I wanted everyone to be able to drink for tea and see themselves or someone like them or their friend in there really be able to relate to it and want to party with them so we worked with this artist called Rosalina Bakova who just builds these amazing banquet scenes and she built this whole scene with the piano and people indulging in lots of amazing food and dancing to music and then we basically really wanted to work out how to take that into the real world so that's where the kind of piano idea came from so there's a big yellow piano on the label we wanted to somehow bring that world into real life tastings and samplings and make sure that people felt that we weren't just serving them with drinks in a tray but that they were having a proper brand experience every touch point so we had this actually kate had this idea to build a piano and have it somehow in real life and then i had the idea to then open it into a sampling bar at the back on wheels so that actually we could like sample as we were playing and wheeling around and it's been an amazing it actually was an amazing investment for us we've had drag performances we've had full like jazz bands on the south bank we've had we've partnered with holland park opera through opera at events like with the piano and all while tasting you know we also had a sort of best guest 300 person sing along at the london craft beer festival it was insane yeah and that was a great one because the idea was to bring those moments that are normally associated with alcohol so like singing along and getting drunk at the pub and like someone getting around a piano but replicating that in the non-alcoholic space and bringing that kind of pleasure and hedonism something which you wouldn't normally find it in and so the craft beer festival that it was i think it was wonder wall and like alice this amazing pianist and singer was leading the charge and those are kind of real moments for us in answer to your question like we built this brand world other than we just keep finding interesting ways in which it lives in the real world, which we didn't even really expect initially.

12:49Love that. You can measure the success of the brand by how many pianos you have. Yeah, exactly. New ROI. Don't mess with it. They keep getting bigger and heavier. And when you were creating this brand, did you have a very specific consumer in mind or was it you guys initially? yeah we have actually quite a we have we had lots of consumers so the in terms of the kinds of characters we have we've given little stories and characters to each of them there's so much detail and thought that's gone into it we've got different ages different sexes different genders different sizes all of that in there but also within there each character's got a name and a story and actually a lot of the characters are named after our team so we've got like kate and ella who are two of the characters we've got jack who's our bee the beekeeper and each one's got a character which we're going to be leaning more and more into in our storytelling because storytelling is a really important part of the brand one of them is like a sommelier so we're going to be able to use that to talk about the connection between wine and bativo and the terroir the ones on the piano are greg and camilla and they love craft beer and that's allowing us to talk to craft beer kind of consumers so all of them are kind of vehicle through which to communicate the types of people that would enjoy bative but also we also use them to serve suggestions so each character has got a different way in which it drinks bative and that allows us to educate people around its versatility and to be honest we've we've only just begun utilizing the characters because there's so much potential so it's more of a brand sort of universe rather than a brand world there it's expansive i love it you can tell you've got a background in brand that is very clear and having like fun with it as well it's like being able to let rip on your own thing i imagine is very rewarding after having done it for lots of different people over the years exactly it is that you work on all this stuff but you rarely see things come into fruition or if you do it's changed but to be honest like the characters like even now i've been staring at them every day for three years i still they still bring me so much like joy i just love them they all have so much like ros the illustrator such an amazing job at bringing to life like just this amazing vibe you think yeah they're incredible they're definitely set so it's a sort of fun scene that i definitely want to be part of now so you've talked a bit about storytelling want to kind of dig into the founder side of things now and that's i think you've talked about the importance of the founder story why do you think that matters i think founder stories definitely help humanize a brand consumers don't just buy products they buy they buy into the people and the values behind the business.

15:29And I think especially when you're selling a premium product, people want and expect to see the craft behind it, behind that premium price tag. And I think that certainly in our space, utility products that are made in factories and the way they're made is shrouded in secrecy. I think that's why it's important. Yeah, exactly. I think founders allow you to connect with people who haven't got huge budgets. I think when you look at the trajectory of how most brands go, often it starts off with, There's a founder story and then that's what you talk about. And that kind of gets people's or consumers' imagination.

16:02And then by the end of it, actually, it goes a bit of provenance. And then at the end of it, the founders are almost like pushed out of it. And occasionally big brands try and bring them back in to get some authenticity in there again. But actually, it's a very kind of normal trajectory. When the beginning, it's like authentic, small, human. And then by the end of it, it's like commercial, big and shiny and like just lots of investment in shiny, big marketing and spend. For us as well, I think like the founders, because Sam and I are so different, it's also where the brand was built from. I really believe that the best brands, again, going back to authenticity point, like the founder stories and where the brand is built from is really important in creating a brand that feels really real and is not just born from, just plucked from the air.

16:47And for us, Sam is an artisan, right? He makes products from hands and he's meticulous. As he said, he was hand-picked to make drinks at a royal wedding because he's like a master of flavours and drinks and attention to detail. And I, on the other hand, are quite a sort of pleasure seeker, sort of self-proclaimed hedonistic type of person. I love food, I love drink, I love all these things in life. And I think that was at the core of our positioning was that kind of coming together of like an artisan and a sort of hedonist and how the intersection of those two things can create a brand which lives in quite a unique space.

17:22So yeah, so it's about authentic stories, but also it's about it's shaped the brand that we've become today as well. Yeah, that leads nicely on to my next question about co-founder dynamics. For the first time I've had co-founders on the podcast, it's normally one. It's very exciting. I'm also really interested in the relationship behind the scenes and how you make it work. because obviously it's such like a critical part of a business success, your business partner, and it can be a tricky relationship. It's quite a unique relationship as well, isn't it? Because it's a very close relationship.

17:56I think I talk to my partner more than anybody else in my life. So it's like quite a close relationship, but then obviously it's a business relationship. So I was going to ask how you met, but I know how you met. I met on a dance floor at a wedding in Mexico at 2 a.m. When did you realise that you'd work well together? Was it like an instant saying or you mentioned you didn't pitch? I actually think, interestingly, we didn't know each other at all. It was really high risk, the whole situation. It was literally someone who loved this liquid and someone who actually, Sam, who happened to be looking for a business part at the time and we had very complementary skill sets and we gave it a go.

18:35And I think it was a huge risk to take because you just don't know what you're going to work at. And it's definitely taken a lot of work. you like you mentioned you it is like having a sort of another relationship and i think one of the things that we really had to understand really quickly not even quickly actually because ages and then we have to find our way around was what are how we work because we work in very different ways so like how do you create a space where that person can be their best person and second of all like what's your what's your what's your way of communicating what will make someone lash out or make someone feel nurtured.

19:09And there can be and are very different things for us because we're different personalities. So it has been a lot of working out what is the best way of working and talking about it. Definitely. I think what's really helped us is the weekdays of check-ins because there is a very physical divide between where we work. Our office is in London and Highbury, but like Emma said, we're either on the road meeting a new manufacturer, supplier or at our own production unit or yeah I spend like a lot less time than anyone else in Petit but in the actual office so it's so important to take time to check in and make sure that you're both happy and aligned.

19:47Do check-ins, tell me a bit more about that. Yeah so we kick off our weeks on a Monday morning first thing we have a check-in and the first thing we ask each other is like how you're feeling both emotionally and about work. I think it's such an important thing to do because So personally, emotionally and work as well. Personally, emotionally and work. And it's so important because everyone's got so much going on in their life that you have no idea what is going on behind closed doors and that obviously impacts how people come to work. So we started implementing that maybe six months ago. Yeah.

20:24And I feel like it's been such a helpful tool for us. Yeah, because I think we were coming in and we were going straight to work and you don't actually take a second to be like, what's going on in this person's life and how are they feeling and I think we come and went okay out of 10 how are you feeling emotionally personally and out of 10 how are you feeling like business-wise and actually it's the rating as well which I found really helpful because it forces you to be like hold on a second how am I really feeling but also it's really important to understand if someone's got a low number that means you need to support them more so what can I take off your plate or what do you need do you need more time do you want to spend more time with family because you can't burn out and you can't do everything and if you're not feeling in the upper echelons then it's going to take its toll sometimes you just need a quantitative number to make things really clear because i think just i think also particularly like culturally we just often just skirt around issues and no one wants to bring something up or i think there's something about directness which is needed and sometimes having a number forces you or allows you to be direct when maybe you wouldn't feel comfortable doing it otherwise yeah and it sounds like you're then working on a few different levels and dimensions so you've got that emotional personal and then work which is important but all of those other things feed into how you show up at work don't they so 100 % as a whole so we've talked a little bit about this but what does your working rhythm look like do you have very specific sort of divide and conquer are there any areas where it's a bit more fluid and actually you do things together interesting we should do more together i think i think when we do go together it will when we're looking to go out and win like bigger accounts and we're looking at restaurants and bars i obviously do a lot of work in the sales brand side but sam is obviously the master drinks maker so I will beg Sam to create some delicious things and come out with me and he's so good with a trade and obviously as a trade and bartender and chef just knows the language and the flavours and that's probably the main time when we're together going out and about.

22:35Yeah, definitely. I think we do completely trust each other and stay in our lanes and Emma definitely will have considerably more control over the sales and marketing side of the business and I will naturally have more on the sort of production and operations side of the business. But obviously all the sort of big business decisions we do generally make together. But yeah, the sales side is something I'm definitely keen to do more of. And I think as we grow and our team gets bigger, I will sort of slowly move out of our sort of production room and into the office. And I'm certain I think that will also continue to evolve, right?

23:07Because as we grow and actually the business outgrows our skill sets even, our role as founders will also shift because actually suddenly there's someone else who can do the brand or like the botting or even produce at a global scale to a much higher level than us. And actually then our roles will no doubt evolve again and then we'll move to something else. Maybe six months ago, you were at the farm way more than that. And now we've got a couple of people that are really trusted in production. You're able to be in the office more and more. Completely. I think that's just like what happens as anyone who starts a business.

23:40Like day one, you are the bookkeeper. You're the marketer. You're the production person. You're knocking on doors. And then as the months go by and you employ people who are ultimately better at those things than you, you start shedding roles. So, yeah. It gets trickier, like you say, when you get to the point where maybe you're handing over the brand to someone new or that production. Those things that you've held really close, like those are the... It's definitely something you have to start doing. I think recently we hired a new commercial director. and obviously I've been leading that side of things and at first I was like what's going on I need to know what's happening and then suddenly one day like a week in I was like oh my gosh I can I don't have to I can just just I don't have to actually be stressed about that anymore like actually I just need to trust someone else to do it and it's going to be quite annoying for them if I don't let them look if I don't give them the trust to make it their own thing but actually having that realization of I just had to trust someone was actually quite liberating yeah exactly exactly and obviously you still have to you're still really involved with that part of the business but knowing that the buck doesn't stop with you and every single time is lovely put down like one of those balls of juggling yeah and then you've got like a hundred left yeah exactly exactly what have you learned about yourself through building the business together

25:01i'm not as patient as i thought i was and i'm quite

25:07guys i work quite quickly i expect i'm always expecting this like the same pace back and i realized that i just can't do that and actually everyone's got different ways of working and to get the best out of each other you have to each give each other the amount of space whether that's much or whether it's more or less to make something really special so i'm definitely that's definitely one thing it's just realizing to to adapt for me I think this is something I'm definitely trying to teach myself I'm terrible at delegating which is probably I think maybe I find my head can be quite scrambled and I think sometimes it's easier to do it for yourself and work out how to explain it to someone else yeah that's true actually sometimes I'm like when I talk to you you've got so much on and I'm like wait point you just get someone else to that one and i'm like your life would be so much easier if you did that but you're just like you're just setting your ways i think maybe a management course might be helpful no to be fair you have got much much better at that it's hard though isn't it when it's your own thing of handing thing handing things over like we just said about the roles that you're shedding that those are difficult decisions to make each time because it's your baby so even the small things can sometimes feel like big things too and having the trust of other like i'd have trust in other people to pass it over can be tricky i agree 100 and i think the other thing that has been really interesting to me is when even when i feel like i've said something this is more in like comms and marting whatever it might be even when i feel like i've said something a thousand million times and like consumers will be bored of hearing it about it most people haven't even heard about it and that's been like a really interesting thing for me because when you're so in it every single day it's easy to think that everyone is hearing what you're hearing or thinking what you're hearing or that you're boring them with the same message over and over again i think then being on the side then realizing oh no like just when you're starting to get bored like that's when one percent of people even know about it and that's been a good sort of discipline learning curve i think an underrated skill in brand building is like getting comfortable with being bored yeah exactly that's exactly a much better way of putting it i'm like I hate being bored obviously as you can probably tell so I've had to learn to be bored you're right and a lot of it is actually quite boring and takes much longer than you want it to and to your point with marketing you're just saying the same thing over and over again and it's like actually being okay with that yeah playing the long game but it's hard especially when you're in like a fast-growing business when there's so much stuff you know the pace is every and then actually when it all slows down to your point that's probably when it's actually starting to get yeah exactly and also because you're nimble because you're a startup you can do lots of different exciting things if you've got loads of ideas you're like oh i can actually do this because it's my business but actually you should probably be like let's just do one thing really well and obviously some other things to keep the energy around the brand and the excitement but you know don't have to do everything is that was that sort of advice you used to give when you were like a strategist coming into brands and now it's like quite so you know it but it's also harder when it's your own i mean what i have realized is that since running a business that there are so many things i thought were great was great advice for brands in marketing because i didn't know the business side just were completely useless which has been quite interesting because i was always like wow why did nobody like take any of my amazing marketing ideas and make them happen in real life it's so weird and then you work on the actual brand side and business side you realize oh that's not actually how drinks like systems work at all you can't just get into those restaurants or whatever there's about a thousand different jumps like hoops you have to jump through and that that's been a real sort of wake-up course that made me realize that probably wasn't as helpful to my past clients as i thought i would

28:59any growing pains especially given you guys didn't know each other when you started out we definitely had moments i think it was like natural and that's why you had to develop these kind of systems to force you to understand each other's way of working and thinking we had coaching for a bit as well which was really helpful again just preventative just lets us like people have like pre-wedding like counselling or whatever and that was really good because that gave us like language and understanding definitely I think just growing pains in the business generally there's always every time you you like get past a certain level there's like a new world of a new world of challenges to overcome yeah in fact we were just saying this morning on our check-in actually that we keep thinking that things are going to calm down a little bit and then you get to where you want to get and then actually it's even more hectic in the next six months you're like what i thought this was like we'd achieved that thing so we thought now it could more people in the business achieve those things why is it now more complicated yeah exactly but but yeah i mean like in like one example the fact that we are we make the team of ourselves and we've been in the same sort of production room from day one with the same equipment and we're now nearing the point needing to move out of our production unit.

30:15The story behind the production unit is so cute as well because it's actually an old milking partner. And you stumbled upon it. The advice I got when I was trying to turn Bativo into a product was, you know, don't use real ingredients, use flavourings from three different consultants that I spoke to. And I thought about it, so I was like, I'm not from manufacturing, these people are probably right. And I'd spent weeks with a micro-pipette and some super-sensitive scales trying to recreate Bativo in this way and just just couldn't do it some of these favorites are incredible but it just didn't give you the depth and complexity that you do get from Bativo so I had to go and find myself a place to make it and as Emma said found a lovely farm in Hertfordshire that had a very dirty dusty milk and parlor that was up for rent and the whole places completely transformed it's amazing about what it's like now yeah what it was then because it feels like a difference it's amazing i'm a landlord that wants to make lannick manor farm into a real sort of food and drink hub and so since then they've invested in the space and it's gone from muddy tracks to lovely paving and there's now a coffee roaster in there and an incredible bakery a gelato maker and butcher and it's also the home of groundswell which is a regenerative on the conference so it's just such an amazing backdrop for us yeah i think it's also this amazing backdrop because obviously we own these real ingredients and these preservatives there's nothing ultra processed in our product and so for it to be the unit to be on the home of the regenerative farming which is basically what groundswell champions it feels really relevant and really right what advice would you give to someone thinking about starting a business with a friend partner or complete stranger and which do you think is better oh god i actually i'll ask the second part i don't think i would like work with a really close friend that i knew really well because i just think i think even when i was living with best friends at university we'd fall out i feel like it's such high risk so high risk and you hear good stories and you hear bad stories and i think yeah it just feels a bit high risk i think what would happen the reason why i'd want to preserve like someone you knew outside of that is because i think you just end up getting like talking about work the whole time and i think there's something so magic about friends being places you forget about work definitely especially if it's like your partner when do you ever stop talking about work i love going home and talking about anything else yeah to be honest i've warned my husband so much about he literally said to me the other day if i spoke about my work the amount you spoke about your work that we would not even be dealing with but i'm like you're but it's my own business so it's so brilliant it's like more interesting in kind of advice I think I think my advice would be to talk to other founders to understand like how your life would change because I think I was really underprepared for the impact it would have on every part of my life and obviously you really enjoy it and you have to be up for it and I am up for it but then that also comes with sacrifices which I wasn't fully prepared for whether that is time with your partner whether that's like not being fully present with your kids whether that's actually your friendship circle shrinking quite a lot because you're you just don't have the time to do everything into the same quality level that you had before and I think that's that is something which is I think people should know about before because that's the hardest part for me definitely I completely agree with that I also think like it's so key just to make sure that you're completely aligned on your vision for the company day one and like where you want to take it you know I always also think to add on in is values of you can be really different personality type and skill set but you want to have the same values or at least be aligned with each other's values and I feel like if you have the same values all the conflict is like fairly surface level whereas if it's like a values jar then 100 % I think actually really focusing on it sounds like I'm bringing it back to brand again but building a really tight brand positioning is also really part of that because your values in a brand positioning are not just the values of the brand the values of of you as founders and and also all the people that you hire are come out of those values and so I think having those discussions around what kind of company you want to be and what you stand for opens up conversations around what you're really like and what you actually value as people so looking forward what's next for Bativo any will you ever bring out another skew any more experiences bigger piano in the pipeline the different skews has always been a hot topic for us.

34:50I think we made the decision quite early on to just try and make Vitevo iconic. Make it like a Campari or an Aperol. But as a brand within a category that doesn't have a huge amount of craft, it seems mad not to show off our craft credentials. So the decision we made early on was to keep Vitevo as a single skew product, but then just release limited editions in partnership with whether it's a restaurant or a brand or otherwise. So we've done three to date. There's a bit more in the pipeline. Exciting. And we're re-releasing. In the summer, basically, we worked with the Otter Motolenghi and the team for the best part of six months to create this amazing, I say we crafted the liquid and then we worked on the brand and that stuff around it.

35:39I actually went to the Otter Motolenghi Spice Supplier, which is, for me, like a dream come true. As someone who loves weird and wonderful flavours, I started playing around with them. And we landed on some sort of flavours that are sort of iconically otolenghi. So we had green cardamom, rose, black lime with pomegranate molasses and honey with gentian root. Yeah, my mouth's watering. It's hearing me. Delicious. That's coming back. Yeah. So we launched that and it sold out in six days, I think a thousand, thousand. Wow. So we're relaunching that, again, limited edition until it's sold out. And then also the other exciting, I think, product news is that we're launching cans.

36:19So we had a limited edition can that we did as a pilot in June. They sold really quickly and also drove up our bottle sales, etc., rather than cannibalizing it because it's bringing in a slightly younger consumer and a slightly different occasion. So we have decided to go ahead. We've got some big listings, exciting listings to announce later. But they're launching in the beginning of November. And that will be properly in restaurants and bars and elsewhere. So that's really exciting for us because I think that's going to hopefully just open up the distribution points for us and also the consumer and give us a lot more opportunity for people to taste it before they commit to it yeah i was gonna say i imagine that's quite a big barrier to entry because it's big bottle it's premium pricing relatively so to be able to try it for and also i feel like it's one of those things that grows on you tivo like the first one i had i was like this is quite nice and then i had another one and then by three i was like i'm a bit obsessed with it now it was a way like weirdly crept up on it's so funny it's exactly what happens and i think the reason is because it's a completely new flavor profile your brain needs a few days to really understand it and when we do tastings we actually always get try and get the them to taste it three times people i think it's just because your brain wants to put it in boxes and it's trying to something very new and so i think the cans will allow that so the idea is that the bottle will make that at home but this is the perfect serve created for you and also the The cans are gorgeous.

37:43I'm obsessed with them. They've got a lot of characters. They just look really beautiful. It's something that I wouldn't expect anything less at this point. I'm going to do some quick fire ones now. So first word you'd use to describe each other as a co-founder. Who's going first? Shall I go first? Go on then. Innovative. Meticulous. One decision you disagreed on, but you're glad you made. Canned. which if you want the context which we had penciled in for launch spring next year and we were both very much up for the cans but the the sort of the imbalance was brought forward some opportunities put it that way by by six months definitely was challenging mine's probably my obsession before you match like me pushing through trying to push through like the matches that I got made.

38:37I think Sam was a bit unsure about their role, but you've come round. I've come round for sure. Favourite Bativo pairing? So food, moment, time of day. Pick your favourite. I am a massive purist when it comes to Bativo. I go through so much. I have soda, water, orange. I don't want it with snacks. I just want it so refreshing. I actually have it also, if I'm hungover, it's the best hangover cure. I just drink it all day every day and I don't even need to pair it with anything. I am also a purist, but I also love it with whiskey, whiskey highboards. A brand you admire and why?

39:22I was invited to the Pig recently, the Pig Hotels, which I think is such an amazing hotel group. But specifically what I loved about it was their 25-mile menu, which I think is insane. It's so impressive. And just shows you what can be done if you are innovative and creative. And I think that's like a wonderful thing about the pig. I basically, I like any brand which has taken a category that is a bit dusty and has shaken it up and reinvigorated it. I like Fatso in chocolate. Fatso, I just love how they've made it really pleasurable and loud and extroverted. Because I think all the other brands that make it really premium and quiet.

39:57Or Peaches, the nappies brand. Like taking motherhood and making it modern and fresh and playful versus the nappy brands. I was forced to put up with when my kids were little. So anything which takes something old and dusty and shakes it up is great. Best piece of advice you've been given? For me, this is like back in my days of working in hospitality when the advice I was given was to work in every department just so you can understand how the business connects. And it gives you this perspective to empathise with everyone in the business and understand what sort of challenges they're facing. So that was what I did.

40:35I worked everywhere from the pot wash through to the bar kitchens, up into the office, even the membership. And yeah, it really helped. Mine was maybe pick the one to three things every month that are going to move the needle in your business and focus on those. Because I think when you're particularly starting out, there's so many things thrown at you and you have to prioritise. So that was a good mechanism. And then last question, which we ask everyone, in your opinion what makes a brand of tomorrow what makes a brand of tomorrow i think what makes a brand of tomorrow is is a brand that has created an ecosystem of empathy and it's so much more than just churning out a product and making loads of money but it's got everything from it's built a company culture that nurtures its staff it's thought about the supply chains and the sustainability and the impact it has it's got that inbuilt into the system versus which is vaulted on and yeah i think a lot of that comes from a lot of female founders to be honest not i'm not saying for me but i'm saying female entrepreneurship when i look at the businesses so many of those female founders have that baked in or have baked that into their businesses and that for me feels really inspiring i love that answer sam do you want to add one or leave it we can leave it there i'm not sure i better that i think i better leave it there thank you so much for coming on guys it's been such a pleasure thank you for having us