Top Cuvée- a brand built like a restaurant

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 today I'm chatting with Brodie Meah, co-founder of Top Cuvée, the restaurant-turned-retail brand that made wine feel fun again. We get into how fine dining taught him to think like a founder, why natural wine isn't always the answer, and what happens when you build an econ business with a hospitality mindset.

0:36Brodie Meah:Hope you enjoy. Hi, Brady. Thanks for joining us today. Before we get into it, it'd be great to hear your background and how you got to where you are now. Let's start from University Days in Manchester. I ended up getting a job in a bar to pay the bills in uni, as we do, and absolutely loved it. fell in love with the industry and I went from working in like pretty crazy nightclubs to cocktail bars and then gradually getting slightly better venues around Manchester until I was working in some of the best restaurants in the city that then took me to Melbourne that's where two things happened got introduced to natural wine out there and kind of opposite to that also started working in fine dining.

1:23So I worked for the British chef Heston Bloomsville and his restaurant over there called Dinner. So it's like a two Michelin star restaurant. It was like university for me. And that was really what taught me about obviously world-class hospitality and service, but also exposed me to a world-class business that kind of equipped me with the skillset I needed in order to go out on my own, which is always what I've always wanted to do, even since a young age didn't know what it was I'd be doing I always knew I wanted to work myself my wife and I moved back to the UK to open a restaurant that restaurant was Top Cuvée what was your original vision for Top Cuvée the vision for Top Cuvée was to take this experience that I've had in fine dining which was amazing and on paper is all about showing people an amazing time but my the real experience that I had there were people were very intimidated by this kind of grand flashy restaurant same with the wines there they come in a leather bound folder purposely like none of it's in english it's 17 different languages in there obviously no one can understand all of that apart from the sommelier so it's very good high quality and amazing produce and stuff and loads of effort has gone into that experience but i just felt like the whole service side was quite anti-customer wasn't very welcoming so we wanted to open a restaurant that had the same level of attention to detail and care and really wanted to have a good time but was just welcoming and accessible and a focus on natural wine right yeah it was initially but we feel again so it's an interesting sort of side quest now we found the natural wine scene was the answer to that stuffy hospitality kind of elitism that's what we thought right when we started to get into all of that and then that was the case it was slightly more accessible but then once you get into it actually it's just the same it's the same thing but in a different uniform you've got on the one side fine dining sommeliers who are snooty by the old-fashioned way.

3:43But then it's exactly the same with these kind of hipsters wearing a Carhartt shirt and we've got to know the right chefs and this and that and the winemakers. It's exactly the same. We thought natural wine would be a really good, like a touchpoint, like an anchor for people that they understand, like that terminology, like craft beer. But honestly, I feel it's more derisive because some people now, if you say natural wine, they're like oh no but that's like weird or funky and the whole point is our wines are like clean and drinkable a lot of natural wines are but we found that it's a bit of a distraction and so you launched lockdown hit how long after launch so the restaurant opened and then it was pretty much exactly one year and then lockdown happened And so the interesting part about that, we just reached the point where I was like, oh, wow, like this restaurant is actually open.

4:40Like we have regulars, we have, yeah, we can keep the lights on here. It was, could have been a very devastating time, but I think also it was a good time because we had all the energy. And we just reached the, over the crest of creating our little community there around the restaurant. So that's why we were able to pivot like we did. yeah so we'll talk about the pivot you then launched shop cuvee in about 48 hours how do you do that incidentally two of the chefs we were working with gratiano and cosimo we are two guys working in the kitchen at the time they were from italy so every service we were looking at what was happening in italy and i don't know if you remember but they were like a month or two weeks ahead on the kind of time scale of the virus so it's almost like we had a little crystal ball that this thing was going to be pretty big and obviously the media and the government at the time were downplaying it quite a bit so we don't really know just carry on and we were like no this is going to be serious because we could see it all in italy on the first day when we shut the restaurant before lockdown was announced and we just said hey we're sharp and yeah it was now we have shops it wasn't a very good shop at the time but it's job so we took all the wine out the back put it on the tables in the front and yeah put the cutlery stuff away and that was the beginning of the shop nice how and you do d2c as well right it was a d2c offer two days later because funnily enough when i was opening the restaurant i was working as a bike courier to just pay the rent and keep working while we were renovating the restaurant so just was like oh i i know how to deliver things we can do that so at the time like that immediate delivery thing wasn't massive it was before go puff or any of those like immediate things were existed so that was a bit of a secret weapon that we had there we were just it was a vibe it was pretty crazy times so speaking of vibe how have you managed to keep the feel of the restaurant experience you talk about your passion for hospitality into the shop experience yeah I think by doing what we do and being who we are and I think when we first opened the retail side that was a huge benefit for us I feel like we just take it for granted that's an interesting question for me to answer now that we've actually been in retail for so long when you walk into a typical wine shop the service is nothing memorable whereas when you come into one of our stores we treat you just like a like you walk into the restaurant so it's hey how's it going strike up a conversation and yeah we have a sequence of service that we follow so it's like your little steps of service all the way through a customer's experience and we just replicated that really obviously changed it a bit We're not serving food in the shops.

7:41But yeah, I hope that answers that in a good way because we just be ourselves and that's all we know how to do. And what do you think working the floor did in shaping the wine range that you now stuck? I think what's important with that is we've actually listened to the customers. A lot of wine ranges that you see are serving sommeliers and people who are like obsessed with the nuances of the wine trade. What we learned from our restaurant and from my time in hospitality is most people are not that interested in wine. It's like they just want something that tastes really good and is well made and within their price range.

8:23So I think that's the biggest thing we took away from the floor is actually, yeah, we're creating this list for the customer, not for us. There's so many wine lists and wine shops that you see where they have these incredible selections, but is it a bit too much for the average customer? Yeah, if you're going for us, which is to, we want to serve everyone in the mainstream. I appreciate a lot of those stores are actually targeting wine collectors and stuff like that, and that's fine. But yeah, I think that's why we're so popular really is because we just keep it simple and make it approachable.

8:57So we've talked a bit about this already, but how have you navigated that change from being a hospitality business this to a product-based brand what do you think you've done differently oh my god so that i can tell you now we've done it all backwards so we've created you know the story everything we've spoken about is true that happened we've started in hospitality and next thing this that the other so it's a brilliant story and it's all true now we're trying to tell that through our product range which already existed as well because we brought out products over the years just randomly and now we're a bit more established and we're trying to sell these products and commercialize the offering I suppose is the way of saying it that's really challenging to go backwards so what I wish we would have done is had a brand master plan or some sort of deck that is cool this is the plan so therefore this is what we're going to do to build that story out yeah I think that's the inexperience and then coming from hospitality you're like a problem solver and like just run and gun kind of thing get stuff done i think what i've learned is when you're doing like a brand project way better to just take a seat think things through really plan it map it what you're trying to say get all of your messaging really boxed off because like i said even though ours is 100 genuine and true it's not the easiest thing to get across to your customers if it's a bit muddy because for me it makes perfect sense and i'm sure it's probably coming across a little bit i know everything that's happened but what you really want to dial in on is like the key messaging we're still working on it it's a work in progress speaking of the brand what were your most important channels when you were starting out firstly build a brand I think visual identity we got lucky with us that was always just a key part of the restaurant even before we had ideas of anything I just it wasn't really planned but I think I just had a natural kind of eye for it and And I just knew what was important.

11:11So consistency, colors, things like that. So that helped us at the start. And then when it comes to the key channels, it was like just anything direct at first. So email was huge for us for a long time, still is. And social media was a big part of what we did. But that was like, we call that a bit of like soft channel because we never tracked anything. We just did it. Email was the most important channel. And then where we're at now is wholesale. it's our independent partners and like i said we wouldn't be able to work with them without building up that direct to consumer base first if i'm honest that's fallen off quite a lot for us our website sales have reduced but the overall revenue of the business is increasing year on year so it's like part of the strategy now for us is okay we've built this brand actually d2c we're better off outsourcing that to our wholesale partners and so we're at the beginning of that journey now so what I would say is it was all about direct connection so Instagram email to get us known in the world and now I'm happy to say we've reached a point where yeah that's cool we keep it going but we can get more traction down the wholesale path.

12:26Nice so is that like brand building through distribution so starting to see top give a nice independence? Exactly yeah and then independence is 100 % our focus now we do have a couple of big customers a few big deals like that we're working on right now but we are focused on our small independent like our peers because that like just goes back to who we are like they're we are you we know your pains and problems and yeah it's like from a salesy perspective it's like easy to sell into someone who you know their business like intimately but just genuinely it's like we love hospitality we like working with a small independence and where do you look to for inspiration that's a good question always like from other industries just yeah like everywhere fashion quite a lot but not to try and make it fashionable just like how they promote things what they do visually sometimes you see things that are trending obviously fashion is always one step ahead of the curve then the other one is like music I think that's quite interesting how independent artists go about promoting their themselves and their music especially when it comes to social media and like guerrilla marketing stuff i feel like there's some really interesting things you can see from up and coming like artists because they're just so creative by by definition similarly with fashion some of the smaller scrappier like streetwear brands it's not something that like i'm into personally but the way that they market what they do is incredible and they have small budgets and they get outsized results by being super creative and thinking outside the box yeah I love that you might have already just answered this question but your tone on social very distinctive where did that come from initially that's me that's my personality coming out so we now have this written down right as a bit of a guideline on how we talk and tone of voice so yeah that's like what we've done and I no longer run the social media account but it's hopefully it's like somewhat consistent because which we've taken the personality and systemize that rather than the other way around so I think sometimes it's a strength to work like that though especially if you're close to the business and you're a founder and you're you're doing it like yeah utilize your personality for sure yeah no and I think you've done the right thing it's the good it's definitely where a lot of brands start but then there comes a point where you've got to get it down on paper and it has to live and breathe on its own and not just be you even where it originated from you but then it becomes its own entity which is probably quite a relief for you as well if you're not having to do all the social content anymore it's a relief for its hard work because now I have to manage brilliant social media manager and I will say the results are better now because it's a bit more commercial you look at it a little bit more critically and actually okay yeah we're paying for this so it needs to do this but yeah it's not easy because you still have to manage it so yeah different problems yeah so you talked a bit about how wine has been like a very traditionally serious intimidating space why do you think humor cuts through so well in your category i think it's not what people are expecting and you will know this any good marketing isn't really like selling direct hey look at the product and check the product and check the wine so I feel like for us we use humor because it's a way to just be present and capture people's attention but without shoving things down their throat and then like any good marketer knows if you make people feel good or make people laugh and softly associate your product with that then they'll buy in the end anyway so I think yeah we never really cynically thought about that actually but that I think that's right if you catch you can get people's attention because no one wants to see a picture of a bottle of wine on instagram but if you're doing like a funny tiktok trend or something they'll watch it and then oh that's that wine shop i know about maybe i'll buy some wine i guess no one else is doing it right so it's isn't other wine brands particularly yeah it's uniquely us we never talk about wine really on the on our socials so i think that says it all really we just we're top cuvee yeah we could do anything we did a bike ride last week with hundreds of people that turned up and we like it that way we like top cuvee to be more yes we sell a lot of wine but when you see the top cuvee brand we want you to think about what the result of the product is if that makes sense so we want you to think about having a good time with your friends when you think about top cuvee not necessarily about drinking wine you've obviously got a really strong community around the brand how important do you think community has been to your growth oh it's absolutely essential a restaurant is community at the end of the day it's it's a place that people come day in day out and especially somewhere like ours it's local it's in the neighborhood so when i was working the floor there we'd have people coming in every sunday and they still come and they just they're friends now with our team so that's like the cornerstone of our business and that's all we knew about then when it came to retail same thing local neighborhood shops where you're coming in you're getting your weekly bottle of wine for the weekend cook your pasta and have a nice time with the family I think what we did is we took that community and tried to take it online during COVID and that was huge for us the big thing that we learned there was positivity at the time in our industry everything was super negative oh my god we need grants from the government oh this is so bad whereas we just we took an oath on day one we said we never even no matter how bad it is we're going to be positive and whatever if you try if they try and cancel us then so be it of course nobody did because what it's positive messaging so everyone likes that and then that's how we really won online during that period was because we were just putting out super positive vibes everything we did was a win and then it resonated with people so much and then we've stuck with that for sure so now like in our brand kind of guidelines it's yeah we are a positivity based company and yeah that helps and then that even runs through into like our community of internally with our teams and stuff it's always about having a positive mindset and just yeah then the rest comes if you think you you're doing great and you just want to show people a good time then it's going to be all right nice and do you think your community has influenced the brand's evolution yeah totally we're obsessed with our customers i know probably a lot of brands say that but we just are because of my background in fine dining it's too mitchell and star approach to running an e-commerce business yeah so that when we were really heavy on e-commerce that was like a thing if we had issues with fulfillment and stuff we would be like what would a michelin star restaurant do and that often would manifest in us like delivering like on the night going on our bikes to someone's house to drop something off and just really go in the next level that is now ingrained throughout the business that's how we operate and that's one of our core values is everyone leaves happy so that's just a non-negotiable in any interaction with top cuvee and then in addition it's just like listening to them and it's like taking people's cues we have the restaurant that allows us to get immediate feedback especially like stuff for new products and trialing out different ways of serving wine things like that and pairings and if even if they don't tell us directly because we do try to have conversations as much as possible and get information like that but sometimes it's like the sales on the till so this product is clearly popular what does that tell us and yeah and then we let that guide our decisions i think over time now we're leaning more into that product based thing it's a bit of a longer lead time so that method is again just for me being in hospitality or what was the best seller last week we'll do more of that obviously when it comes to sourcing wines and designing labels there's a bit more of lead time so we take our time a little bit more but yeah it's still the same method yeah I love that Michelin star approach although that must be hard work it is but that's why it's a competitive industry and it's yeah that's the good thing that you learn from hospitality if you're not smashing it every single service then you're not going to be busy the next day and that that's really something to mention if you're building a brand like though every single touch point every single interaction that you have like people remember it yeah it was one of my first hospitality jobs ever i can't remember they really nailed this but essentially it was like people just remember the last thing that happens the classic example is you've had an amazing meal in a restaurant and then you ask for the bill and they forget and then it takes 10 minutes and it's if realistically that's not a big deal but you've been there right that is annoying and then you leave there and that's how you remember the place and i think that's something you should really take into your brand building mindset every time every thing every interaction that someone has for your brand is like a memory maker and just you need to make sure those are good memories because people remember it and they just won't shop with you again or that's it you get one chance yeah i feel like that's a nice segue onto merch talking about brand touch points and putting loads of effort in you guys have got some amazing merch it's become kind of part of the brand's dna talk us through a couple of your favorite bits and then what your like approach to merch is favorite bits probably the cooler boxes that we have they're awesome i think a lot of it we have a bit of a like an industrial kind of vibe in the retail side of things and with the merch and And that comes down to like good quality materials.

22:48So like our tote bags, we get really thick cotton ones. And these coolers are like industrial standard ones because that's like tying into. I found like people really like what professionals use, whether that's like a chef. Oh, which knives do the chefs buy? Or what chopping board does the chef recommend? Stuff like that. So we try to sometimes make it like a little nod to, yeah, like we're the professionals. and you can have a little piece of that if you buy some of our merch and the other favorite one was like we did like a wine tote like a it was like a single bottle wine carrier and it was made of neoprene like a wetsuit so yeah that those are two favorites the two that lost us the most money as well incidentally we do it all again though nice with your community with your socials have there been any moments or posts along the way that have surprised you in terms of response there's been a couple of yeah like a couple of trend videos that have hit a few million views just out of nowhere so that for me was really surprising because that was one came from our social media manager that was like look we're gonna jump on these trends they'll do well it's a bit dead can we not come up with something original and then they're the biggest post by far did you see like value from that in real terms as well i'm gonna be honest not really because a lot of those viewers were in america so yeah it pumped up our numbers which is not bad that is good to get your account like active but yeah from a pure like brand building commercial perspective not really it's good for our egos this is what i think everyone wants to go viral although people have thankfully stopped putting into briefs now to agencies i think in the same way it was happening a while ago actually once you hit a certain number like to your point unlikely those are going to be the people you actually want to speak to and I've seen it before on Brad especially on TikTok you can rack up some crazy numbers but actually it's nice and you can use them and tell people that's happened but it doesn't do much to shift things not at all no but what we've done Josh who works for us the commercial managers he really like analytically thought about it and said what we should have is like a system where we're aiming to get these big numbers but then also we're serving our community as well so we try and we put out these viral kind of style videos but then we also make sure that we're making a bunch of content that's for our community and for our people and the idea is we'll slowly grow the audience and then serve them with valuable content along the way and that's really working well for us you have to have both of those things working in your account in order to grow and serve your audience.

25:39So we've talked about your hospitality values and how ingrained they are in the brand and how important they've been to building the brand. How do you think you'll hold on to those as you scale? Yeah, it's good. I think we've simplified them into one key message is wine for everyone. So any question, any decision that we have, it's does this make wine more accessible? Does this make wine fun? Yeah, that's the goal. That's the idea. We've written a little strap line. So it's top cuvee, wine for everyone. Most people find wine intimidating, so we've built a welcoming community, making great wine accessible to everyone so you can focus on having a good time with your friends.

26:20And that's our mission, and that's what we want to do. And it's important to remind ourselves of that regularly. And at every meeting, we talk about that, and everything that we do, we run it through our core values and I know a lot of people would have heard about that the importance of values in your business and when you're small it seems a bit excessive but honestly it's taken us this is our second iteration of this the values have always been the same to be honest and the values exist right whether you've got them written down or not you have them they're really useful tool that help with your decision making and then especially when you're bringing in other people have a question or trying to make decisions does it run through these four things if so then chances are we'll do it that's super super helpful and we use them all the time and like even with like random stuff like some of our designers labels and stuff we say hey just by the way these are our company values so get some in the right headspace for any kind of project nice no more hand delivering bottles on your bike though we still do a bit of that we just had a conversation though it's probably not cost effective anymore we like it because of the the eco side of things it's really probably important to mention like it's something that's been a big part of our business has done so many last mile delivery by bicycle courier yeah just with us the way it's gone now single bottles it works really well but yeah it's we'd still do it but it's just a killer sometimes you get a wholesale order and it's you can be out on your bike with 10 neoprene little bags yeah we have cargo bikes now but yeah like i said i was a bike courier for a while so i'm like yeah you can do it but you put in on a few hundred bottles of wine onto a bike it's not the best it's heavy is there a moment where you'll feel like we've made it i think we've yeah i don't know it's hard to answer that because i feel like we've already made it i never would have thought great we'd be doing this so in one sense we've already made it but then in the other yeah we'll never get there because it's just a treadmill of like constant improvement and no matter how many people we can touch there's always going to be more and yeah the sky's really is the limit and i think that's super important when you're trying to build something because if we just set an end point yeah cool i mean what you get there and that's it but reality i think you need to just think massive bigger than you're ever probably going to reach but as long as you're thinking that far ahead that's what's going to keep you going i think we've got it written down somewhere it's like 100 million pound turnover this and that and it's yeah that might get us to 10 million and that's cool i think that's important and then we do have a bit more of a scaled down realistic approach as well where we set we do quarterly annual and three and five year targets and just to try and bring us back down to earth a bit but yeah i feel like yeah it's a weird one because we do so much we have the restaurants there's always so much happening we just we're busy and people are always happy and there's things happening and so it's not like we're oh we need to get that listing and then we're sorted we're there so it's almost in our own hands to just see what comes and make the most of it what a great place to be yeah so final question we ask everyone in your opinion what makes a brand of tomorrow i think it's someone who's got a plan and someone who's customer focused you know that yeah i think that's my answer what makes the brand of tomorrow is your customers for sure so as long as you're serving them they'll be good to you and you've got to be going to have your wits about you because sometimes maybe customers don't know what they want just yet but you've got to know and you've got to be able to listen to them and read the room and then yeah providing you look after them and they have a good product good service listen to your customers then you'll have a strong brand for years to come it's not about the logo and the website or anything like that it's about your community and how you serve them nice thanks so much for coming on brodie my pleasure