Why Everyone’s Drinking Ready-to-Drink Cocktails | Black Lines

0:00Cocktails are notoriously slow and confusing. As a consumer I was like I was always really interested in food and drink but I never really like got cocktails. I think I'd drunk lots of cocktails but didn't understand like the history, the complexity, the detail, like the variety on the menu. I couldn't look at a menu and understand exactly what's going on and I think it was quite telling that like I felt like I was someone who knew the industry or like knew hospitality relatively well but even I didn't know much about drinks and it felt like something I wanted to understand better and it felt like we had an opportunity if we got it all right.

0:30that actually consumers could be brought into this story much better by a concept that didn't alienate them and didn't confuse them. Yeah, I think the one thing I do know about cocktails is, you know, a very good one from a very bad one. Yeah. So that's the one thing I would say is that when you're having a cocktail out, you can tell like a crap pre-made one. Like it's either really sugary or it's like quite syrupy and sticky. Whereas when it's made fresh, and especially in front of you in like a nice bar, a good cocktail really like sets the tone for an evening. Yeah, well, I love that. I love that thought.

0:56Before 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. So 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.

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2:18Getting to Grow is also brought to you by the Coconut Collab. And full disclosure, as I'm sure most of you are aware, I work there. So I know how much love goes into everything that we make. We'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.

2:50Welcome back to another episode of Getting to Grow. On this week's episode, we have Colleen Comarcia, who is the co-founder of Black Lines. Now, they do such an amazing range, which they have very kindly brought loads to show you guys today. But I actually first was introduced to them when I was invited to your Oatnog launch at the Rix-O-Bar in Chelsea, which was amazing. and actually I was living with a housemate at the time and we literally came home with like four bottles and drank them well we loved them um but I'm very excited margarita is my thing like that is my go-to drink ever so I'm very excited to try this later um but um would you like to introduce yourself and tell me a little bit about you yeah for sure my name's Colleen um you mentioned co-founder of Black Lines I uh have been running Black Lines for seven and a half years now um it started actually eight and a half years ago my business partner started the business but um i'm proudly co-founder as well yeah um a bit about me um i started out my career in sort of consultancy i guess for a tiny bit and then into starting my street food business and then very much fell into into drinks but i love it and how did you meet um what was the gentleman that started how did you meet him um i slid into his dms oh um i was running the street food business for like a year and a half yeah I have University I was on my own and kind of the idea was open a restaurant and then ideally you know a chain of restaurants in the future yeah yeah and got this this point where I had everything set up to open a restaurant what kind of the build guys and the interior design team and we're gonna rebrand a bit and I had no idea how to run a bar so I was like I've done the food for you and a half I've got a good idea of what I'm doing there but no idea how to deliver drinks obviously need a good offer so I started looking at pre-batched or some solution basically for cocktails and found Casey on Instagram doing a little one-man band job and went for a coffee with him and I just um I think I catfished him a bit I basically messaged him from like my street food business account and he thought I was opening a restaurant one of his cocktails that was kind of the premise I thought as well but I was falling about I'd love opening a restaurant I was a bit I was on my own I had no idea really how to do it uh it felt a really big step very capital intensive so um i guess in the midst of all this thinking i was like this pre-batch cocktail thing looks quite quite cool never seen it before aferol spritz out of a tap like surely that's got some legs um we went for a coffee at the hotel and i just said to him like straight up i was like i'm really sorry like i don't want cocktails in my restaurant but really like what you're doing just like checking and see how you're getting on and he said uh okay fine and we sat for like an hour and a half he had a coffee obviously I didn't yeah and a glass of water and just chatted about where he was at and he was kind of a year in had set up this amazing foundation of a business um his whole background was in drinks he was group bar manager at a storehouse before he started before he started the business um and I he just felt like there was a really natural fit there he was kind of looking for what the next step was going to be I think needed some some support commercially and strategically and that's where I really that's what I love basically doing um so I just said to him um give me half the business and I'll join you and we'll do it together uh took him two months to say yes and then he did uh clearly not a good negotiator but it's been seven and a half years since amazing so it wasn't kind of like linear in terms of how you got into into F &B at all and also like I love that you were straight in like I can see this is going to go somewhere but I want to have business so you were very like targeted and I felt like it had some values yeah I think at that point in time and it felt always the right thing that I think it's good to have two co-founders I think it's really important to have definitely like difference of opinions and difference of backgrounds we're like very different people as well but obviously got on super well and it just yeah it seemed like there was a really good matchup of of skills he's incredible what he does um I definitely wanted to get on that so yeah I also think it's really important to have like your yin and your yang when you're a co-founder like you need you need the differences opinion you need someone to like bounce off um and also with you getting like half the business i think that's also really important because it means that you've also got skin in the game so you're going to work just as hard yeah that's it we're both like fully committed yeah we don't like to run a business where we kind of work ourselves into the ground but i think it's so good to have two people that are like pulling in the same direction even if they've got different um different skills and if you can kind of like sum up your why in terms of why you're doing what you're doing what would you say I think like starting a business has always been on the cards it's what I always wanted to do I always felt my dad because I kind of moved over from Kenya when he was like 19 and was an accountant and consultant and then started his own businesses basically when I was younger it was always like before going to bed it was like what what have you been doing today like what are you working on and I think I just got the bug then it was kind of that bit that was like you can do it why couldn't I do it he did it I've learned all about these little bits and bobs and just felt super natural that I would do a similar thing I love doing like a variety of different bits as well I've never been someone to like focus on one thing so I think yeah it felt really natural to start a business yeah after university it was just like how do I do it what's the first one yeah yeah how do I get stuck into something and then it just kind of rolled from there so it ran in the blood yeah I think so I think it was just that like attitude so like if someone can do it why can't I do it um yeah definitely he taught me definitely and I think that's actually an interesting point I think I was speaking earlier on podcast I recorded and we were talking about how um like teaching that entrepreneurial like action kind of value is really difficult to teach you sort of either have it or you don't when it comes to the why you work for a business I think when you're in a corporate it's maybe something you could potentially like you know you hide behind your a cog whereas when you're like you and me and I'm similar to the sense of you like we are very invested like we want it we're doing we're kind of doers in the business and that's kind of a big fat sign of an entrepreneurial like person um back in 2017 when um like draft cocktails kind of weren't really mainstream what made you believe this was going to be like the next big shift in hospitality I think it was as a consumer so Casey's business background is like in in bars in drinks he could see the solution for me you know there's definitely like an understanding what the solution could be for bars I hadn't really run bars or been in bars before but you know I could see that it could be a massive benefit and cocktails like notoriously slow and confusing as a consumer I was like I was always really interested in food and drink yeah never really like got cocktails I think I drunk lots of cocktails but didn't understand like the history the complexity the detail like the variety on the menu I couldn't look at menu and understand exactly what's going on and I think it was quite telling that like I I felt like I was someone who knew the industry or like knew hospitality relatively well, but even I didn't know much about drinks and it felt like somehow I wanted to understand better.

9:45And it felt like we had an opportunity if we got it all right, that actually consumers could be brought into this story much better by like a concept that didn't alienate them and didn't confuse them, but actually made great cocktails like really accessible in like at home as well as in great venues. And I think, yeah, for me, I saw the kind of solution because Casey was already doing some business and I could see appetite for it in the right places. And there was definitely like commercial opportunity. There was enough margin. I think we can make enough margin to like to make it make sense as a business and still deliver great cocktails for venues.

10:17But yeah, I guess from a consumer perspective, it felt like there was an opportunity to go and change the space. I think a lot of people feel the same idea at the time, which is that cocktails are confusing and expensive and intimidating and can be kind of stuffy. Yeah, I think the one thing I do know about cocktails as you know a very good one from a very bad one yeah so that's the one thing i would say is that when you're having a cocktail out you can firstly i think you can you can tell like a crap pre-made one like it's either really sugary or it's like quite syrupy and sticky whereas when it's made fresh and especially in front of you in like a nice bar a good cocktail really like sets the tone for an evening yeah definitely so like if i yeah there's how and it's also how sometimes you start your evening right like i'll start on a cocktail i wouldn't drink cocktails throughout dinner really yeah it's something you have before and after and then drug wine or whatever throughout so it kind of sets the beginning and it sets the end so it's a really nice you need to have a good cocktail in my opinion to have a good evening yeah well i love that i love that thought i think the reality as well is that you can go to an amazing cocktail bar and great get a great cocktail we love that we love the theater of it as a business like we like really support that side of things but i think there's like a group of restaurants bars hospitality venues where you're not going somewhere where they've got an amazing histologist who spent like 10 years behind the bar and it's gonna make you something really creative and you're gonna be worth your money you're going to venues often they're like great pubs or or great restaurants and bars that are there for vibing it yeah experience not for like a bow tie and a 14 15 pound cocktail and actually you still want a great like great liquid in those environments definitely and that's where we we're definitely not a kind of a volume player we're not here to like tick off witherspoons but we want to be like anywhere you don't have an amazing cocktail bartender we want to be there to deliver that that liquid and that experience in venues that need it so did you start in like kind of draft like bigger formats and then you've gone into bottles selling to retail or d2c we had to start with draft so drafts kind of our bread and butter it's what case he was working on it so house group before we started the business he was kind of working on a pre-batch offering for so is he at so her house yeah he was the manager at so house before he started the business and he basically spent like five years working on a pre-batch offer the rooftop of shoreditch house that went from a jugs bar so just like mixing the syrups together topping with soda um over like that year one and then year five was like putting it into corny kegs these are like refillable kegs charging with co2 behind the bar to get carbonation and pouring out the taps on like the shoreditch house rooftop um and it worked like it's not it wasn't a consistent way of doing things you had like not a great environment for doing like actual pre-batching um and carbonating like that's not very not very effective basically but like he could see the solution of like a cocktail in a keg come out of tap and delivering great quality and consistency working so when he left the business that was the kind of idea was to do draft cocktails but do them properly look at the best breweries distilleries wineries take lessons there wasn't like a great pre-batch cocktail business at the time at all there was no precedent of it so um there was no way to go and look and kind of like get tips from or emulate so it's like yeah look at all these different places what do i need to make an amazing cocktail how do i start doing that and it started off with i think it was april spirits and nigroni when he first started when i met him and we had like a mojito on the go at some point as well and we've worked on lots of different products but that first bit the first three years was let's make draft cocktails for like as good as we can make them let's go challenge them let's put them into venues that are going to say no to us and just like prove that they're gonna work so the standard hotel we've worked with now for like six seven years we put a Negronian on tap into Harris dining hall and the whole idea was like let's let's test ourselves yeah with bartenders who are gonna say no this is this is weird and disgusting so that we make the products like properly impressive yeah and then they can work anywhere and that was always the priority actually when I first met Casey that one of the first things I said was like we need to we need to rebrand this business the draft side could have been an amazing b2b offering but was never going to like touch consumers really having nothing to take home nothing to buy off the shelves so we were always working towards like what does a consumer-facing product look like and the idea was bottles and we um we had this like this nice brand that casey had built with an agency really lovely looking premium it did everything it needed to do for us from a b2b perspective but didn't tell like a really exciting forward thinking story I think when you look at that offer it's like we can change cocktails so why does our brand look like an old gym brand And we basically pulled like the first year in case I weren't together We like we changed a lot of things.

14:56I just it was the really easy fixes for me I think it was kind of a I could show value really quick. We basically Negotiate prices like cost down with all of our suppliers up to all our prices because they just wasn't enough margin at the time and had a good summer I did all the sales with Casey and we had a really good summer and like our first year first year working together we're really profitable and we just poured all that profit back into working with an agency to basically build a new brand for the business spent a year working with them and then yeah that bottle that bottle story was always going to come with it we didn't feel like it was going to come that quick because like the market wasn't necessarily that ready for a bottle cocktail we started trying them in the standard like the library in the standard hotel in 2019, end of 2019, when we first launched Black Lions.

15:44And luckily we had the bottles because COVID hit in March 2020. All our bars closed, all the draft taps stopped, and the bottles were like fair game, had to start and get going with them. And where did the name Black Lions come from? So it's the name of one of the first pieces of abstract art by a guy called Kandinsky. The idea behind the brand was that we wanted to take cocktails forward. So like abstract art was this kind of idea I think people like obviously craft beer has always been surrounded by a kind of art and Illustration and creativity. We felt like we wanted to bring that same creativity into cocktails and like real identity so we worked with lots of artists, but Yeah, the idea was to like to take cocktails to a new to a new ground like abstract art did in in the art world so we kind of attached ourselves this this painting black lines and each drink has its own illustrator artists attached to it and um it's been lovely to work with i think gives brian lots of kind of interesting feeling and it's really cool it really stands out like it's really unique and different um yeah i really really like it and um what's one unique insight that you had about the cocktail industry that maybe others have overlooked because there are like loads and loads of players now when it comes to um like bottled cocktails i think i think me and casey are both like pretty neurotic when it comes to like what we put into the world the team are the same like we have the same attitude and approach whether it's in the production team sales team marketing team like we want to deliver like things we're really proud of and I think we wouldn't be doing this now if we if we weren't thinking that way we've had opportunities to look at really big volume plays and deliver something that is cheap and effective but that's not how we see this this movement I think there are lots of players in our market now loads more than when we started obviously who are going to fill holes and and do good things and I think there's also a lot that's done really badly and it gives pre-batch cocktails unfortunately still like a pretty tainted name um yeah for us it's just always been about delivering product that I want to take to my mate's house and and drink with loads of pride I want to have my friends pouring at their wedding I want to go to like my favorite bar and have it and be really proud of what what we're making and I think if we're relatively clear that if we stick with that and if we make sure that everything we do fits that like and it hits that same brief and we never waver then that's your all-star yeah yeah I said we want to do cocktails like amazingly well yeah we want to be like you know the answer to cocktails in the future I think pre-batch is becoming more and more common everywhere I don't know why it hasn't been in the past but yeah cocktail world's changing and we'd love to be like a leader in that charge to say like you can have a pre-batch cocktail that doesn't taste shit yeah basically and you mentioned that you're getting married next week which is really exciting yeah very exciting so what cocktails do you have on offer uh so well we're gonna have some we actually can't do we can't do cocktails in the uk wedding which is a heartbreak we're gonna have some for the afters because you know there's caulkage and all that stuff but it's a baseball wedding basically in the uk but we're getting married in kenya amazing in october and actually uh that's where the cocktails are gonna be a big priority are you like changing any of their names to like work quiz that's not really my that's not really my vibe okay so we're gonna keep it ready to be classic yeah maybe we should get one name but it's gonna be our first bit of export actually okay exciting yeah weird way to do export for first time for your own wedding yeah but also like really good insight good insight I guess yeah your first customer of your own product that's the one so I'm getting a bit trouble for being a bit slow on it but okay my next job is to try and export some cocktails to Kenya yeah amazing and um with the um like with that and like you mentioned about export is that actually something that's maybe like on the the cards for you guys in terms of getting it just like outside the UK I think it's always it's always like interesting to look at there's obviously opportunity outside the UK and lots of it we kind of we've been so focused on what is like just one market but we we're really we're really clear that export is not kind of the story for us just yet i think we've got so much to aim at so much good work to do we want to build our name here really and then like then export comes easy and we've got so much we always feel like we've got so much more to do but i think there is like lots to lots of stones still lots of white space to go after yeah yeah that's what's really exciting for us yeah definitely um and we touched a little bit on covid in 2020 now when it happened um and how how was that for you so obviously luckily you had the bottles right yeah so was your website like up and ready for kind of that traffic was it March like March 20th or something March 20th yeah something like that I think we had we had the website live by like 7th of April um bottles we had like the fulfillment with DPDs set up got premises license um it was quite funny poor Casey actually like all of it because obviously he was the one like close to the yeah yeah we were all we're all dotted around uh like uk i guess in the team there were five of us at the time and yeah we just all like all just works hard we could get everything live as quickly as possible luckily had some stock and then we like started producing bottles from then like more consistently but we were designing labels like the label some of the labels still stand today and actually i brought uh well the spice tomies margarita and the neronia labels they were designed in like april 2020 in the midst of COVID.

21:03Really? Yeah Jake our designer was at home in Brighton, I was in Surrey, Casey and Bethnal Green and we were just like sat on calls designing labels and like I mean I hate them now. Do you? Yeah. Why? I've hated them for a long time just because we like we had to smash them together so quick and I think I stare at them and see mistakes. Not like spelling mistakes or anything I just feel like we could have been we could have been sharpen our design approach but you know they've stood the test time for now we're working on a bit of a new brand Jamie Muck that's the one yeah yeah you can change that though can't you like you can always pit in for a new you know it's so much harder I remember sitting there thinking like I said to the guys like we were loads of I mean I about what they should look like what's the final design gonna be I said because like we need to wait one more day because it seems like it's gonna be really easy to change in a year the moment the products go out we start launching new products like always followed the same design design like aesthetic and then suddenly you've got eight products or six products that we've changed right okay yeah there's a long time actually confident enough to say new products are gonna have a new design so you've got like the Apertiro Spritz the Paloma here they're all I kind of a new design style completely different but yeah that COVID piece was really interesting we worked really hard to get everything live we kind of kept the whole team on we made sure that we were as active as possible through that period suddenly no revenue so we started having to build up new ways to find revenue it was how do we deliver to people's homes the first batch of orders we had low support of smart friends in the first week and we sent them all out in wholesale boxes with DVD and we were like rubbing our hands together like we've done something we've got it got it going and then half the half the boxes to smash on the way because how stupid are we not to think about that they might be tossing boxes into the back of vans and and we needed better packaging yeah it was like this really exciting moment of getting out of the mud and then we're straight back in it um there was loads of fixes i loved it it was i was going to say it's how you test and learn in those days and actually those mistakes you made early thank god you made them then versus on route to a fat drop of tesco where they all smashed on route like you know i mean it's like at least you you found out small problems then that can you can change quickly 100 but it was really difficult obviously like when it happened it felt really confusing but it was an opportunity for us and actually what came out of it was the suddenly pre-batch cocktails were on people's radar you had like the best bars in London across the UK making bottle cocktails because that was the only offer they had consumers were drinking cocktails at home way more than they ever had before definitely only a bottle cocktail felt like really natural yeah we had an opportunity to just say like we've got no revenue we've got no opportunity here with the draft we've just sit and wait on that one um but there's time to spend the next year or whatever this might look like launching all the bottles so we just went and we just launched bottle after bottle got the full range we had on draft into bottle came out of covid with like eight draft products eight bottle products suddenly like a properly mature offer um yeah like it in theory it was it was horrible but in in reality i think it was such a um important learning period and we actually you know we had a great time doing it i think we were we were a really small team we still are a small team but everyone was just committed to making things happen yeah get shit done yeah I think that's the difference between like a small business versus like a big business like everybody's just so action driven we're like right this is what happened by tomorrow at 12 it's getting done yeah um and what metric do you watch most closely now when it comes to like your business is it kind of speed of serve is it like customer feedback um like margin sustainability um and all those things what do you like look at as like your biggest metric I guess it's a real cop-out but I think we're really focused on the full picture.

24:47I think for me, the financials have to stack up always. We haven't raised any investments since we started. So this business has been about delivering proper products at the right price with the right cost base so that we can continue to grow the business and continue to adapt and build out new things. We can't make really big mistakes anywhere along the way. I'm always watching the numbers. And I think it makes us really effective at what we do because we have to be super efficient. We can't, there's no like, no big pot of money to kind of just fall back into when we make mistakes. How has investment worked?

25:27Have you got external investment? We haven't, no. It's all self-funded at the moment. Yeah, it's all funded from like profit from previous year. It goes back to the business and we reinvest. It means that we're like always really tight. Like the business is running really tightly in terms of cash and things. but we're good at managing it yeah definitely and like i said i think it promotes better decision making i think it makes us like leaner and more efficient we know like when we're growing we're growing with with purpose yeah um i think there'll come a time i'm sure like maybe maybe soon where we want to sort of accelerate a little bit faster but we would never want to take money and suddenly become like a massively loss making business we want to deliver like a proper business yeah i think that's really key i think you know when you are in the early stages your money is you're not sitting on a big pot of cash where it's like you can dip in and dip out you are really you are looking at things where you are on tight margins you are a really lean team yeah but actually i think what that does is it gives you you're super laser focused you can't go willy nilly oh let's try this let's try this you're like no i need this to return so this is where i'm putting my effort in um which has like obviously sometimes bigger benefits of coming out because you've been this is my I need to achieve this yeah 100 % I think it makes you like question question every yeah like a small decision is it worthwhile is what's going to deliver for us so and what would you say has been your biggest high today and your biggest low biggest high yeah I'll start with the biggest low to be fair like I don't really look back um and think about too many lows I've like we've worked through everything we've we've had like kind of come at us and I always look back on it with kind of a rose-tinted view because it's exciting it's the next thing and we've learned from things but I think we had a time in COVID in August 2020 where basically we had worked with one exclusive distributor before COVID and they were great like did a really good job for us one of the biggest like craft brewery partners in the UK and we're delivering like amazing restaurants and bars and it felt a great fit we said we'll put everything through you and August 2020 came and it was like the first time I got on holiday obviously because it was it was COVID but I got away to France with them with my partner's family and like just about to send me out of office and I get an email and it's like the distributor who basically owed us like 45 grand which at the time was like a huge amount of money it was like a fifth of our revenue at the time um had gone into administration and I was like right um need to sort of deal with this all of our stock was with them whatever or they had a load of our stock they had 40k of debt we were not going to be getting back and we had no way to like deliver to our customers at the time so I was in France I was like it's not really the moment for this but do you mind can you just like can I just quickly finish like topping up my tan then I'll look back at this honestly well Casey I'd never I'd never even help with like with sorting stuff out and it's really difficult to get back at the time yeah Casey and Morgan our team was he was one of our kind of earliest team members just hard as it was it van luckily we've been really clear with our distributor we need to know exactly who's buying what date like when which stock so we had a full list of our customers we're really hands-on with our customers as well so we knew who who was taking what and we just got every single one of them that day all the breweries are it stopped because like none of them knew who was buying which bit he was selling to a distribution it was all going but yeah for us we had these like reports every week so we got in touch with all of them casing and morgan then hard as it ran filled with the kegs and did it like a full week of drops and like from that moment on we've delivered direct from that first week like we've delivered direct we haven't missed any uh orders we haven't had stockhouses it's like it's been amazing since but 40k just went in there you never got that back no still sitting there maybe one day we'll get her yeah i'm not gonna sit back now yeah but yeah it was tough did you still You have to deliver direct to every single customer now?

29:19Yeah. That's really interesting because that is usually how a lot of businesses start because they need to build up want from wholesalers, et cetera, to then get the listing to then grow. Does that not really eat into your margin, having to deliver to every single one direct? As we've grown the business, we've just been really clear on there are ways to deliver effectively with good service and at the right price. And we need to find them and we need to build them into our offer and we need to make sure we build a warehouse and fulfillment team that can manage like one two three maybe four different partners so we can deliver nationwide I think we have probably one of the lowest MOQs and fastest delivery setups okay like the UK so you own that distribution well you know we work with loads of partners but we have different partners for different different needs basically we've got a pallet delivery service we've got a courier delivery service across the UK we've got like in London we've got a team we work with that have two vans that deliver every like four days a week for us but specific delivery days it's basically our delivery service we have like for smaller sample deliveries we use DVD we've got like a London econ firm and partner so all our e-com all our wholesale everything goes out of our facility in Tottenham okay interesting yeah I mean it's such an it's such a good way to have like hands-on like customer experience because you then have direct relationships like constantly and that's okay yeah 100 % and for us you know the our product it can be really seasonal like a Wembley customer and we don't want it to go through another party because we get visibility of what's coming or like what's working what's going to come next suddenly you get a 50 grand order in and no one's warned you a bit or yeah who's it from yeah you don't know no so yeah we're really hands-on also i guess it helps you really manage stock quite well because you're then you know if you know your customer they're telling you maybe weeks out right we're going to have a big week this week so you can go okay well what i can factor that in my supply chain my gantt chart you know get it all out whereas sometimes if you don't have that visibility and you know my day job at coconut collab we sometimes do have this issue because we deliver to some obviously um regional and national wholesalers wholesalers and i we have a forecast from them but we sometimes don't know if a big customer will just drop in 100 cases of something that we didn't plan for so therefore we don't have stock and we aren't because we're a chilled product we don't have like we can't sit on stock yeah we have to be quite like right well we have to forecast very accurately because we can't afford like constant wastage obviously like no business can yeah whereas it's not like maybe a drink where you can sit on about you know sometimes a year in a bottle that's delicious to have a year shelf life yeah i can't even imagine well i've like sometimes i have like 30 days the chilled store i can't even i think that would be like beyond i wouldn't have clear how to do it yeah it's just you just have to be a lot more organized and stuff um and just like really be on your kind of your forecasting yeah but obviously sometimes it really is out of your hands you don't know 100 um and is there anything that keeps you up at night about your business?

32:08Yeah lots of things I reckon the thing now like that's most stressful I suppose is like we have 21 people in the team so there's 21 salaries that rely on the business to make sure they're paid every month and make sure like the team are looked after and I think like not that we've got any of our concerns at all but it's just like we want to make sure that we're doing right by our team and yeah obviously making sure they're paid but like outside of that too and I think when you're building a business without too much money like it can be a you know it can be a stress that's always our priority is to make sure our team's sorted and they're like we'll never let them down but yeah just you know want to make sure things continue the same way in the same vein so that we can keep supporting that that team and speaking of team how do you go about kind of the hiring process and what is your 21 members of your team at the moment what are they made up of is it mainly sales is it mainly like distributors like in supply chain as such or say yeah marketing we sort of like have a 50 50 split in the business so half the team work from tottenham that's where the factory is and that's kind of production warehousing operations probably just a little bit over half and then the commercial team we work from waterloo and that is sales marketing like kind of front of house operations and do you own your own factory in tottenham yeah it's our factory yeah that's amazing as well because like so many businesses have to outsource that yeah because they can't afford their own like factory so you built the factory yeah we did we i mean we've been in tottenham for like seven and a half years when i first met casey we were in this tiny little i don't know if you remember like wild fizz kombucha yeah yeah yeah um so oh my gosh that is a throwback he was yeah when i first met casey he went he rented like a tiny little room with a full ceiling probably the size of this room like with one tank at the back of that their kombucha brewery and i met him and i was like oh like great let's this is the room um and then we kind of bounced around from there so there's a bottling plant around the corner from us so we were there for a year in this little room we needed more space we found the bottling plant around the corner and they had some space so we moved in there for a year it's amazing we got to see so many different products coming through and watch their process like pick up a couple of people actually when they like when they moved like we took a great people from that business um so we moved there always around the same industrial estate basically but kept moving like just bigger and bigger and then in 2022 i think 2021 we actually went back into the same unit we'd been to start with with with wild fizz but at that point we had half the unit and they had half the unit they closed their business unfortunately meant that we took the whole unit suddenly we had this like 4 000 square foot unit from being the little room in the front at the back um built that and that was like kind of office warehouse production production in the back warehouse in the middle outgrew that at some point and the unit two doors down came available so we took that unit rebuilt the production facility stripped the whole thing like put all new flooring in new kit um and that was then full production we had a warehouse and office two doors down and then suddenly that warehouse started to get quite full so we've got another storage unit around the corner um so yeah just like we've just slowly wow built it up and how lucky to have that like full ownership of your site you know because yeah and process as well yeah for sure because that is something that if you you know something goes wrong you you can get there very quickly um you know our factories with coconut they're not easily accessible yeah so if something does go wrong you know it's not necessarily as maybe as easy to pop there you have to kind of really think about your journey um so for you guys to have that hands-on like right i'll be there in an hour i'll be there in two seconds i'll walk across the room from the office it's really really special oh we love it i think we've outsourced once in our in our eight years and it was fine yeah we bottled and um we knew the bottom line we're working with actually and we kind of we knew what the quality was going to be like but actually just wasn't like what came back wasn't what we were expecting the product sat for too long beforehand like the labels weren't all straight and silly things like that like we were really meticulous about things and it just was like you're doing what we prefer to do things sorry about that we prefer to do things um ourselves because we want to control things we want to make sure this product is as we expect it to be every time um it's bloody hard to be fair but yeah we just like we said let's take it one step at a time and um you know you have to jump for a lot more hoops you have to get your own sales recreditation you have to get your own like food safety and how you have to learn all that stuff because you haven't you can't just go to a factory that's made like bottled anything of course yeah you've got to learn all the kind of extra bits that you can outsource yeah and it takes more time but at the end of the day we've got a team that like way more included i think than than most I'm biased but we have a team like understand what they're doing like from start to finish across the board yeah it's lovely like we're also super agile when I launch a new product the development happens in the lab in the factory so we can work on stuff we can tweak our products we can we taste the spice on his margarita for like two three a period of some we're like you know actually we can make it better we found a new lime juice supplier we found a new spirit partner we can tweak this in a few months rather than going to a partner and refixing a recipe and maybe not having ownership of that whole process and sourcing of the alcohol does it come from all over the world yeah so we it used to like we used to only work with well we we tried to work with british independent distilleries as far as possible obviously there are some products we use that don't like aren't made in in britain so you can't get tequila yeah literally yeah it's a big one uh we get our vermouth in from spain uh wine from France so yeah I'm also like across the globe now the important things for us with our partners are that they have the same like mindset ethos that we do that they're producing sustainably and like incredible products wherever we can find it basically that's kind of like really define how we build products if we can't find the right liquid for the right for the products we just we'll just park it the old-fashioned is an example that we were looking at for eight years now don't you know fashion we actually got really close this year and it's kind of all fallen away but um that's another story but um you know whiskey's super hard to get it right to get the right quality of liquid to get the right like solution that we can get in bulk we suppose a lot of um scottish distilleries that just can't send us whiskey in bulk because has to be bottled in whiskey in in scotland rather to be called um like scotch whiskey so yeah there's there's lots of complexity but we do yeah we source at a minute from across the across the world yeah and then of course i'm sure like importing alcohol comes with its own like issues and yeah and things like that because you can't just import alcohol can you no well again like you just you just um you learn as you go yeah suddenly you need to import alcohol and you call around and work out who's doing it and how you're supposed to do it yeah accreditation and you do all that stuff but casey's amazing to be fair like that really fun detail yeah i don't want to get that's my worst nightmare um when it comes to hiring and you were speaking about your team and what's one trait that you look for?

38:52Actually Tara was like I told her about it she read the question talking about us yesterday and she said I know what you're gonna say it's hungry yeah which makes me sound so cringe no it's not like I think we just want people that are like eager and excited to get stuck in yeah and to learn and grow and we don't like we don't feel that anyone has any limitations so we want to open up an opportunity to say like if you think you can come make a difference here and and do something really great and obviously fill a hole that we need to fill too um we want to have you on board and we want to have you driving things forward definitely yeah definitely that and with um with the kind of future of the brand do you see it as a household name um like going forward like a forever brand that's here to stay or do you have like an exit strategy in you know five ten fifteen years whatever it might be or is this uh it's going to be passed down to the kids it's uh it's funny when i first started the business with when i first joined casey you know i put this kind of strategy together and it was the classic startup strategy of like run it five years flip it move on go and like buy a house in the Bahamas we didn't keep that at all you know the idea was like you know prove concept and raise money yeah well knee cross is a little two bed flab is it's doing me right yeah but yeah it was like the idea was do the classic startup thing raise money lose money raise more money build a brand sell it out the I show buys it everyone's everyone's laughing and then we started the business and actually got into it and it was like we don't want to do that why would we do that we love what we're doing there's an opportunity to like properly learn some stuff I'm like very like frustratingly principle when it comes to the finance side of things I always wanted to make a properly sustainable like self sustainable business and something that's profitable I think for me it like it's a real sense of pride there and I think it's still doable in this in this world so So, yeah, we didn't follow that script at all.

40:46And we are, like, not following it now. I think we just want to build a business that we love to be part of. We want to take it as far as we can. The moment we start doing really badly with it, or, like, it should be in someone else's hands, I think we'll definitely consider it. And obviously we're always open to, like, what comes. But we definitely see, like, years and years of growth and opportunity for us in the business. So we want to, yeah, take it for as long as we can. and if you um if like kids are on the cards or whatever in the future like you'll definitely be the very cool dad or the cool uncle or whatever or the cool you know well yeah well yeah that's kind of cool because you can come to my house because you're gonna have all the beers all the all the different types of alcohols yeah yeah no it's a nice nice industry too far definitely um and what makes what kind of motivates you um in as a founder i think like you are you're the go to for so much until you step away as like a day-to-day figure in the business um when times get really tough what keeps you really motivated i think i'm just like i'm so committed to what we're what we're doing and the team we have now as it gets bigger like there's more reason to stay engaged it gets more exciting i love the challenge of like what we do every day so um you know like no matter how stressful it gets i think there's always there's always a learn there one and like this is what i've always wanted to do so you know if i was to run away from this to go start another business i think will be my next thing if i believe this and um i don't see like right now how i would find an opportunity better than i have now to keep growing and learning yeah and with um i've got a question actually just thought of in terms of like marketing and activation like later on and how you kind of throughout how you activate because i think so much of alcohol is branded in like a fun let's go out let's go drinking kind of way and you know you also have non-alc stuff as well right yeah so like how do you how do you work between the non-alc and the alc kind of side of things and then how do you like market that in sense of yeah what are your marketing activations because i can see you guys like you've obviously got your gorgeous bar like in rixo i could see so many more of them across London and making like the black lines like a bit of a go-to yeah I think we're like working towards a future where maybe activations and concessions are a bit more regular for us activations we've always found difficult like as a brand that doesn't have loads of money activations can be just really resource heavy yeah so resource heavy so we the way we do activate is with partners that like that really understand what we do and we're going to add value we always have this notion that we want to add value whether it's from like a liquid perspective a brand perspective we want to be like a brand that really supports their partners the National Theatre I think for us has been a really lovely opportunity where we've we started working with them last year and we now do like all the theatre bars the main bar like every cocktail really in the National Theatre now is one of ours and as a result we've just put a great relationship with them we we want to really help them build the right menus and approach and they basically had this container on the on the South Bank and they just like sort of gave it to us to to Bratton so like as part of the bigger the biggest process there like we've then got for the whole summer this lovely branded black lines bar uh on the south bank like visited by so many people yeah that supports the the team there and that gives them a really hopefully exciting kind of focal point for their offer and allows us to suddenly be activated without you know like just randomly paying for a picture at a festival or um or throwing lots of cash at an opportunity that all brands are looking at um and with those activations i think they're great because it gives you like a touch point to the customer to come and have an experience and then want to go buy online right what if like a buyer of tesco came up to the the bar on south bank and said i want to list like you know your margarita in every single one of our stores is that something you guys are looking towards to do as well it's um it's a really difficult story like the big retail piece supermarkets um not not at the minute yeah it's not really like for us i don't think one i think the brand's not like rich enough yet to to be like really like pulled off stores off shelves really readily and two our like our whole ethos has been about working with great independent partners or great venue partners that and and retailers that kind of understand what we do in in real detail and we're not there just be a kind of volume move um and i think there's plenty for us to do so for now like supermarkets are not on the cars i think maybe there's an approach to that in a few years time and and it might change for sure um but we we've got like you know great retailers and there's still lots of volume to be had in those spaces and with you know we work with like self-shirts whole foods fennec we've got probably 100 bottle shops we've got deli online um those are the places where we want to go and like pitch ourselves yeah and i also think as you grow bigger and if you did go into like a tesco or sainsbury's or whatever it is you might be at risk of losing your independent partners so like national theater might turn around and go do you know what we want to work with brands that are slightly smaller and don't have that mass reach and that's something you've also spent so long working towards so it's a really hard one to like grow but like not keep not lose those yeah those partnerships so it's actually something yeah it's a bigger piece to think about versus just oh yeah what are you losing in the meantime 100 um and if black lines disappeared tomorrow what part of it would you be most proud of?

46:10I think the like for me and this is so boring but like for me having built something that has actually looked after itself and has grown organically for so long I think I'm really proud of I think the team that we've got as well I'd be really sad to to like not be in that in the office or in the factory I'd be really proud I'm like I'm super proud of the team we've got around us I think like we're in an environment and we spoke about earlier about like you know maybe people who aren't founders might not feel as like as wedded to the to the business I don't feel like for us that's the case I feel like we've got a team that's amazing I'm really excited about what about what they're all involved we're all involved in it together um you might find different answers when you speak to them but that's the sense I get I love I love the team we've got yeah I think also that that that will really trickle down so I'm sure if I did ask them the question it would not be the case I'm sure that if you're as obsessed with them as they are like that kind of is a very like mutually respected like generally yeah kind of like relationship when when you've got that to tell about your employees and also then you want to work hard for them but i'm sorry and vice versa like you want to make sure that they're getting everything they need and then they want to make like you you proud that's certainly how i feel yeah um and looking um like where do you where do you see the business in like 10-15 years i think we want to we want to keep doing what we're doing i guess in 10-15 years like we would hope to be like properly leading cocktails and we'd hope cocktails will be like in a very different place maybe than what it is now um i think pre-batch cocktails for us like we feel like should be the answer in loads of environments and hopefully like what we do can be the solution for that we would love to be looking a bit i guess outside of just drinks as well not to like be launching other products and brands and things but i think we want to become um a bigger brand um we want to have a story that's bigger than just we make bottled cocktails and we make draft cocktails um we're working really hard at the minute to kind of like really understand like what we can be and how we can add the most value but um yeah let's see where we go and what is what would you say is like one of your biggest goals with the business so would it be for example i know we're in like a world where once we get that goal we always want the next thing but if there was like one north star that you could say i've sort of made it if i get that is there anything that that kind of resonates with that yeah there's one okay and it's like so not uh like sexy it's not going to take us very far yeah but our factory is 10 minute walk from the tottenham hotspur stadium right i'm a lifelong spurs fan okay we've got wembley we're in the emirates crystal palace working with city man city up north and i just can't get anything to tottenham hotspur okay so if they're listening anyone tottenham hotspur anyone knows anyone i literally walk the kegs around on a trolley to the to the delivery uh gate for me like that's the team will know like that's the moment I'll continue to work my socks off for because I'll be happy I don't mind that's it I don't care about the rest I just want to be in there I just need you need to go organise like a flash mob I'm trying everything try to get the attention or you just run on naked onto the pitch and stop the whole game those are the two things I haven't actually done no I think you should do those two things I'm doing all like my traditional like sales things but no you've got to think outside the box if they're not listening to get naked run across the pitch with like loads of bottles like really get someone's attention or a flash mob okay well maybe maybe you can help me like yeah next step I'm not gonna flash mob's by I'm sure I could do it yeah yeah I'm not a ruler when it comes to dancing so I'm not you gather that but I'll help with the creative sales idea I love I love putting like the kind of creative side of me into a sales pitch yeah yeah and thinking outside the box that's everything all star yeah that's cool so a little bit of a Kind of quick fire to end the interview first cocktail you ever loved.

49:54I think I was like a really tacky little drinker when I was younger It was probably like a long-iron nice teas because I thought it was so jokes that were so strong. Yeah Not my favorite anymore. Yeah, what is your favorite now? Negroni. Negroni. That one. Yeah, okay My boyfriend's obsessed with Negroni so he'll love that. I really like that one. A brand not in drinks that you admire? I really like brands in fashion I'm not a high fashion like follow or anything but I think that like that middle ground in fashion I find really interesting and there's a like a brand from Netherlands that I've been following for a little bit called Brahms fruit that are like fully random and people don't really know them yet but I'm sure they're gonna get really big they've just got I love brands that have like a really interesting mindset yeah and like everything they do just a little bit like kind of subversive and different and yeah that's what I'm keeping an eye on.

50:45And finish this sentence, cocktail culture

50:52to me means?

50:57I find it so jokes, I think it's so cool that you can drink like something, I love beers, I love wine, sorry this is not a good sentence to finish her but I just love that like there's so much variety in cocktails and you can do so much with them, you were right earlier when you said it can be the start of the night, the end of the night. I'd love to start the evening with Hugo Spritz and finish off dinner with a Negroni and then have an espresso martini. I love the variety of it all, and it gives you proper autonomy rather than picking between eight different beers on the bar or three different glasses of white wine.

51:26I love all of it, but I think, yeah, for me, cocktails have that piece of real excitement and difference. You're definitely right on the vibes piece, I think, as well. Cocktails bring a different vibe. When you're drinking a cocktail versus a glass of wine, like you feel quite sophisticated you're like mmm wine whereas like a cocktail you kind of turn your fun on a bit yeah it's indulgent I think it should be like people should feel like they're allowed to go and like be indulgent when they have a cocktail that's the idea of it it's not you know your steady Eddie sort of moment no definitely thank you so much for coming on Getting to Go it's been so interesting hearing about it and I need to pop down again to the Rix-O-Bar because I did love it in there it's just like such cool vibes so yeah we have to have you in Tottenham you can come see the facility we've got 10 cocktails on tap in Tottenham so oh my gosh sold yeah I'll do that and then we'll work on the flash mob yes yes yes thank you so much no problem at all it's been a pleasure