How Hoxton Gin Became a Global Drinks Brand w/ Gerry Calabrese || Hoxton Gin || Getting to Grow

0:00I never thought that I could do anything in business because I had dyslexia and ADHD. I'd never been academic. You know, some of the best entrepreneurs I've had on the podcast are severely dyslexic and also have ADHD. You guys have a total superpower that other people don't. And we've got a lot wrong, don't get me wrong. I mean, I've made every mistake known to man with this thing. Tell us some big ones. Oh, overordering too much stock. I mean, I've had five different types of packaging designs as well because I've got ADHD and I've released something and I don't like it anymore. and I'm really doing it.

0:30And then you've got products on the market that's in different bottles. I mean, all sorts of stuff I've done wrong. I also think that the main difference between success and failure, one word, perseverance. You're not prepared to just grit your teeth and go through it when it all seems impossible. If Hoxton Gin went tomorrow, what would you be most proud of and then what also would you be doing? I would be most proud of giving it a go. Yeah. How many people build an International Dreams brand? Not that many. Yes. So to try, a guy called Bo Benston said to me really early on in my career, you know, the secret to success is hiring good people around you and knowing what you're good at and what you are.

1:09And like, I don't know why I didn't heed his advice. He said that to me 10 years before I started listening to him. Looking back, what has been the hardest moment in building Hoxton Gin? Wow. Before we get into today's episode, I want to give a shout out to a special sponsor, Sam Lawrence Recruitment. We all know that finding the right people or the right job can feel really overwhelming. And that's exactly where Sam comes in. He really just gets it. It's not just about ticking boxes. It's about connecting the right people with the right opportunities. He takes the time to understand you and exactly what you're looking for, whether you're building a team or taking that next career leap.

1:47So definitely get in touch. Trust me, you'll be glad you did. Charlie is a three-time founding member of Startup Brands, taking each from 0 to 1 million within 18 months, across different categories, channels and countries, including launching operations in the US and Australia. He is now the founder of Plugin Brands, an award-winning, outsourced FMCG sales agency working with the fast-growth food and drink brands, and Dive-In Agency, a tick-top shop agency helping brands turn social commerce into real revenue. With a background in go-to market strategy, brand development and distribution through retail and wholesale channels, there isn't any one better place to help you supercharge your brand.

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3:43We're all about creating delicious, dairy free, plant based treats that do not compromise on taste. from our creamy yogurts to our indulgent desserts. Everything's made with coconuts and a whole lot of care. If you're looking for something naturally good but seriously tasty, and my favourite is just our natural coconut yoghurt, I have it most mornings with granola and lots of honey. Trust me, you're going to absolutely love it. Welcome back to another episode of Getting to Grow. On this week's episode, we have Gerry Calabrese, the founder of Hoxton Gin. and Gerry has a really interesting story and I'm very excited to get into it behind the scenes of what you do day to day how you started, all the good stuff Thanks for having me Yeah, I'm excited and you're a podcast virgin I am a podcast virgin, this is my first one Go easy with me I will, I will, don't worry, or will I?

4:33But you grew up around one of the most famous bartenders in the world Salvatore Calbreze, which is just like an unbelievable name I don't know how anyone beats that name. So it's always been in your blood. It is, yeah. So when you were growing up, did you always imagine you'd end up building your own drinks brand? Not even remotely, no. Okay, take us back to what you do when you're younger, your childhood. To be honest, my old man was kind of like a godlike figure that I saw every other weekend. Because he worked at the Duke's Hotel in the 80s when I was very young. So he'd work a weekend off and a weekend on.

5:08So I would only ever see him every other couple of weeks at the weekend. and like you know so we didn't have I mean he was a great father right and he worked his socks off to to bring us up but like you know I didn't have that sort of connection with him when I was very young it was only because I've got ADHD and I'm dyslexic and so school was a torrid time for me yeah so like you know the only time I suppose I started to get to know my father is right really when I started I did work experience so I was very lucky that he worked at the Lanesboro Hotel and ran the bar at the Lanesbury in the 90s when I was doing work experience.

5:44And I went and did work experience and that was it. I was like, oh, something clicked. I was like, oh, I can do this. So I virtually basically at that point then bunked off school to go and work in hospitality from about 15. And I did everything from, I mean, I started a pot washing, then I went in the kitchens for a bit, didn't like that too much. It was a bit like being in the army. And then I went front of house and that's where I found my calling really. I just love people. I love talking. I love all that. And I ended up working in every single department between 14 to 18, I suppose. And that's when me and my dad started to have a connection because I suppose at that point, he respected my work ethic.

6:25Because I've got my first 100-hour payslip and I was 16 when I did that. So we had that connection then. But it wasn't ever a planned thing. It was in my lineage. I grew up around it I mean I made a cocktail I think when I was 13 years old in the kitchen and blew blew the shaker up because I put lemonade into it so like you know I've always been around it yeah I just I sort of fell into it it made sense for me and then when I got involved and I was passionate about it obviously having a father like my dad I mean it's mad what he's done I mean he grew up in post-war Italy with no shoes and socks on his feet like real property like his dad died when he was 11 working from he was 12 years old he was working made his first drink at 12 you know so to have come from that and done what he's done and created this whole legacy is absolutely fantastic i mean like the fact that you put gin and vodka in a freezer is because of my dad you know that like there is no that before my dad that didn't happen right bars because the bars having freezers behind the bar or like chilling glasses i mean that's my dad's legacy that's insane yeah so that's crazy so obviously for me going into the going into the industry there's like a a spotlight on me right because like you know you know no one likes nepotism yeah for me like I had to work really hard to just make sure I was the best of what I could be and that's what that's what I did and I also also wanted to carve my own way like I grew up watching my dad in sort of a white dinner jacket and dickie bow and dupont lighter at the at the ready and he sort of glides around the room and i'm like that just ain't me man it's just not who i am so like you know when i when i when i fancied being a bartender i spoke to him and he wanted to train me and i was like look dad like i want to go my own way like you know where can i go that's more in keeping with who i am so he sent me to lab bar um i think about 2001 yeah and like uh and lab was owned by Douglas Ancruz like the godfather of one-step bartending came out the Dick Bradshaw school of bartending and like um created the porn star martini and I walked in lab for the first time in old Compton street in Soho and the whole place just stunk of like lime and mint and like there's house music going there's this cool looking motherfucker behind the bar covered in tattoos called Tolga from South Africa flaring and three pretty girls sat in front of the bar and I'm like I can do this yeah hang on a minute this this I can do right so that's that's kind of where I started like and uh started my career in bartending and then I just got into competitions and doing competitions myself and um and I was kind of passionate about like great drinks made well at speed yeah and that was kind of like the foundations of my career and what I then went on to do like owning venues was like you know and then there was a little bit of flirtation with nightlife as well like I used to throw parties around the east end so like I suppose when I then went on to create my first venue it was kind of an amalgamation of all the things that I loved which was music and great drinks yeah so cool what a cool like like initial story as well like what you know from your dad and then you're right nepotism does if you're a kid out of it you have to actually work way harder than anybody else because you've got a spotlight on you yeah and like people wait for you to fail and like not and for you not to be as good as yeah as what's preceded you and i just think that you know it's great to go into an industry especially like being italian as well you have that whole first son thing i'm the oldest son like following in the footsteps so it's quite nice to sort of pass on a legacy and have a legacy and a thread through our family but like you know you've got to also make your own way you know 100 and not just be a carbon copy you know yeah absolutely did you originally then always see yourself like staying behind the bar so I did at first I never thought that I could do anything in business because I had dyslexia and uh and uh and ADHD like I'd never been academic so like the thought of trying to do anything with numbers or anything like that was completely alien to me and I left school quite young but then when I started relating it to a pound note all of a sudden maths and numbers started to make sense because like all right see okay okay I'm revenue okay I get revenue it's weird how they don't teach maths in that context in school it's crazy how they don't teach it and also you know some of the best entrepreneurs I've had on the podcast are like severely dyslexic and also have ADHD like you guys have a total superpower that other people don't and it's mental how it's not honed in an environment in school where actually if you have that you can't do a normal academic you know literature that people are set out to do because your brain doesn't work like that 100 % and even like the times of the day like you know I'm best at night like I can't I can't I mean I can't do emails and things like that in the in the morning or during the day I'll do that at night it's weird like it's just something that's ingrained in me so like trying to sort of conform to a sort of like school environment it's nine to three and very prescriptive every day you get burnt out and you can't focus and you can't you just can't um you can't get your attention so it's it's a it's a weird thing but I think that's what's great about being an entrepreneur is you get to mold your own time and work the way you want to work I mean frankly I'm unemployable which is probably why I've ended up I was gonna say I think you'd be hard to employ because you have so much energy and you want to do this i can like get that from you already also can i just say i think i've met my match in terms of like decibel oh really i am so loud and everyone's always saying to me you're so loud and i'm like and what i am i am noisy but i mean mostly because i'm mutton right because i've spent so much of my time in nightlife where the speakers have been loud so like i'm honestly i think i need to go and gear up for some hearing aids or something because i'm always being told mate you're talking so loudly the whole fucking room can hear you yeah me too like i'm literally exactly saying my boyfriend will probably have tinnitus at the age of 40 but i'm like look there's other benefits you know we have a laugh um so let's go back to when the moment for the idea for like hoxton gin first came to you um it was in the early 2010s um and the gin kind of scene was really booming so i was a bit before that a bit before that yeah like like the idea the idea yeah like because like like i sort of worked and was establishing bars that were heavily aimed at young people.

13:04And like, I mean, when I opened the Pony, which was 2008, I was passionate about gin. And I had 40 different types of gin on my back shelf at that time, which was more gin than anyone else had in the country. I think there was only one other bar in the country that had as much gin as me, and that was the Bramble in Edinburgh, right? So the gin market just wasn't what it is now. Yeah. And I love gin because of the way it's versatile, and each but there's so many different variations of botanicals and all sorts of it gives it like within mixology and bartending it gives you a great canvas for a drink but I kind of looked on my back shelf and I was like I had all these cool creative I mean it's in shortage right so it was like peak hipster culture so I have all these creative types coming in and out my bar all under 30 and I'm like well even the gins are kind of aimed at them in terms of taste like in the botanical profiling like uh it was at the start of new western style gins with like hendrix cucumber and rose on the four note less juniper driven uh i suppose the first new western style gin was probably tanker a 10 grapefruit innovation and then um aviation as well was doing doing its thing uh gg vine as well i thought well if you look at those bottles you know Hendrix Gin, Victoriana Medicine Bottle, you know Steeps in History and Provenance,

14:27Tankeray 10, Art Deco, Same Aviation. I thought well if you can do a product that's kind of aimed at young consumers in terms of not just what's in the bottle but like how it speaks to them in branding and packaging and all that stuff you know there might be an opportunity and also because I was passionate about gin, gin was a declining market at that point so I was like well you know what's lasted 350 years and not evolved or developed in time you know and kept up with time because otherwise you know if you don't engage new drinkers then the category declines and eventually it disappears so that was my starting point and I'd worked as a brand ambassador for a company in France called Gabriel Boudier in 2005 and like these guys are like experts at putting real fruit into booze so like their creme de cassis i'll get a bit geeky now no i love it but their creme de cassis is like in my opinion the best creme de cassis in the world they're using like 650 grams of fresh fruit per liter of alcohol wow any more fresh fruit you're basically an alcoholic jam right and that is very difficult to do because like as soon as you put that much fruit in something as soon as you open it you know you get oxidization so like you know that's why fresh fruit isn't used in spirits a lot because it oxidizes and it changes the taste and the tannin and all the rest of it so it's very difficult to use real fruit in in booze in that way so i thought well i've got this relationship you know i'll uh i want to try and reimagine what gin is was kind of a starting point and And to be honest, my only kind of, I suppose, modus operandi in the whole thing was to serve it in my own bars.

16:09It wasn't like I was turning into trying to create a business. I just had this bar and I wanted to create something for my customers. And I went out to see the guys in France and said to them, you know, I've got this idea. And would they support me? And they would. So I went away and started to think about what I could do. and I thought, well, you know, if I tinker with botanicals, it's just another variation of what it's always been. So I thought, what could really rip the rule book up? So I rested on coconuts. I love coconuts. Who the fuck puts coconut in gin? Well, apparently I do. So that's where I started with the idea of putting coconut because that's just so alien.

16:52So this is your original one here, the coconut. Yeah, tropical gin. So that little bad boy there in the yellow. It's cool. And tell me about the little, the squares. What does this represent? Hoxton Square. Ah. So, you know, if you look at Hoxton via a bird's eye view, it's the perfect square. So that's the whole idea behind the variations of the square. That's cool. I love it. Yeah. I like the idea of, like, I think you have to rip up the rule, but, like, you can't bring something that's the same, same to market. You're right. Like, it won't work. Like, it needs to be disruptive. It needs to be different.

17:25It needs to be loud. I mean, I was really taken apart by the industry as well. I had an incident with Simon Difford, who won't, I love Simon, he's a great guy, but who ran Class Magazine at the time, you know, and he put the bottle upside down on his page of shame, because he didn't constitute a gin. So I was quite public about it, I was like, look, Simon, what's lasted all this time, 350 years of evolution, and like, it's declining, like, if you want the category to last, you've got to find a way of getting young drinkers involved in the category, almost as a stepping stone. So it's like, right, if they're engaged with Hoxton, surely that's a good thing.

18:02Then they might go on and try Hendrix and they'll go on and try something else and so on and so forth. But if you don't have a stepping stone on the way into the category that appeals to young consumers, then it will die. I mean, it's happening with whiskey at the moment. You know, so it's like, you know, you've got to do this stuff. And at the end of the day, I like to think that I was proven to be right, because now the gin market's like crazy. And there's lots of variations of gin that are very different. and I was one of the first to do it, which is good. I also feel like lockdown had a big part to play in gin.

18:35Like it was a real time that people were at home a lot and trying different drinks and having it at home. It's certainly when I was drinking a lot more gin than I ever did. It was the only way we got through, right? I mean, it was... Literally. I was climbing the walls like a cat. People were either like doing one thing. They were either like getting really healthy, like Joe Wicks bloody dumping about there. I wasn't that guy. I was boozing. Or you were boozing in the sun and like literally there were two ends of the spectrum. um so you were very intentional with your like kind of ripping up the rule book yeah but this as you said was only for the people that were coming to your bar at the time yeah I wasn't intending for it to be a business like and like but I was fortunate so if I go back a bit like I'd um I'd sort of always worked and lived in East London it's just where I feel at home I'm from East London originally but like you know when I when I sort of started setting out my stall as a bartender I used to love working in East London you know it's just the vibe the creativity the energy I think East London represents sort of a microcosm of everything that's great about London it's diversity it's culture like cross-culture cross-culturally yeah fashion industry think about like the YBAs that were all squatting around there back in the 90s like the warehouse parties like I just love that area and I I'd lived there and I had a I used to run a bar called meat which was a 24-hour cocktail bar whoa in 2000 and uh yeah 2005 it was peak which was just a nuts place and i had this crazy guy a guy called edward christinelle who was uh uh high up he would hate me for saying his name he was high up in the city he was a city headhunter yeah he used to be my best customer so no way ed used to come in on a tuesday at me and because it was 24 hours he'd come in on a Tuesday and leave his car behind the bar and pick it up the following Thursday oh my god so anyway I've gotten that I got to know him really well and we ended up and I couldn't afford it but he he could I ended up being his flatmate so like I ended up in this penthouse flat on the corner of Fanshawe street now bearing in mind at that point I'm a GM like the wages were crap back then I mean it was paid like under 30 grand a year but I'm living in this flat on this street in fanshaw street which is right behind hoxton square and like it was a bit of a party flat and we got to know all our neighbors now that street was mad right you had stuart trevor the founder of all saints who owns stuart trevor the fashion brand now you had mark gillespie who owned 360 group who managed mark ronson calvin harris all these cats right you had a guy who's high up at Deutsche Bank.

21:15You had a guy called Michael Hart, who's sadly not with us anymore. He was the youngest ever partner at a Magic Circle law firm, a corporate partner, who actually helped me set the company up. And I just thought to myself, well, all these guys are here and in shortage because it's cool. But yeah, anytime they're going on a date or having a business meeting, they're going into town. So I kind of sat there and thought, well, if I can open a bar on the doorstep that is still cool but is high-end enough in terms of service delivery that these guys will go i'll be on to something yeah so that's that was the foundations of the hoxton pony so that and then i found a pool hall that was doing six grand a week at the time in revenue uh managed to get it managed to get investment and opened it in 2008 uh a couple of weeks after my first kid was born which is insane no wonder that marriage didn't last and uh and uh and that was it and then like all of a sudden like mark sending me mark ronson to play and calvin harris and it just became this whole zeitgeist moment like it was crazy and it's probably the only thing i've ever done in business that just worked first time like everything else after that's been hard yards right but that thing for some for whatever reason it just went right That's so cool.

22:37And that's where, like, you know, so then because I had the pony and I'd just done Hoxton, all of a sudden, you know, the things getting photographed with, like, Ed Sheeran or, like, Calvin Harris or, I mean, back then Gavin and Stacey were a thing, so Matt Horne, like, having a drink. Whoa. That's how, you know, so it was just like this moment in time. And it ended up with, like, Agnes Dean's kid sister, Emily Dean, holding a bottle of Hoxton on the front cover of the Evening Standard, with Vodka's Dead, Gin Seasony Resurgence in London, thanks to Hoxton. Like, you can't write like that. Do you know what I mean?

23:13Yeah. And then off the back of that, I was approached by a distributor. And the distributor says to me, like, Jerry, we love what you're doing, all this marketing. It's so cool. We want to turn this into a proper business. Like, we'll support you. We'll take on the supply chain. We'll buy the product. We'll distribute it. And then we'll give you a commission. in every case we sell i think great i mean at this point i'm under offer on my second bar and my whole itch is to grow a bar business so i did that deal and that's pretty much how it stayed till 2019 and then 2019 at that point i had i think seven venues across london housing three and a half thousand people like 100 staff i mean the whole thing was giving me mad mad angina yeah i can imagine and like it was just a lot right and i barely ever slept and like the whole thing and i was about to become a dad again and i i just i kind of had enough uh of everything and i needed a break so i decided that i was going to sell up and then i'm like what do i do now yeah so um i thought well we've got hoxton so let me think about that so i then you know bought the distributor out of the agreement we had, ripped it up and went on to set up distribution myself and start investing and getting a little team together and that's how it all started properly from 2019 onwards is when it started to become a proper business Whoa!

24:51I'm just taking a bit about that, I don't think I've ever had a story quite like that Really? No. That's pretty insane. I mean, it's been a bit of a mad ride, I've got to be honest. You don't realise until you tell someone else, actually. Well, yeah, when you sit down and speak about it, it's so rare someone says, like, tell me about your last 20 years. Yeah, it's been a mad ride. That has been mental. And we've got a lot wrong, I don't get me wrong. I mean, I've made every mistake known to man with this thing. Tell us some big ones. Oh, overordering too much stock. Yeah. I mean, that was horrendous.

25:23I mean, I've had five different types of packaging designs as well, because I've got ADHD and I've released something and I don't like it anymore and I've rebuilt it again. And then you've got products on the market that's in different bottles. I mean, all sorts of stuff I've done wrong. Yeah, so it's been a mad old ride, really has. Yeah, whoa, I mean... We're not even really scratching the surface. No, we're literally not. At the time, in terms of the category and the gin, when you then like took it back over and you were like right this is going to be my focus I'm going to like put my time and energy into that what was your aim at that point I wasn't sure um what what happened was uh I got run over like yeah I got right yeah yeah I got just after I sold the business I got run over and I broke my leg in four places compound fracture the whole nine yards it It was pretty bad.

26:19Just like, obviously we didn't know COVID was around the corner and then COVID happened. And I had like a, what was called a non-union fracture. So basically their first operation, they put a metal thing in my leg to get my bones. Do you beat when you go to the airport now? No, they don't do that anymore. Cause you've got to do this whole scanning thing. Oh yeah, that radioactive one. of course. So, so like I ended up with, on a walking stick for like two years and not being very mobile throughout COVID because I couldn't get an operation to fix them. non-union fracture so I then spent those two years researching the booze business like and that's what I did during that time just to keep myself sane and the thing that kind of I saw was this opportunity around flavor obviously I'd already released tropical gin and that was flavor forward and uh the one thing that sort of jumped off the page is that you know young consumers are now category agnostic and what I mean by that is that if I grew up a whiskey drinker generally I'm going to stick in my lane right I'm going to drink whiskey if I'm going to go to the bar I'm going to probably have a whiskey cocktail when I go to the supermarket I'm probably going to buy whiskey if I want to buy a drink and my main reason for doing that is because I like whiskey as a category if you look at youth consumption it's pretty much a global phenomenon now number one criteria for purchase is flavor beyond everything else right flavor first they're now category agnostic so they'll flip between whiskey to rum to rum to gin to rum to tequila like you know without any real allegiance and the reason for doing so is flavor beyond everything else and this is backed up by statistics like you know and if you look at the flavor category it's due to grow 17 % year on year for the next five years.

28:07Yet most traditional spirits are declining by 2 % because of youth consumption. So I'm like, right, well that poses a problem and an opportunity. Problem is trade hates flavour. So bartenders generally hate flavour products for three reasons in my view. Number one, big brands have been using it to brand block for decades. so what i mean by brand blocking is that they'll do a deal where they'll support a bar with a check and go look we want you to stock our vodka pour our vodka and we'll write you this check but yeah you know we want these 15 flavor expressions on the back shelf and you know what we don't really even care if you sell them it's means of advertising right brand blocking number two Two, flavours full of junk, primarily, mostly.

28:58So if you had the same labelling requirements on booze as you do our food, most of these things wouldn't get out of the gate. You're talking like six to 800 grams of sugar per litre of alcohol in a lot of cases. E-numbers, like synthetic ingredients, synthetic flavours, like terrible stuff. So, and then number three, it's perceived as cheap. You know, so I'm not going to mention any specific brands, but there's a lot of brands that operate in the flavor space and they're cheap. Well, because what they're doing is they're taking the core products that they already have and then they're just adding a load of E numbers or a load of synthetic flavors into it post distillation.

29:40Yeah. So it's just not in keeping with the traditions of fine spirit manufacturing. so I thought well if I could create a range of flavoured spirits which are as natural as possible and in keeping with the traditions of fine spirit making and is perceived as premium then bartenders will start using them because ultimately the the largest demographic going out frequenting bars and restaurants are younger people so like we should have like flavours around to stay so let's create some products that are actually good products not you know just enough just a sort of cynical ploy to create some more volume which is really what the flavor category is at the moment is it's it's it's quite cynical from big booze companies with minimal effort just to create some extra volume off of existing lines yeah and it's interesting actually because you're right like if i go out for drinks with my friends and they're gin drinkers they'll always get a flavor gin there you go yeah it's quite a lot of the time that flavor gin will contain junk it will be a synthetic flavor whereas what we're doing is real maceration so like if you think about like if you put a tea bag in hot water right you're going to drink it you're not drinking tea you're drinking hot water which has taken on the characteristics of the tea via osmosis yeah of course that's essentially what maceration is you're getting the booze yeah you're putting real fruit into it and you're turning it and cooking it over time for the booze to take on the taste and characteristics of that flavor yeah inherently expensive complicated to do yeah because you have to test if you go okay we'll create a banana rum yeah right how do you know how long you should macerate that banana for in that rum in order to create the the optimum extraction well you don't know until you test it absolutely it's five to try it at five days you try it at five weeks you try out of 10 weeks yeah it's a constant thing you've got 12 years of like you know heart painstaking product development on that on that table there in front of you like it's crazy i mean the banana rum i'd given i was doing that during lockdown and i was messing around cooking bananas forever in a day you weren't making banana bread then like everyone else i was cooking but i was cooking bananas it's a rum like it was a bit boozy in my house and um you know like i was getting all this great stuff so like you know like getting sediment from the fresh fruit of the banana you're getting these earthy tones you're getting this natural sweetness from the fructose that occurs in the cooking of it the maceration of it you get a beautiful banana nose but i was getting no taste of banana like yeah i spent ages doing this and then i was about to bin it off and then i think i can't remember i'm the first the end of the first lockdown second lockdown third lockdown i don't remember i got invited to a house party in hackney wick and then like as any good house party guest does you go and buy something to turn up with right yeah so i go to a corner shop get a couple of bottles of rum down and i walk around to the counter and uh and i see a bag of banana chips banana chips so i buy a big bag of banana chips and take them with me to the party and i basically spend all night on this party cooking bananas banana chips into rum right i'm getting everyone wasted on it and this time like i'm getting this horrible looking yellow liquid but i'm getting all this taste of banana so i emailed my manufacturer in france uh that day and a few weeks later i get the sample back there's this horrible kind of liquid but it no nose none of that other good stuff but i got this taste of banana so i ended up with like five day maceration of fresh fruit in the rum yeah and a five week maceration of dry fruit in the rum and then it's a 50 50 blend 100 natural no added sugar but like you've got to go through this process in order to get real flavor into into a product you've got to go through this process so i talked my hands so i'm knocking the mic no it's fine i love it and i think a lot of people romanticize don't they like starting a business and being a founder and having like their name founder attached to but you know as well as anyone and every founder i've had on here it's not glamorous you know it's really hard but it you know the reality involves like a hell of a lot of production as we've spoken about trial and error distribution regulation because you're an alcohol brand and a hell of a lot of logistics.

34:03Yep, correct. What were the biggest challenges in the early days of launching Hoxton Gin? I mean, money always. Yeah. Money's hard work, isn't it? So you end up spending time raising money rather than focus on running your business because I'm especially like in this game, you're up against some big, big players with writing some big, big checks. Deep pockets. So, like, you know, you have to have, you know, investment to keep the lights on. And, you know, regulation, you know, due diligence for each market. I mean, like, you just don't know what's in front of you. Like, for instance, you know, running a cash flow in a bar is quite easy to do because you know what your peaks and troughs are.

34:48You know that in summer, if you've not got any outside space, it's going to go down and winter is going to come up. you know if you're heavy gear on outside space in the winter it'll be the opposite you know which are going to be your busy weekends so you know you know you've got a pattern throughout the year and you can plan your cash flow and your and your costs around that in this game you know like i started speaking to a to a distributor in indonesia two years ago right so it's like we had an loi a letter of intent to to get distribution in indonesia then we're like okay right so it's a muslim country primarily muslim country all the recipes need to be registered with their their their principality principality and their board and all the rest of it two years two years to get those licenses before you can even talk about getting an order so like all of a sudden so if you're thinking okay well six months from point of getting commitment to accessing the market and getting an order and getting some cash in And if you put that in your cash flow, there's going to be a big gap.

35:48So there's just so much you just don't know and you've got to pick your way through as you go. And we're getting quite good at it now. Yeah, of course. You better as time goes on. But there is just so much in the beginning that you're just not aware of. It's crazy. And what would you say was probably your biggest mistake looking back? I mean, I met an investor that let me down big time. Really? Yeah, so that was horrible. and that put me in a really, really bad situation. It nearly sunk me. And I suppose I was too... The reason that deal got done was because I was too much in a rush and I was desperate for funding and a significant amount of funding to keep the lights on so I could focus on running the business and I was sick of doing investment meetings every 30 seconds.

36:40so I was sort of attracted to that my head was turned and uh and to be honest if I hadn't done that I would have been in a much better place you know so you know but you just for me throughout my life I've been successful and I've failed right but I learned more from my failures than I ever did my successes in fact my successes turned me into a cocky git you know like you know where it's like The failures humble you. They're lessons that you can take and take forward. And I also see moments of failure as a cleansing experience, and it's cathartic because you end up with the people in your life that you're supposed to have.

37:21Because when you're successful on your way up, there's a lot of people that will try and come with you. But then when you're on a bit of a period of bad luck, you'll realise and recognise who's supposed to be around because they're the people that are with you from thick and thin. 100 % so like I think like I love the the term rise and fall in fact it's my next toe on my knuckles is it yeah yeah because I because I just I think I think the falling is more important than the rising you know I really do believe that it's just part of the journey and if you're too fixated on the destination you won't enjoy the ride getting there you know and I think you've got to take stock and enjoy the moments and the and the hardships and like the warning to do it and yeah I actually I really agree with you and I don't think I'd ever like felt that until last November when I um I hiked the Inca Trail I really really really wanted to hike the Inca Trail and I wanted to like get to the destination see Machu Picchu and we did this like five day trek like off the side up the side of the Andes and you know we stayed in tents like we carried all our own food and just like did this amazing five day hike I got to Machu Picchu and I was faced with like hundreds of influencers with their selfie sticks.

38:38Like, oh, I'm at the top of Machu Picchu. And I just thought what I've just done was so... And I'd never like been in a situation before where like the journey meant more. Like I'd never had that like experience other than then. I was just like, you guys, yeah, okay, amazing. You've seen, you know, A Wonder of the World and Machu Picchu is obviously phenomenal to see. Like definitely recommend, like obviously go see it. And they might not have had the time. I don't know what their story was. but the journey of getting to Machu Picchu and like the giggles we had along the way and like you know when we were like weeing on the side of a mountain in the middle of the night and there might be like a bear like that stuff was so cool and oh the people we met and who we were with that was so much cooler than like the end goal than the arrival yeah I believe that I also think that the main difference between success and failure one word perseverance like if you're not prepared to just grit your teeth and go through it when it all seems impossible and everybody in your life is telling you give the ghost up right you've got to be able to find a way through if it's something you believe in and that then that hardship and that test of endurance is what sustains you because when you get beyond it and you're like okay i have done it and i have got to the next point now nothing's ever sort of final but like you've got to enjoy get going through those hurdles and those obstacles and navigating your way through to that next stage yeah 100 and your gut is like your massive guardian angel in this and again another example where this like came into play for me was last week i we were talking in the lift i got stuck in dubai i mean that's a madness right that was a madness but the amount of people that like opinions i had of people being like oh you better stay put you know it's risky going to oman but i was like no i'm gonna ignore all of you i have to go to oman that's their only flights going out of muskett i need to leave this country everyone was like stay put, stay put, stay put and I just said no, like I can't listen to another opinion I'm getting on a coach for 12 hours and I'm going to a man I've got home but if I'd stayed I might still be there yeah well everyone like everyone has an opinion as a spectator yeah don't they but I mean at the end of the day you're in it exactly and you've got to know yourself and you've got you know and at the end of the day like you know what's the worst that can happen well in that scenario quite a lot well in that scenario yes Yes, my scenario, we ain't got life and death.

40:57But I mean, like, you know, it fails. Well, you know, pick yourself up, dash yourself up, do something else. But like, you know, I don't want to, I wouldn't ever want to have given up just because I gave up. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like, if I've got the possibility of getting beyond and doing that next bit, then I'm going to try and do it, you know, because you just don't know otherwise, you know. Absolutely. Don't want to squander the chance. And there's a lot of gins now in the category. As you said, like, it's, you know, it's quite a crowded market. There's loads and loads. How do you guys constantly stay ahead of competition and always make sure that you guys are the ones at the forefront of people's minds?

41:32Well, I suppose for me, we're not just a gym brand anymore. So we've got six products at the moment. We've got two more on the way. We've got Amaro. We've got Banana Rum. We've got Spiced Whiskey. And what we are is essentially a portfolio of flavoured spirits. You know, that's premium flavoured spirits. They look so cool. I love them. Thank you so much. They're like little collector's items. They are. They are little collector's items. You need like key rings now. that's a good idea i'll nick that yeah i like the idea of having a key ring of that so like you know it's and like we just try and you know focus on building advocacy and trade doing cool stuff that's authentic um and uh and like you know working hard you know i mean we're now i think this year we'll probably be in over 20 markets you know like you just don't know what you don't know right like amaro the london spritz that is in 1700 supermarkets in australia Wow.

42:26In Coles, is it? That's it. No, Coles has got banana rum and spiced whiskey. The Amaro's in Dan Murphy's and BWS. Okay, yeah. But I thought that was going to, I kind of did that as a labour of love. Yeah. I think like the aperitivo market has got like, there's a lot of products in there with no real fruit and loads of sugar. Yeah. And that is low sugar and loads of real fruit. 450 grams of real fruit per litre of alcohol and very low sugar content, right? so I just did it as a labour of love like I never expected to sell 20 ,000 cases of that stuff globally let alone to one customer in Australia you don't know what you don't know until you give it a punt right?

43:06Absolutely I just also was speaking about ideas and about keyring I just had a really good idea for your business cards. Go on. So you know how you get minis? That should be your business card but it should have like your name and your number and your email on it and like you give out minis. Can we hire you? I like I just I don't know why but I was thinking about minis and then I was like oh key ring and I was like oh my gosh you need minis like a little mini bottle yeah but it has your name or email and be like that's my business card that's a very good idea that's so cool I might steal it go for it yeah that would be unbelievable how like that would just be such a flex like getting it out of your pocket I don't know how expensive it would be to do yeah I know I haven't thought about logistics or cost but there's your idea and like coming from hospitality and how like being a founder as we spoke about was like never in your like spectrum of thoughts I'm curious about how that approach has actually like made you the founder that you are and do you think that bartenders and operators have an advantage when building a drinks band so the second part of the question definitely yes I think like you know at the end of the day bartenders are aware of trends they're aware of the craft that goes into making these things and can develop things in a way like the way I've kind of deployed my expertise is kind of thinking about the end consumption like how do you create something in the bottle with the customer in mind at the end of it right so like you know you don't have to be a mixologist to make these products taste good like you put one ingredient into one of my products it tastes like a cocktail you know and i think that's a unique take on developing a spirits brand right that to have like the end use in mind from the outset yeah rather than looking at the liquid in isolation thinking about the journey and the experience of the customer and how the thing is going to be used like at home in a bar yeah that gives you an advantage as a as a bartender in terms of developing these like products i mean as a founder i mean i i don't know i just i suppose the biggest thing is like if you come from hospitality you have a kind of relentless mindset towards work right like there's not many industries where working 70 to 100 hours a week is normal no so like banking maybe so like you know like when you're founding a business like you know there is so much to do all of the time you're never off yeah and I think that that's been particularly helpful for me is like you know having that foundation of that graft and that work ethic kind of makes it bearable when you're up at 6am and then talking to Australia at midnight it like it's just you know it's part of part of who you are already well my next question was going to be what what have you like remembered from the bars days most that you've taken through to your like you know where you are now but would it be that like constant relentless work ethic i think so as well and also just having fun with it yeah i like you know i don't take myself too seriously i don't take the business too seriously i don't like i'm not like okay look we can geek out about the science of what's in the bottle but that's really not what the brand's about the brand's about having fun not taking itself too seriously like you know i'm not telling you how to drink it you want to put coke or sprite with tropical gin tastes great did it yeah like like for me like that kind of just you know enjoyment of life that i've had from the bar bar industry i've sort of tried to bring through into this i mean like we're in manchester on tuesday i'm still recovering from it we just we went out there and threw a massive party yeah that's what we did we basically went up there we had disciples there we flew lines in from Athens which top eight bar in the world those guys came over did a bar takeover for us in a wicked little bar called Tangerine in Manchester like they did the cocktails and I called a favour from Luke from the disciples and he DJed for me and we just threw a big old knees up like you know we didn't bother about talking about liquids or anything like that literally come and drink some come and drink some of the products and listen to some great music yeah but that's so key because people hate being sold to yeah like people really don't enjoy you know being marketed a product but if you're saying look enjoy my drink at a party hopefully you like one day down the line they'll go buy it because they enjoyed it that time they remember that time they had exactly yeah and um speaking a bit about the business side and the capital kind of obviously only share what you're you're happy to share here but what are you guys turning over now as a business oh i don't know if my business partner were like me saying fine no fair enough we're on track to do somewhere between 40 and 60 000 cases this year that's insane so that that'll give you an idea yeah that's so cool and where do you what's the next like five years of growth for you guys what's the plan uh so i'm uh currently under developed with some new product development so we've got a vodka coming yeah okay tequila coming cool and we might also have a range of rtds just because i know i'm twitchy gear i can't stop no but you know it's how your buzz balls took over the world didn't they so i feel like just like and obviously we've got the distribution and one of the one one of the ways you can advance further growth is through new product development and also like try things like for me like if one of those products didn't sell but i'd stop producing it yeah like like you know if i've got the ability to turn around new product development it's my passion yeah so like if i can sit in a lab and create new products all day and that's all i did i'd be quite happy with that so like why not you know throw some stuff at the wall and see if it sticks yeah absolutely absolutely um and looking back what has been the hardest moment in building hotston gin uh wow um well i mean it's just just the you know the pits and troughs of being an entrepreneur nearing bankruptcy several moments it cost me a marriage yeah hopefully just the one well yeah so i'm not great at being married to be fair um but yeah you know like it's it's it's hard yards like it's hard yards like you know i've like i've had some dark moments like obviously moments where i've slept in the office you know trying to avoid a disaster or something going on or meeting a production schedule or you know investors not turning up with money but like you know I just grit your teeth and try and get through it and what mistake ended up being the best lesson uh I suppose overhauling stock yeah you know like you know because you know at the end of the day like you know how do you forecast a global market you know how do you do that well I didn't know so like it's a tough question isn't it like you know we we ordered way too much stock way too much stock and then we pay for storage and all the rest of it and i think like you know i think sometimes like just revising your ambition like and just you know having a bit of a bit of a word for yourself and also like bringing expertise that's i think that's another thing that i've kind of learned in time like when i was a bar operator i was a massive control freak and i used to do everything myself right i I used to run the company.

50:31I used to develop the menus. I used to do the hiring. I used to build the training programs, just do all this stuff with the help from my brother at the time. And now we've got a CEO in, so I'm not CEO anymore. Someone that's got the expertise in finance and doing the day-to-day stuff that needs to be done so I can focus on what I'm good at. I brought in a wonderful person called Stuart who comes from, I mean, he was high level at Picardy, was the MD of Campari UK. Wow. Like, you know, got to have people around you to listen to. Yeah. Like, you know, if you try and do it all yourself, especially in an area where you're new to it, which I was.

51:17You know, I've been in the business my whole life, but I've never tried to run a company. I've never tried to build an international drinks company before. Like, it's a very different skill set to running and operating bars. you know and i try to apply the same level of commitment and ownership over every facet of the business initially like i did with the bars without having the without having the understanding of the expertise to do so and um and i you know it's weird because people around me early on told me stuff right i'll never forget like an investor of mine really great guy he was a guy that's the founder of Just Eat, a guy called Bo Benston, said to me really early on in my career, you know, the secret to success is hiring good people around you and knowing what you're good at and what you want.

52:03And like, I don't know why I didn't heed his advice because he said that to me 10 years before I started listening to it. You know, like it's a crazy, crazy thing. But again, that comes from lessons and mistakes. Like it's very easy to take advice and not listen to it or heed advice and not listen to it until like you've made the mistakes that make that advice count yeah absolutely and also like your mindset at the time when you heard it might not have been like exactly where you needed to be to hear it yeah and also like when you're young you're cocky right yeah you are you're like i don't need your advice i know everything exactly do you know what i mean well it's like so with benefit of age and making mistakes and stuff you start listening you know and you're also more humble and more prepared to take things on.