Top Cuvée - Brodie Meah

0:03Hello there and welcome to episode 124 of People Doing Things. Today we're taking it easy with Brodie Meah, founder of Top Cuvée, London's top spot for natty wines and a hallmark of the natural wine movement here in the UK. Founded in January 2019 as a neighbourhood wine bar and restaurant, they've found numerous ways to express themselves over the years. from their original restaurant in Highbury and wine shop around the corner to their underground wine bar Cave Cuvée in Shoreditch's Bethel Green Road. They've also become famous for their house wines and vermouths as well as parkside deliveries, serving up the world's best wines right to your feet while blurring the lines between physical retail, restaurant and DTC deliveries.

0:48For Brody, his love of hospitality started in Manchester, collecting glasses in nightclubs to fund his TV and film production degree. Soon he was hooked, gradually moving up the ranks to running some of the city's best bars and restaurants before moving to Melbourne to work at Dinner by Heston, a Michelin-style restaurant which is part of the Fat Duck Group. Inspired by his time there, Brodie returned to the UK to try his luck and go for broke. In this episode we talk about the rise of the natural wine movement, the power of adaptability and the beautiful tensions at play within the Top Cuvée brand universe.

1:24Take a sip, savor it and enjoy. Hello, Brody. How's it going? Hey, good, thank you. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming on. I guess I wanted to dive in to your past and to your background. I know for the last 10 or 15 years, you've worked in hospitality and the service industry. From what age did you know that, you know, acts of service were your love language? Yeah, it's a good question because I didn't know that and it's definitely true I thought it's funny that you picked up on that. When I was at university studying started out in IT and then had a job in hospitality to sort of pay the bills and I fell in love with that really.

2:08I was in uni and I was like I can't be doing this for the rest of my life and yeah something about tending to someone's needs before they knew that they needed it so whether that was like topping up someone's water before they realized their glass was empty or you know getting them the right drink before they kind of knew based on what they told you they wanted that was a really addictive kind of sensation just like making people happy when they're on a night out it was in manchester at the time and it was in some quite like late night bars but the fundamentals of hospitality is true at every level so yeah i think it was just like working in any bar yeah was uh yeah and as a child were you like into acts of service did you like kind of i guess looking after people hosting people all that kind of stuff going deep now but um not really however now you mention it my mum was like a mad host always still is brilliant now i appreciate it when i go around to hers if she had guests around it would be like a thing like not crazy but i think you what i would see from her right is um a lot of work in the background but then when people turn up it's like oh no yeah this is normal we didn't do anything exactly and that is what hospitality is you know really when you get into it it's exactly the same you walk into a restaurant at 5 p.m and they open their doors and it's super calm and oh yeah we've been waiting all day for you sir but the reality is you know there's a hell of a lot of graph going on right up until in most restaurants 459 yeah i love that element of hosting like the empathy and the forward planning you know thinking through all the elements that's going to make someone's experience like perfect or really enjoyable we were talking about this earlier but how has your role shifted with the business over the last few years because you've been running top cuvee for six years now yes yeah yeah so when when I first started out my background is in in hospitality as I said so working every single role from KP to bartender to waiter and restaurant manager in the end so yeah when we opened the restaurant that was me and that's what I thought was me for the rest of my life I don't know I didn't plan that far ahead but yeah I was running the restaurant every single service I'd be there I'd open the doors link up with the chefs set the tables serve the people everyone knew me it was it was awesome um as the business has grown and evolved obviously did not doing that anymore because it's just not possible um what i'm trying to achieve now is like how do we empower the teams and our people to deliver that level of service without my input what that looks like is yeah lots of documentation training and stuff like that and then for me the role has changed to be more admin based financial think like the systems part of it that happened like a few years ago so we've been sort of on that for a while and then as the businesses continue to like grow and diversify then the role a bit more setting the vision yeah exactly thinking about the long-term plan and then making that happen we're fortunate to have people who can do all of the service side and train and like people are better than me at that anyway so that's all happening and then yeah my role is really yeah setting the vision sounds a bit grand but really that's what's happening yeah do you miss any of the early days do you go actually you know i just like to serve someone's wine yeah it's cool like and i still get to do that from time to time you know like serving a bottle or presenting something like a cool new wine to like you know like a new potential customer or some event that's happening i don't miss the late nights and it's it's backbreaking labor you know in a restaurant what i say though is i get the best of all worlds now so i'm still involved in the hospitality industry but generally more as a guest um which is great yeah who do you get wine and dine by or what is the best bit of wining and dining you've had well always getting invited to openings which yeah I'm starting to kind of not go to as many it used to be really fun you know it's like oh is it restaurant opening me and my wife would head there and just yeah it's like a bit of a party vibe always you know it's dead exciting isn't it new restaurants but as I'm getting a bit older it's like we'll actually just wait for them to open and then we'll just go on your own terms yeah it's fine the biggest thing I get like satisfaction from with the wine and dine is actually now we're sailing to other restaurants and stuff I just love it when I go into someone who buys our wine to have a lovely dinner and it just makes me really proud and then also like big for our product but then also proud to see like the hospitality industry like blooming and smashing it still.

7:15And on that point you've built a really interesting proposition but also kind of brand universe for lots of different people within the kind of world of wine it'd be great if you can just like talk or explain that to people listening yeah so fundamentally what top cuvee is all about is making wine accessible um i've worked in the industry pretty much my entire life and even for me you know buying a bottle of wine was like pretty tricky situation and certainly in like the top end of the restaurant world so when we created Top Cuvee even when it was just a restaurant we were like yeah we want to make wine accessible to people and make it fun and not intimidating and then that just kind of got out of hand really I think what really happened is like when you got the restaurant and you're doing that that's your vision and you want to make it fun for as many people as possible and you fill your restaurants like we've got 50 seats cool well we're doing that like every night it's not scalable so yeah like where we're at now is we've managed to create our own product line and work with lots of other restaurateurs and retailers that share the same vision but it's more scalable and we can touch more people with that message every every single night it sounds like it was a nice organic natural you know growth to the business but actually having that really core mission you know starting in restaurant going to shop going to distribution having that really kind of core heart or soul of the brand actually allows you to be adaptable yeah and move into different places and have start having different conversations but still about kind of wine and the culture around that yeah I think it's like bottling that experience that we deliver at the table and then yeah getting it out there and retail for us was like a revelation you know we used to joke i was like oh it's dead easy it's not it's just as hard as we just didn't know what we were doing we were naive but yeah taking that you know from the hospitality then into retail learning that business and then what we really learned was you know how to serve what is now our customers in that wholesale distribution side like yeah we sell to restaurants and retailers and we also operate a restaurant and a couple of retail stores so yeah we knew the message but then we also knew like the pain points of like what those businesses like need and want um so that allowed us to use that knowledge to direct like our sourcing of our product yeah Well, I guess people say, you know, like you're a good supplier if your customer is yourself in the first instance, right?

10:12There's a better way of saying it. I was going to say, I've never heard that before, but that's exactly us. Yeah, that's really interesting. And I guess that element of like service, hostility, empathy can translate into different verticals, especially if you're dealing with other restaurants looking to source natural wine for their own, you know, occasions. Yeah. you talked about like the experience has there been much intentionality around crafting a certain experience how would you describe that experience how does it show up in the world yeah just warm welcoming not pretentious friendly we want lots of orange yeah yeah yeah totally yeah the color the visual identity is really important for us but we don't think that's what makes a brand you know it's like um speaking to the wrong person maybe yeah yeah true i'm joking it's a big yeah but it's everything you do is what people perceive the brand as but then the visual idea is so important because that's what people like recognize and latch on to and remember so we were lucky that we had that initially so we've never veered away from our logo and our orange color scheme quite street art inspired was it yeah like it was actually inspired by um like old school belgian cartoons oh yeah yeah it was like um yeah that was the brief to and i'd never done a brief before and it was just like oh we just want our restaurant to look cool yeah but turns out it was like really resonated and the real reason behind it was um i was working alongside a french sommelier who used to say that something was like the top cuvee so if we'd have a range of wines he'd be like this is the creme de la creme the top top top cuvee yeah what that really meant is like this is not for you pal that is it this is the top stuff okay and he was like that he's a legend but that's what that meant okay and then so i was like okay well the top cuvee you can still have it but we're going to make the branding really cartoon-esque and friendly and that just a position obviously people didn't really know what top cuvee meant in that context because that was a bit of a private thing for me but that's what yeah you know i mean that's a real core of our mission it just shows you how honest i am when i'm saying this was about making wine accessible to people yeah and i'm happy to say now people do associate top cuvee with with quality yeah but we still have that warm and friendly kind of visual identity and that flows throughout i think we do as well yeah i guess coming from that world i guess a lot of people have seen an elitism or snobbery well in the whole culture around wine and is that something that you were i guess fighting against in some ways or looking to re-channel yeah 100 the way i describe this is like that style of service is like anti-customer which isn't very pleasant in a way but also just doesn't make sense as a business right it's like why do you want to intimidate your customers yeah and then i was never like formally like wine trained you know i worked in the industry serving wine but I was either working behind a bar or working on the in the restaurant um so yeah it was definitely like yeah self-taught and like when we opened the restaurant that was the first wine list I'd ever written and it was hard but you know I made it happen and yeah I learned a lot about like the natural wine world at that time that was who I was kind of like getting in bed with you know with all the suppliers and learning all the you know what's happening here in London because I'd just come from Australia.

13:59Were they a bit more advanced on their, like, natties? In Australia? Yeah, it's an interesting question because, like, yes and no. It was more of a thing. Like, it was slightly, like, more widespread. But now I'm back in the UK and I have been for a long time. I can see, actually, they weren't really. It was more of a scene there, whereas in the UK, I think it's a little bit more entrenched. and I think I've come to learn that because it's like geographically it's like all these wines and everything that they're really championing over there at the time it was from Europe they're leaning a lot more into like Aussie producers now which is really cool and it's like what it's all about really you know like local wines um but here in London you know you've got history centuries of like wine trade between those regions um and the city yeah so yeah it's a weird one it was it's more like every day you know people are just like doing that it's less niche i suppose there but really it's not quite as like entrenched as it is in the uk i first heard about natural wine through my Aussie mates in who were like oh you gotta have a natty you know it was like and they kind of made it like cool and interesting and something exciting like felt it had some excitement to it that's why I think they've done a real good job of there in Australia to be honest that was me you know I was moved to Australia I was like whoa this is this is cool yeah and I think now I'm thinking about it it's down to the restaurant culture there yeah I will say like the local neighborhood restaurants in I was living in Melbourne were like sorry to say in london but freaking way better yeah and there was loads more of them and they all had these trendy wine lists and stuff um yeah maybe that's that's what it is and and like there that's like a big thing whereas in london it's kind of like yeah whatever like a bit cooler yeah uh maybe yeah but is it i think one of the other things that i was really keen to like talk about with you is where does the like natural wine movement sit at the moment because in the 2010s we saw a huge like craft beer revolution mainly kind of led by brew dog but there were kind of four or five others be with town camden etc that have all now been kind of bought by the people that they wanted to get rid of you know in some ways and then you know in the mid-2010s you had the craft gin movement there's obviously been a bit of an on-out spirits movement and I was getting really excited because when I saw kind of you guys on the scene I saw brands like you know Nouveau now New Theory there's Chin Chin which I know you've kind of spoken about previously like I was like okay there's there's a vibe here it's a different style of wine it's got a different ethos it's a bit more east london than west london it's very design led it's a little bit punk it's a little bit rebellious especially in the kind of more consumer world i know that sort of changed in you know depending where you're selling it but there's a real vibe and energy to it that i was quite excited and it to me it's felt like it was getting started and then like has slightly slowed down and I'm curious to know like as someone on the inside what's your perspective I think the reason that it kind of lost its momentum it's like due to the nature of natural wine as a thing what it prides itself on is being unadulterated so therefore you know it tastes different year on year like sometimes quite dramatically so the end consumer didn't really appreciate that really you know people that are into wine it's like yeah that's quite cool you know different vintage oh it tastes like this why oh this was the weather or this happened in the vineyards so this flavor has come about but even as like a real like wine lover you know it's if you drink an amazing bottle of wine in 2019 and then you're really excited in 2020 because you see it on the menu somewhere don't forget you know they always sell out as well that's a big problem and then you get it and it tastes completely different like that sometimes it's good sometimes it's bad and so that doesn't help and then I think yeah touching on that like the the sellout factor of the wine so when we're working in retail we found this you know people would find a wine label that they liked oh cool I'll have that and they'll buy it and you know let's say there's enough for like half a year of sales in london of this wine that everyone's loving and then it just disappears for six months so like they're not ever building any momentum you know that that was definitely i think detrimental to that kind of as you say the momentum of that movement building up and then sort of flattening out a bit if you want like the insider's perspective what i see now as well like natural wine people see it sometimes as a negative term now why we like the term natural wine because we thought okay it's like there's loads of conversation of people saying like why that is like a bad term or all wine is natural and this and that and you know pedantics around calling it whatever you know you've heard people say no it should be called low intervention or it should be this should be that okay so biodynamic regenerative exactly you can pick hairs yeah you're picking hairs around that but we've seen okay natural wine seems to be sticking at least it's a term that people understand like craft beer so like that's cool like that's helpful because that's what we want to do isn't it's make it accessible and easy so if people understand that term we'll go with that but i think due to the kind of variable experiences that people have now people just know natural wine is like it's a bit funky or it's a bit weird and like it's not so yeah i don't i think a lot of people use the term now i don't like natural wine and then we we see that and then we don't really associate ourselves with that term anymore we never really have like probably is on the website in a few spots but people have always labeled us as natural wine people what do you just want just wine yeah it's just that's it really um yeah we're not trying to be a movement but are they like more like younger wines rather than vintages yeah yeah the wines that we import and and sell is like wines that are meant to be drank now and yeah exactly just sort of fun fresh easy drinking wines that you want to drink again I think that's the key I think that's what we are really and you might be able to help me with this and then get our message in a bit cleaner but it's like we aim to serve wines that you want to drink again and again and also we aim to source them in that way right so they're always available and it's like just getting a little bit more consumer focused on the sourcing so rather than being like oh it's you know it just made 600 bottles and that's cool it's like well that's probably not one for us for the long term because we want to we want to touch as many people as possible and that doesn't mean to say that all the winemaking and stuff and the quality of the fruit and the quality of the wine is less it's just if you stick to that story of like oh it's natural wine it just puts off a lot of people yeah i guess there's two things in my head one is the scalability of wine compared to say something like beer as in like you can't have a vineyard that is like so huge that can just do endless bunches of the same wine over and over again to my knowledge anyway they're more like broken up especially in Europe, maybe in Australia or in South America, it's a bit different.

22:28Yeah, exactly. It's like low yields per, I think, if you were really boring about it, it's all about the fructose levels, isn't it? Because that's how much alcohol you can ferment. And yeah, like beer is barley or wheat or whatever you're using. So that's like a grain that can be stockpiled and you're just bought on a market. You can buy your barley from a number of different sources and still make the same beer. still tastes exactly the same every single time yeah whereas wine especially if it's low intervention or you know it doesn't you can't do that in the same way yeah exactly and you also you can't legally do that really if as well you know because of the labeling yeah so you know you can you can blend wine and stuff but a lot of people are looking for like um provenance yeah exactly and there's very strict rules around that so yeah beer's much more scalable and then made to order really you know from uh from raw ingredients whereas wine is even at the kind of more commercial end of the business is still like made from fruit yeah which goes off we were also having a really interesting discussion earlier around like the culture of say like beer versus wine but I think the same is of kind of gin beer was a really like commodified you know there wasn't much culture around beer especially like mainstream beer and what craft kind of did was like bring a level of you know interest and different types of barleys and malts and all the rest of it different processes around it like intellectualized it a bit for the craft community and it was very like experimental whereas I think there's already quite a lot of like high culture around most wine and actually going the other way can come into contact with lots of opposition.

24:24Yeah I think so in the industry but then when you talk to your average wine drinker it's like what I didn't know about any of that yeah definitely and there's a lot of pomp and circus in the industry and like when we go sourcing it's funny sometimes it's just a bit mental like the way people are acting and stuff at these wine tastings yeah um and then yeah like you rightly say you know a lot of it is like people don't want to see you like dumbing it down yeah but then for us we just obsess with our customers yeah never ever has anyone ever said that to us you know it's always like oh my god i love you because you make it simple yeah you don't make me feel like an idiot and you know what a lot of it in the industry actually is people like they want to be like that and they want to make you feel like a freaking donut yeah because it makes them feel better about themselves like i could say that because i've worked in the industry for so long but i think most industries are like that even in like branding or strategy they want to build up credibility all these kind of names definitions frameworks like you build it all up so that you appear like an expert.

25:37And the bit I really enjoy is like, let's get rid of all of that bollocks. Like it's useful at times, but let's get to like, what are you here to do? What's the best way to do it? And what's the story that we can tell? Doesn't need to fit in the boxes. And actually I want you to understand it instinctively and I want you to feel it. If you can do that, the stuff is good. You don't have to worry about the like intellectualizing around it so much yeah but you know that can piss a lot of people up who spend time debating what difference between a positioning and a proposition for example yes and then for us the way that we look at that is we still do all of that we're still on it we still know what we're talking about and when we're sourcing wine we do it in a professional way and we can tell you all about it as well that's the other thing you know so it is still there but we just don't shove it down your face um it's a bit um learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist yeah and like my um little soundbite for that one is is like going to a wine bar doesn't have to feel like an educational experience yeah that's great yeah and like you laugh yeah that tells me you've been in that situation when you're sitting there meet a mate glass of wine something tasty i just want to drink you know oh well you know and it's just you know that's all i want i just want a glass of wine and okay so well what do you want it to be like i don't i want it to taste nice yeah i think that like that table wine experience can be so nice it's a bit more european than i think like british in many ways but it's like the sun's out you sit there with you know there's nothing like it doesn't have to be super fancy it's just like top it up small glass and you just enjoy yourself that's the best and that's what we say like with top cuvee what we're looking for people to think about our wines is that moment exactly what you just described there when they're picking up a bottle of top cuvee wine that's what's in their mind it's not like the aspect and the slope of the hill that the grate was grown on and what temperature it was when it was picked yeah because no one cares about that really yeah exactly and i think just breaking that down or or like channeling in a different way can make it just a bit more accessible a bit more enjoyable but it makes it about you stuffy yeah and then you can just enjoy the taste of it without feeling like an idiot yeah it's really interesting though especially when it like the name top convey like being being the best i listened to a really good talk by a guy called neils leonard who runs like probably the best or most exciting advertising agency in the world called uncommon and there's a lot of people in the design and like branding industry who are like really scared about ai and his talk was like you know why would you want to start a creative business now like we're like he wasn't saying that but that there was an implication that a lot of people think that that industry is is fucked and he was like no this is like the most exciting time to be in it because like only the best survive you know it's like it's ride or die and you should be inspired by change by difficult times by people innovating because that's like should motivate you to go and do things in your case like differently better add a better service try harder there's a lot of anxiety and noise if you spend too much time on in the wrong parts of the internet but actually if you just stay focused on what you're doing the value you offer and then like double down there that's where the innovation really comes from 100 i think what you say there is try harder that's the one for me you know just keep doing it and keep smashing it and if you're not doing well then tweak it until you are and then keep doing more of that and then with the kind of like economic side yeah it is freaking hard but just look at any freaking history book this will pass yeah so if you're really now knuckling down and just grafting and improving and just keeping going then it will swing back up and then you're going to be in a great position so yeah just stop moaning get on with it yeah stop moaning get on with it well I guess that comes back to like adaptability and a lot of people don't like change and but I think if it's better to be positive about change because then you actually lean in and you see the benefits of it and then you can do other things as a result of it exactly yeah when we opened the restaurant we never thought we'd be doing what we're doing if we didn't we wouldn't be in business today sure and on that topic so you know people doing things is all about honesty and openness what would you say the biggest highs and lows that you've experienced in the business highs oh it's been so many you know just like seeing people happy with our product is like amazing and still to this day for example i just walked past a shop literally yesterday random shop on a high street stoke newton and like our house wine was front and center in their window display and i'd never been to that shop you know one of our team has made that happen that was a freaking high it's like quite a small moment but that was like pretty good because that was just some unexpected moment of like wow we're really doing this yeah other ones is like I don't know if this is a high because it was like scary but the um we do an easter egg hunt every year and like it's always pretty been massive since day one and last year was like the biggest it's ever been which is pretty crazy because it was it's always been the biggest biggest that we've ever done but this year I turned up again like I didn't have anything to do with the execution this year the team did it all themselves amazing so that was like a really really proud moment just that they'd made it happen so I was really happy about that and then I turned up to kind of like enjoy the day and the queue was like hectic it went around the whole block and you know we've always said oh the queue is like massive but this was like it was like a festival it was like glastonbury or something it was honestly all the way it's fat over a thousand people there that was a high but also like a bit of a worry because it was borderline like shit we need like security or something that was cool um similarly with our anything we do that like gets the community out like and when i say the community we do a lot with uh people like around highbury and shoreditch where our venues are but i mean like the top cuvee community and like our real fans and customers who love what we do so yeah key time for that like the tour de cuvee bike ride we do every year and um that's amazing like it's just that's just a really i guess emotional day for me because it's a cool event it's a lot of work to put on and again team really do well so always proud to see that but then i ride it every year with the community i just you know no one like knows who I am really but you know I just chat to people along the way and I hear a lot of people oh this is amazing and oh yeah love this brand love this wine love this love that and it's being immersed in like pretty big group of people who are there for us and the brand that we've built is like pretty special and not to mention the dopamine of like riding your bike up a massive hill getting into Brighton makes you feel pretty good but yeah just being surrounded by our community and like seeing how the positivity and like the positive vibes that we aim to put out really rings true and I think it brings like similar-minded people to us and then the low points is I think like over the years I feel like big bills are coming in so we weren't ready to pay but actually like pretty bad times you know like shit fuck fuck this up cash flow so yeah had a couple of those moments and that was where I really changed my role to become like more on it but like financial finances business you know it's all well and good bringing out a thousand people to your thing but you need someone there managing the business as well because like yeah sure it's a brand but it's also a business that employs like 25 people um and countless other suppliers and you know got landlords and all sorts of things depending on this brand that everyone loves but there's a lot of a lot of paperwork in the background and yeah so that was like tough times not learning just getting through it and making it happen and then learning as a business owner and as a operator to be like oh yeah that either need to employ someone to do that or you need to get like better systems in place for that because we've had systems for like all the other stuff like operations and everything but yeah it's equally important to have systematic approach to your accounts and your cash flow and all that yeah so with the lows it's that the one thing is just learning from it and if i can remember that and sort it out and you know change something make it better so you can continue and crack on with all those high points there's a really nice uh diagram that talks about like the different comfort zones and you've got like you can do nothing and just do what you're doing and you're really fucking comfortable or you can like push it and it gets a bit more uncomfortable you can push it or it can be like you're having to deal with something that's so stressful but actually once you've done it you bank that bit of growth yeah you bank the learning you go through those emotions and then you kind of if you ever pause and you look back you're like oh that was fucking hard but like I actually did it yeah I think that's quite rewarding and can be quite fulfilling 100 you've got to grow as a person when you grow in your business that comfort system thing was like that was me now I'm most comfortable doing spreadsheets and finance before it was like social media then they hired a social media person and that was a challenge because then I had to learn to be like a really good manager so I did that and then yeah it's like now I look back I know how to manage my team yeah but I didn't until I put myself out there and had a tricky few months like learning how to get the best out of people yeah but yeah now that's done i wonder what's next yeah the next big challenge i guess on that the final question is like what does the future have in store for the brand and for the business like where do you want top cuvee to go next it's a good one because we kind of like we've arrived you know and we've been doing that that's it we're just um more of the same but it's scaling growing it so it's doubling down on our partners in terms of our wholesale business so we sell to other restaurants other shops and we just like we do more of that because that allows us to keep this amazing mission that we're on to make wine accessible to everyone but to do it at scale and reach more people and everything's the same except we're working more with partners yeah nice yeah so it's a double down year yeah yeah exactly just more more of the same last year was less do less but better so we only really focused on our two events last year easter egg hunt and the bike ride would do that and that was like insanely successful that pivot and so we don't do just random events anymore we just do stuff that is impactful and meaningful and good yeah so that last year was do less but better this year is do the same better yeah nice well thank you so much Brody for coming on People Doing Things and I wish you the best of success.

38:21My pleasure, nice to chat to you, thanks for having me. That was Brody Mia, founder of Top Cuvée on People Doing Things. As always I've been your host Ed Little. And if you are feeling particularly generous of spirit, reviews go a long way to helping this podcast grow so please head over to Spotify or Apple and leave one. People Doing things on a mission to celebrate and inspire the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.