115 stores and coffee at 30,000feet; Bootlegger's Playbook for Dominating the Category

0:00When you bring new people into the business, you almost start diluting things. So you almost have to bring people into your world before you can expect them to adapt. When you have such a clear objective as to who you want to be and how you want to be, it gives a real true north as to where the brand's going to go. I'm Eric Fulweiler and this is Scratch, bringing you marketing lessons from the leading brands and brains, rewriting the rulebook from scratch for the world of today. Hey everyone, and welcome to today's episode of Scratch. Today, I'm joined by Miguel Neto, who is the head of marketing for Bootlegger, a rapidly expanding South African hospitality brand.

0:39Now they have, in just 14 short years, built 115 cafes across South Africa. Miguel has joined the company as head of marketing and has been instrumental in a couple of the huge, huge partnerships that the brand has done in the past 12 months, namely the bootlegger and fly suffer partnership to put bootlegger coffee on the plains across South Africa. Now that's a really interesting one, but just one of the key, key things that we talk about in today's episode, like one, how did they even do that? Miguel really dives into their frameworks and their principles about how they build this brand world, not just through a brand document and a brand guideline, but actually what does it actually mean to build a brand world and really be consistent with that, both in messaging and in every single campaign you go to market with.

1:29We also dive into their very, very famous 29 Rand coffee promotion. And we talk about how do you balance, you know, not discounting the brand and like the premium feel of the brand when you are offering these discounts. And then finally, we dive into what it means to actually build a true lifestyle brand across e-commerce, across B2B, retail and experience as well. Just a really fascinating conversation about what it takes to build something which cuts through in a highly, highly saturated and competitive market. Really, really do recommend listening to this episode if you really want to understand what is working in other parts of the world as well.

2:06Without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Miguel. Miguel, welcome to Scratch. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. I'm incredibly excited to have you on the show as head of marketing for bootlegger. You are definitely one of the top editorial candidates that we've had on our list for a little while when it comes to South African brands, which are just absolutely crushing it and doing so much in that challenger space. I was recently over in Cape Town to visit the team over there and just started to really see like one the coffee scene but just like the amazing hospitality scene that is building down there.

2:44And so yeah very very excited to have this conversation with you today. yeah it's um i'm glad to hear that you said you were in cape town and we call it the we would like to the unofficial capital of south africa but cape town around this time of the year is an absolute uh it's booming with tourists with the locals out the weather's great and uh i guess our industry is booming but i think i'm safe to say any industry in cape town this time of the year is booming so it's a it's a good time to be in south africa and a good time to be in cape town I mean, definitely worse places to be, you know, at this time of the year.

3:19Okay, great. So Miguel, before we get into all the intricacies of Bootlegger and what you guys have built over there, we have a slight icebreaker question. We ask this to every single CMO and every single head of marketing which comes on the show. What is one challenger brand that you're passionate about right now and it can't be your own? Within our industry or in general? It can be any industry. I guess at the moment, I'll give you a very, very good question because there's a couple of brands which I'm really loving at the moment. If I look at in our, kind of our realm, because bootlegger plays in quite a diverse, we're not just a coffee shop, we're a restaurant, we're a destination, we're a work environment.

4:03But in terms of a brand, I'm loving where Tashas is going at the moment. a highly respected brand in our I guess competitor space I think they are they've kind of walked a similar journey they're estimated they're calculated and now they're starting to flourish their stores are looking great their offering is is great and I guess someone that I we really where I look up to and I think the way they go about their business is what I admire most you know again a kind of a similar way which is probably why I hover towards it but I'm really enjoying tashes and their growth and what they're doing um and i guess if you looked at closer to home i'd probably say seattle um really really enjoying their their growth at the moment and what they're doing with for our industry in general and um for their for their own brand i really i'm really liking it awesome both both brands which i'm not familiar with so i'm definitely gonna have to check them out after this are they both both just based in cape town or just no across south africa seattle uh national brand it well even across across africa um and then tash is not as many stores but also national a couple up in johannesburg tash is a very similar offering to to bootlegger probably not coffee led more restaurant led but if you look at a all-day cafe type vibe where you can even come for an after work drinks a glass of wine that's kind of where they are and their food is immaculate and their journey as i say it's been interesting to watch and it's definitely one that not many people when i speak to them they say who are you watching in industry that they they do make the list which rises which raises quite a few people's eyebrows at the time interesting that's always a good thing i feel yeah you know good well can you give us then a quick overview of what bootlegger does for those that may not know sure so bootleggers i think a lot of people think it's it's been around for many years it's been around for i I think going on 13 years now.

6:02So the growth has been fairly quick. It's an all-day cafe that started with coffee. So coffee first. It was back in 2012, three founders looking for a good coffee in Seapoint at 6 in the morning, decided to start roasting coffee. And here we are today with well over 100 and I think we're heading towards 115 full-service all-day cafes across South Africa. Obviously, as I say, one of the biggest artisanal coffee roasteries in South Africa. We would like to say one of the best coffees in South Africa, coffee brands in South Africa. And I think that's where a lot of people either know us for our coffee, they know us for our destinations, they know us for our entire offering.

6:41We do have different versions of our offering. We've got the full store, which we call All Day Cafe, which you can come for coffee in the morning, all day breakfast, lunch, dinner, right throughout. So it's got a full menu. And even in some or most of them, we serve alcohol. So we do find the after work drinks type thing quite popular. so it's very interesting to see bootlegger coffee company and then people having these types of conversations about just go there for dinner so we kind of that's the all-day cafe and then we do have our what we call our excess which is our extra small offering which is which is where our direct coffee competitor comes in in terms of the likes of the vedas and the platos and the seattles in our industry a lot smaller still have a food offering but no kitchen and kind of pastries and those types of um of a food offering but and then the same coffee offering you more your grab and go type and then we've obviously got a few of our other elements but to sum it up we're we're a national brand and we are a lifestyle brand that was founded by coffee and is growing now towards we would like to think 200 stores by 2028 across south africa and into the rest of africa and yes our vision up until fairly recently was we're a lifestyle brand that enables connection and that's kind of still along those lines we're just on a journey now just to kind of fixing it up but i think that really sums it up we're we're a start or a finish or a middle or a meeting for anyone's day and you and you choose what you want from our venue but we are a coffee brand we're roasting about three and a half to four tons of coffee a day in cape town in our roastery and we distribute across to our stores and to a network and wholesale and hotels and offices so we would do a lot of everything yeah it definitely sounds that way but it sounds like a very interesting place to be um i think one of the ways you've characterized the brand is obviously just there as a as a lifestyle brand as opposed to just being strictly coffee and i think that's a really important distinction that i want to lean into right out the gate because one of the interesting reasons as to why we thought it would be cool to have bootlegger on the show and why we kind of look at you guys as somewhat of a challenger brand is because you kind of have built this real bootlegger world around what you stand for and what people buy into especially your customers like they know what they're coming to you for and that is different for every single customer but you're able to meet the customer where they are now that to me really speaks to like a very very strong persona that you've built and one of the things that was referenced is you know this james dean character archetype that you've built around so i'm really keen to understand like one where did that come from but also how do you now translate that character persona into something you know which is real in your marketing and brand decisions so yeah yeah absolutely it's been quite an interesting so we've we we live through our founders eyes the three founders and early days as i mentioned when they when they thought about starting this up i guess like any startup you know you've got an idea then it evolves into something and then you've got to get to that point now what are we who are we where are we and how are we and i guess the early days they sat around when they came up with the name and you know you start having those discussions if we were this what would we be if we were a car what would we be and then kind of instead of just shooting out a name they went through a journey and they said what is our characteristic who is who is the type of person that we want to be what do we want our customers to think when they engage with us on in the store when they come into the store the feeling you get or if it's online or if you're engaging with us on any of our forums how do we speak and how do we show up and I guess you know the persona that came out through them and some of their old their life stories and things and their likes and their favorites was a a character of James Dean and I think when you have such a clear objective as to who you want to be and how you want to be it gives the a real true north as to where the brand's going to go and I think it's stuck so fundamentally key to that is where they've they've guided this brand over 12 years so I've worked in a couple of different industries within the marketing world I've built teams in various industries but this one is so specific and it's so refreshing to work for a brand that knows who we are and what we want to be sometimes to our own detriment in terms of you know we might not get the hundred thousand people liking us or following us but we know that the ones that we do have are bootlegger loyals and eventually people will follow the others accordingly so i guess for for me it's it's part founders uh part you know the journey at the beginning and then holding the line it's it's a saying we use very often within the bootlegger world that people that have come through the business we never say that something is wrong so if we're writing content we're writing social posts or we're coming up with a campaign we never say something is wrong we say it might just need to be adapted to bootlegger which is very unique you know sometimes you look at things and you and you create something for something rather than saying let's have an idea formulate it and then plug in bootleg and see how does it fit so our brand voice our brand tone how we write um how we create and the things that we come up with are all run through meticulous i mean we have day one still sitting in the office so we've got all all three founders and our ceo ricky who is a founder at this also a founding member all four in the office all day every day so we're living through their eyes and we're taking their guidance and as this brand grows they're letting go slightly as you know as a business grows but at every point we always have this refreshing stop where we say is it is it the bootlegger way and are we acting like bootlegger from the look to the feel to the sound etc and i guess if you look at the persona of james dean you know standing in the corner pretty cool pretty slick probably got a cigarette in his hand he he doesn't say much but when he says something it's either a bit quirky, quite serious.

12:31And it's kind of what you feel when you would walk into a bootlegger, you know, or when we put something out, you know, if we like to have fun. So sometimes we'll put out a post that might tickle a bit here, or, you know, or sometimes we really are straight to the point. So we're normally using four words instead of 10. That's the way we kind of write and things. So I guess that gives you an idea as to how we go. And I think this could resonate with a lot of people who either know bootlegger, or I'd like to put this in people's heads when they do walk into one or look at our channels and go, I can see it.

12:58I really can. And how does that, like you mentioned there, like having the founders in the office is obviously super helpful because they can kind of be across every piece of copy, which is going out and things like that. But has that kind of, as the brand scales, like you said, past 115 stores now, how does that translate into any sort of marketing frameworks? Have you guys built you know brand frameworks around you know what does it look like to write in four words versus 10 words have you done those types of things yeah any any key things that you would impart in terms of wisdom when when building those frameworks i guess so we've got a very clear brand voice so we've got a brand voice document which we keep updating and you know again we we talk about growth and scale when you bring new people into the business you almost start diluting things so you almost have to bring people into your world at first before you can expect them to just adapt, oh, it's got to be this way.

13:52And I guess a 50-page brand voice document is one thing, and you can always open it. But the quicker we can get people to enjoy and buy into the brand and then understand it, to be able to practice it and put it into practice is where the key lies. So we have a brand voice. And as you said, having founders in the building or on our, we have a single floor see-through window. You can see everyone, everyone's walking around. having them in the building gives those people and new and new joiners the opportunity to engage and then the current team to always have to call them in they what they're very good at is not getting involved only where needed or it's always that final check-in where we can always just go to or invite them to into the into the proposal meeting to just for them to see it and nine out of ten times as i said they're never going to say it's wrong because we've obviously we've built a really successful team that knows what we're doing but it's really nice to have someone who was there on day one just saying you know maybe not like this let's do that and normally we've taken 10 steps forward and we end up coming seven steps back and we take three steps and a person who makes it in the bootlegger world is someone who doesn't see those seven steps as a fail we learned we learned learned learned and we came back to three and we did it right and it went out and we got what we needed out of it so it's really refreshing in saying that i think it can be a challenge at times so we there's definitely processes and you know they're also busy individuals growing a growing an empire so you know you can't just walk into the office say what do you think of this because then it's the gun to the head effect so we have to make sure that we've got the right check-ins during a process to bring them in normally at the beginning somewhere in around in the middle before you go too far into the into the implementation and then just at the end just to say you know what here's the here's the fruits of our work and the fruits of what you've built That makes sense.

15:42And as you've kind of gone through that, developing that brand world for bootlegger, have there been any opportunities or, you know, even trends on social that you've had to walk away from just to protect that identity? Yeah, I mean, the coffee world's full of them. I mean, I think the world is full of them, not just the coffee world. But, you know, one that came to mind when you asked straight away now was the coffee rave. You know, everyone started doing coffee raves. Our customers are everything. And obviously, we've got thousands of requests through our channels and through referrals and things saying, when are we doing a coffee rave?

16:17You know, we want to do it. But we also need to see one, if we're ever going to do anything, again, is it the bootlegger way? So we're not going to do the same thing that everyone else is doing. But at the same time, you know, our customers are coming to bootlegger for a reason. our loyal customers and the ones that are the 20 000 a day that that are there working having a meeting in the morning just enjoying a coffee or enjoying a breakfast so we need to always go back to that i think you've got to be careful between the balance between attracting new customers and not respecting what you have so you know there has been trends that have that have come and gone and bootlegger we we don't like we do one of our things in that brand voice and our bible is that we don't follow trends we actually go the other way uh which is again what probably what james would have done in his time he doesn't even break the rules uh so we we try just do things that are a little bit more edgy a little bit more talkable i think we had this chat the other day between us we kind of put our mission break rules never break trust we're definitely not out there to try and go out of our way to break rules but we like to be a bit edgy and a bit funny and a little bit kind of here and there but never breaking the trust of the people around us and the people who are looking into our brand i think that's really important i think that really keeps the customer at the center of it doesn't it like not breaking that trust because i think it's really easy to pursue a trend and kind of think about it as oh it is a talkable thing to do to do a coffee rave or whatever it would be but actually it could alienate a lot of customers so it's really i think one thing that we've started to notice that we've as we've been doing more and more work with challenger brands and like the challenger brand index that we launched at the end of last year the rival 50 is like a lot of those brands who do super super well they are better about deciding about things that they're not going to do as opposed to just deciding to do everything um so it's really that process of elimination which makes them a powerful brand as opposed to you know just involving themselves in everything yeah i guess i guess you know when your brand's on point and you know who you are is when that decision is quite easy so that you'll get pressures from a lot with the trend to say when are you but if again if you hold that line and the decision in your head is almost imminent to say it's probably not us and we're happy and we're comfortable to move on or if you know so it's yeah maybe we can do it but let's do it this way I think that's where if you're going back and forth, not always, but I think there could be a little bit of a brand identity there that we're not sure about.

18:49Do we? Don't we? Those are where you kind of get to a point where you trust your brand, you trust your decision. You're not always going to get it right. Sometimes a trend does go viral and takes off. But again, I think your values and your pillars within your strategy and your business dictate it. So we, a lot of our competitors are community driven and we want to be community driven and we are. But that also comes with its challenges. So I guess we're not going to follow a trend. We're going to try and do it ourselves and be a trend. I mean, if bootlegger does do a coffee rave, I'll probably attend.

19:21I'm not going to lie. We're probably going to, if we had to do one, this is through the founder's eyes, he'll probably try and get black coffee or something similar to their approach. That would be the bootlegger. I would definitely attend, for sure. I would make the flight back down to Cape Town. Well, he's just bought his house in Cape Town. so um we like to call ourselves the official coffee of cape town so it's only it's only fitting that black coffee drinks the official coffee of cape town i mean that makes sense let's see let's see if this podcast can reach him and maybe maybe we can figure something out i hope i know you recently went through a slight rebrand or refresh rather to have it as bootlegger as opposed to bootleg of coffee um how did that how did that whole process go like maintaining the brand identity that we've just spoken about in that brand personality so strongly how did you communicate that i'm really intrigued as to how you communicated that with your agency who kind of did your refresh and your rebrand um i'll start at the end so you're looking at the agency he's sitting in front of you we uh we built a so we have an entire our marketing team is an internal marketing team we don't outsource anything other than a few of our optimization and our listing things so we that's i think point one is where we we were able to to really hone in on on a rebrand is when we had our designers myself workshop with the with the founders to get to it um why we did it i guess when you look at the expansion it's 10 12 years old at the time the strategy dictated we need to grow nationally obviously cape town founded cape town born and the strategy was to grow outside of cape town and and if you look at a logo that's got born in cape town yes it's it's historical and it's always where we will be from and it's something to be proud of but you know if i'm a franchisee buying into the brand there's certain franchisees which like the fact that it has born in Cape Town on it but it also limits it's also not a known brand it doesn't feel like a local brand so part of it was how do we how do we move that off the logo and still feel like we're a national and then move towards a national brand and then obviously as I alluded to at the beginning when you look at you know coffee company we will always be coffee first and we like to think we are one of the best coffees in South Africa but we are more than coffee and that was a how we how do we differentiate ourselves from our competitors and from the in the industry is to mature ourselves And I've always said, if your brand and your business is strong enough and the message is out there, you don't always have to say what's in the tin.

21:57You could take the logo off and people will know. Or you could say something and people will relate. So it was a three-way exercise. How to grow nationally. How to make sure that we can grow nationally and move forward into this new chapter of bootlegger.

22:11Miguel:In a world of conventional marketing, doing what everyone else is doing is the fastest way to become invisible. That's why there's Zag. the fortnightly newsletter from Rival. We don't just report on trends. We dissect the challenger mindset that helps brands like Google, F1, and Monzo win. Every two weeks, we deliver breakthrough ideas and actionable insights straight to your inbox, helping you outmaneuver the giants and drive outsized impact. Join over 5 ,000 marketing leaders who have stopped following and started leading. Subscribe to Zag at wearerival.com slash Zag. How do we move from a coffee company to an all-day cafe?

22:47lifestyle brand and then the third one well actually fourth third one application you know the logo did have its restraints in terms of how we act how we how we applied it and where we applied it and we just saw it getting blurred and then again i i guess you know brands the theme of our entire one was de-branding so how do we how do we do less to do more and that's where it started so we were actually to be honest we were on the journey towards finding an icon and then i said I don't think we need an icon. I think we need to look at where we are currently. Take the one big step back, close the doors, get the cokeys out, white table and off we go.

23:21And we came to that point where we said let's mature. So we didn't change too much. We currently, it was not a complete rebrand where we've gone back a hundred stores. We've introduced a new logo. We still have our current logo which is where the Heritage lies. And as we evolve and as stores revamp, so everything going forward will be what we call new logo or new brand. And then we still got our heritage, which sits in our, I'm going to say older stores or current stores, and as they evolve over their five-year revamp period, they will adopt a new logo. And that was, I guess, financially as a business, also just to not be a bull in a china shop and say, here's the new logo, you all now have to drop millions of rands to revamp your stores.

24:01So it was a very clever way to do it. And to answer your last question about how did it, like, how did we put that to the business? I guess we told the story i mean we put a really cohesive you take three uh what four individuals in a room who are shareholders founders and stakeholders and tell them i'm going to change your logo you know it's it's not really the easiest conversation to have so it was really taking them through the journey making them understand why telling them what other brands have done and what we think we need to do and then show them that you know this is the way forward what does the future of this logo look like and we did that and i think again like i've alluded to a couple of times i guess they The trust that they give and the feedback they give and what came out of it was a really seriously successful rebrand.

24:47And I think the buy-in of the business and the buy-in of obviously franchisees and the internal team was where we put our first focus, making sure everyone knows what, where, why and how. And we came to a really, really, really strong rebrand. And then out of that, the aha moment went off in the light bulb. There was our icon, the gold dot, you know, the full stop, the finality, the precision. So we've now, that is our icon for the next five years. We will be driving a black billboard with a gold dot on it. And in five years time, someone's going to say, that's bootlegger without a logo on it.

25:20Awesome. And I think that's an interesting segue actually into the next piece of the puzzle, because you've kind of alluded to it and mentioned it a couple of times already, like bootlegger is now just bigger than just coffee. You know, you're doing retail, you're wholesale, e-commerce, franchise, all those different elements to it. So actually you're doing that all whilst maintaining just the single brand identity. So what do you think has kind of worked across both B2B and B2C? What do you think the key differences are in the marketing approach for both of those? And where do they kind of overlap?

25:56So it's, I mean, from a B2B perspective, just to clarify, we are, I mean, we are wholesale. So we're selling. So as I said earlier, we're roasting. on our side b2b is called coffee you know so we were to wholesale to hotels to restaurants to offices from machinery to training to staffing it's all done in-house and that's what we call b2b i guess your franchisee model can also be seen as b2b you know to a degree and and then there's which is which is new business so how are the guys finding new sites new locations so one side of that is property developers landlords etc and then the other side of it is you know we getting in a franchisee might come to the brand with the cash with the site vice versa or we're matching people up you know you you have a site but you don't have money or etc so i guess the b2b side to a degree it markets itself with with with the brand and the offerings that we put so we put more focus there into telling the story making people understand what you are what what you're buying into um and then it's more of your lead conversion funnel and on the on the new business side the wholesale side is very much showing up at the right time events conferences etc and then i mean the brand and the coffee is that good that people want to have bootlegger in their office they want to enjoy it at home so the e-com is has been such a an incredible thing we had it we had an e-com site which was just kind of a i guess it was just there because we knew some people would like bootlegger at home and it's turned over the last couple of months we've actually realized that that little putting some a proper strategy and some really strict strategic approach behind it has turned into an incredible finding that like people are buying anything coffee online through bootleg i mean we've got people buying our iced coffee tins on online it's been an incredible look and for me it was a light bulb moment that that that's where we really are using that to to grow our brand um i'll give you a really silly example when it comes to e-commerce and like people look at us i mean we made with mer we made a high-end dog bowl and we put it and it was a really expensive dog bowl put it online and a lot of people didn't like some people said to me like why dog bowl i said well if you look at it um that's how you position lifestyle we might not sell a lot um we didn't actually we didn't go that deep in terms of consignment stock of thousands of these things but you know we had a category it was called the the buddy club all of a sudden people start seeing us in a different world we've got a lifestyle range you know where we're selling staples pantry staples coffee butters and those type of things that yes to a degree is an e-commerce exercise but it's also an exercise and a journey towards that lifestyle that i spoke about you know we're playing a part in every so you can now have a bootlegger at home in the morning you're probably going to go to go to your meeting meet at a bootlegger um all the way through to you know flying in the sky now we've put bootlegger in the sky to just enjoying it at the office because your office has bootlegger or at an event so i guess it's how everything ties in to bootlegger and then as on the b2c side i think that's where people most people know bootlegger it's the stores it's the it's the it's the it's the brand that people buy into that's probably the one where we put most obviously most of our focus but i guess as you alluded to it all sits under one brand so if we're doing our job well enough that the logo is strong enough no matter what sits underneath it what sits behind it then people are going to want to know so inviting people into our roastery to come and have a look do the tours roastery experiences you'll never look at coffee the same and then we've introduced you to coffee but you're going to come there and probably have lunch or probably have bring your friends for a run and start a run or finish a run from there so again it's for us then you go into the community side so we do a lot of marketing and a lot of efforts but it's very strategic and and very measured But our first priority is to look after our franchisees, obviously, and our franchisees stores, because those are people on the B2B side that bought into the business and the brand.

30:00And how does brand show up nationally and internationally to help them grow locally in their region, which they have to do. They've still got to grow their store in their region. They're the local. They've got to take the logo off. You've still got a coffee or a restaurant business to run. My job is to make sure that the country knows who Bootlegger is and they know that it's in that area. And how you mentioned a little bit there about the lifestyle brand and the e-commerce strategy. Was that, is the lifestyle brand the strategy for e-commerce, like building these different products that, you know, would not necessarily be typical coffee products?

30:34Was that the thing that really got you guys, you know, the exposure in the home? Or was there something else that we're missing there? No, I think it was more that, you know, people, our coffee, our coffee is an everyday blend. so people that enjoy the fact that you can have our coffee morning afternoon so we haven't got you know all these varietals of blends we have the bootlegger blend which is something that people enjoy and people want to have it at home so finding the from the drip bag to the filter coffee to the to the ground beans to the pods etc making sure that it was accessible for people to enjoy our brand at home which then ticks lifestyle you know it's not i don't have to go to i'm probably going to go there as well when i pass one but at home i can still enjoy it and then And obviously, as a brand of our scale, you know, having the machinery, having the affiliations and the partnerships with all these different suppliers and things, it opens us up to really being your one-stop shop for all things coffee and all things bootlegger.

31:31When it comes to what you alluded to now on the lifestyle side, that's just us kind of putting another tool into our toolbox from the brand side. It was never a revenue exercise. It was more around that lifestyle. so we and again it comes back to that just finding different ways in the bootlegger way to do things so we've done you know and it's also some of the some brands come to us that makes sense they want to do a partnership or a collab and we say we say no to a lot of them because it's just a collab for no reason or no authenticity is probably not going to do anyone any good it'll be so another one of those trends but there are a few that come along the way and mer being a high-end you know takeaway or like um like coffee cups whatever that makes sense to us and it just helps us be that one step up so i guess e-com and e-com you've got place to play and and place but for me you put an e-com ad out yes it's an e-com ad but it's also a brand ad and and how we shoot and and how we position it's all very much thought through switching gears a little bit and you you mentioned this a little bit before and i think most of people who are listening to this know already about your airline partnership.

32:38But I do want to dive into that because I think that's such a great example of a non-traditional growth play. You know, you mentioned you want to make sure that people see that brand everywhere that they're going and that they start to instantly recognize it and like can trust that this is the best coffee. What made you pursue that instead of a more conventional marketing route? It was an interesting start. You know, it started off with looking at the strategy again. so you want to grow nationally and then what are the what are your verticals to to really make a big play and say we are a national brand obviously outdoor advertising and billboards and things are where a lot of the i guess your i'm going to say big brands play because they've got the out of home budgets and they would and they would go there the other side of it came into you know in the strategy it says we want to make two to three big plays a year and we're willing to walk we're willing to spend a year or a year and a half on something to make something that comes into the industry with a bang so it was a bit of a mix between the two of those then we went and did some you know some investigating where where do the problems lie with i guess coffee and where where do the opportunities lie and in south africa especially our airline coffee quality um was horrific it was a consumer problem people weren't drinking coffee in the sky so i kind of said why don't we try and get up into the sky and do coffee properly in the sky and and that for me then went to that tick that box of you know what if you can put your cup branded cup and your product in the sky where you've got thousands and thousands of people a day traveling around the country national growth don't have to hope that someone sees my billboard so we started that journey you know and i it was it was really one of those i would say hold my beer but it was like hold my coffee let's go and um it was an incredible it was never and this is hand on i've said this so many times in media and on panels this was never a revenue exercise it really wasn't it was a full-on brand exercise but in hindsight it's turned into a pretty successful revenue exercise if you look at the numbers so it did play it has played both parts but it took us a year it took a year of dealing with aviation rules and regulations dealing with tourvest who runs safir's on-board offering dealing with safir themselves you know to make sure that they trust the brand it was never done in the sky there's a to have i think it's now 38 or 40 airplanes in the sky for that volume of people logistically it was hard to get across the line because of the way that tourvest handle it with zafir and the thing and aviation to have your you know to put a coffee machine in the sky it's not going to happen to put a barista in the sky we we asked to do it really cool uh put pod machines in the sky also not doable so we had to really go back to why bootlegger is what we are everything is in-house we product develop in-house we had we have a our head of coffee so it was a full-on team exercise with me going to them going guys we've got an opportunity but i've got a problem i'm stuck product what can we do coffee what can we do so we formulated the products for the deal and then we had to go back to safi and two of us and then came back you know sizing limits you know they load the plane once a day the product expands it comes down there were so many conversations i can't tell you and there were nights where we had lost it and there were nights where we got it back and there were nights where we were asking old jobs to do favors for us and eventually you know it came down to a meeting where we said there was no benchmark here so you can't say to i mean the margins were nothing and then you say to a brand you know trust us that lift your prices and trust us i mean that's that's a that's a hell of a thing to say to someone but they did and now i think they were proud to have a brand in the sky and what's evolved in the last seven months has been astronomical it really has i mean we've i think we're on well over 700 ,000 hot beverages in the sky over over just over six months we've now taken the in-flight cover of the of the magazine we've added a product range and now we're doing the cookies and those things through the business through our bakery which is a bootlegger silo bakery so you know it's as i said and all of this whilst growing the brand whilst people going you solved the problem i don't have to buy coffee before i get on the plane now i've got my favorite brand in the sky i can enjoy it i've got the logo and again like i say for a brand like like fly safet and two of us to trust another brand put them in the sky and call it a cafe in the sky for me i couldn't have asked for for more so short answer after my long answer is pure branding exercise but looking at you know what what is that aha moment the bootlegger one that's going to make a big play in the media and a big play in the consumer's lives how does it go about how do we work together as a as this incredible team in-house and how do we put it out there and make it work and then with longevity so there's so much that i said i wrote the linkedin piece this week i I said, I wish I could share what's coming.

37:37We are constantly evolving. Like now we've reached airline. We're serving coffee at 30 ,000 feet. Now we're going to take it to the next level. So really, really cool national growth for bootlegger. That is great. And that actually brings me on to one of the questions which came from our rival AMP SA community, our WhatsApp group for fellow marketers in South Africa. um one of the questions that came out was really around you know what is the principle or framework that you utilize for staying relevant and standing out in such a heavily saturated market and one of the reference points that this listener gave was that they remember the ubiquity of mug and bean back in the day um and then the sudden decline and like the closure of stores and things like that and that was predominantly down to i would assume from you know no longer standing out in the marketplace so they really want to understand if there is a framework that you use to identify any sort of unfair advantages for the brand and how do you how do you execute that i can answer with one word and it's what's it's what's literally um drives the entire business it's quality our vision um is be better so be better every day the quality in bootlegger uh is what differentiates us from obviously we have the different models and we've got restaurants but the quality from every touch point of the brand everybody's trained through the business anything we put out from a barista i'll give you an i'll give you an example all of our baristas are trained level two barista training through bootlegger all of our stores that open we train those staff anyone who joins the brand we train then we've got in-house product developments everything that you see on the menu everything that's developed everything that's made is done in-house and tested and tried and tried again even from our past stage and us it was took a year to to finally get right i mean they tasted thousands to put one out that went yes that's it and now they're out in the market um all the way through to um you know even from that franchisee journey that i spoke about when a franchisee joins bootlegger they don't just buy into a brand or put their money down and get a get four walls and and a logo on the wall they join what we call the the bootlegger journey so they get this from their suppliers through to the build through to the project management through to the marketing through to opening bank accounts they've walked this they walk a journey from from from an idea or wanting to be part of it to the day they open their door and then beyond you know it's quality in every single aspect of the brand that has made it um what it is today And I guess there's a slight bit of transparency there, you know, making sure that people understand what goes on behind the curtain and how we could possibly, I mean, we had this discussion recently, we could possibly really brag about, you know, the quality and the amount of in-house training and the amount of development and testing that we do.

40:35But that's not our brand. We're not a bragging brand. We like to just show up in the product, in the service. So I guess to answer their question, it's that there's not one thing that's not looked at, measured and tested for quality all the way through to the very last element of any aspect of our brand is pure, pure quality. And in our industry, unfortunately, I think over the years, it's taken a knock in terms of quality. I think some of our competitors have let go of quality and that's where you lose it. The minute people are saying, I go to the store in X because they have a good coffee, you've lost it.

41:14You're on your downward trajectory there. You should have the same coffee everywhere you go if it's from bootlegger. If you're having it at an event, if you're having it in a store, if you're having it in the sky, it should be the same experience that you expect from the brand anywhere in the country. And that's what we live by. you did mention when we spoke earlier consistency over constant innovation and i think that really rings true in what you've just said there 100 even on our menu you know we a lot of brands do menu launches we do we say our new summer menu we probably take one dish off when we add two on and we do something cool um that's coming now for our winter menu but we don't we're not we're not changing again it goes back to our our customers we're looking at the data we're looking at what people are enjoying we're not just saying oh we don't want the eggs on there anymore so off they come you know we look at what dishes have done well what dishes and regional specific and again it's it's kind of like if you do the basics to a degree but you do them exceptionally well you've you've you've won then if you just add a sprinkle of you know bootlegger on there you've done exceptionally well all right great and a final question and this is about a very tactical campaign which i think you know bootlegger launched and has has turned into a massive success um is the 29 rand coffee being part of that morning ritual like can you talk to us a bit about that i really really want to understand how you think about using that price to drive behavior without it kind of devaluing the brand um so yeah let's hear a bit i knew you were coming with that question um 29 rand coffee is an interesting one so our business doesn't run on specials you won't see you won't see many signs with special this or special that sale this which was part of the strategy of 29 rand coffee but you do see you know based on the data based on the need of the stores based on our brand you know we have to make plays you can't just sit and hope you know certain stores are are great locations and certain stores need a bit of a bit of help but without diluting your business, your brand.

43:23So the 29 Rand Coffee, what started as, again, a trial, has turned into an offering. So we don't call it a sale. And for me, it goes back to that Saffir thing. We're almost solving a consumer problem. As people are on the move, I want to get my coffee. Now you can get a consistently good coffee or great coffee at 29 Rand. So for us, it's time of the day relevant. It's a reason for people to change their morning routine from the start. It also helps us grow the brand for people who aren't sure who bootlegger is. I can now go get a 29 Rand coffee. So it helps me give me a bit of an ammunition in my marketing toolkit to be able to market something.

43:57But it does also allow me to put a really cool promotion out there and disguise it in a 29 Rand coffee. It's not, it's just an offer. And you see people coming in and rushing in at two minutes to eight, diving into the counter to get a 29 Rand coffee. And for us, the numbers have shown across the country that it really has been successful. again we're not going to be putting it on billboards we're not going to be we put it in strategic places but for us the the value of eternal land coffee is you telling your friend oh did you know bootlegger does eternal land coffee is it down the road or at all their stores nationwide that for me is is the is how a successful um campaign is run and it's turned into an offer will we adapt it probably here and there might add a few combos on here we again everything that we that's put out is tested across the brand and across certain stores which we call head office stores so we are testing and playing around a bit but the 2900 coffee for us has been it's been a really interesting journey and a successful i'm gonna say campaign or offer that we've rolled out do you think that that works really well with the brand still being a premium brand because you have all the other elements of it of being a lifestyle brand being in the in the home and in the air all these different places yeah absolutely i think um you know we We're 100 % speciality grade coffee.

45:17We're the biggest artisanal roastery in South Africa, which means we are producing quality coffee. So, you know, you discount your coffee. Sometimes you run a risk. For us, it's not about discounting the coffee. It's about getting more people to taste the coffee that you will then come back at lunch. And you don't mind paying the 41 Rand for the coffee later that day. It's more us acknowledging time of day, routine, and then also giving the rest of the business and those other pillars that we spoke about a little bit of an offering where there's help needed instead of just saying, right, discount, let's do 50 % off the whole menu or let's do X, let's just, you have an offering.

45:54And as I said, we will adapt it and it will become part of, it might become just on the menu at some point or we will look at ways to adapt it. You know, Valentine's Day, get a coffee and add a past day for an extra 10 rand. Now all of a sudden you're getting a coffee and a past day for 40 rand. I mean, those are the type of elements where we will have a bit of fun with it. But I think it's I think it's here to stay for a while. Amazing. OK, great, Miguel. That brings us to the end of our main recording. We've got a couple of lightning round questions before I let you go. So you're up for those.

46:29I love these. Let's go. Great. All right. So, Miguel, if your brand were a pizza, what type of pizza would it be? i would say a um a margarita with pineapple on it no it's got pineapple doesn't it it's a regina with pineapple on it okay interesting what's the best campaign that you've seen recently the best campaign i saw recently was probably the 2900 coffee no i'm kidding um it's a very good question i can't actually get one at the moment um can i come back to that one yeah you can come back to that one uh what's your biggest pet peeve in marketing at the current moment answer this question the other day um it's i love partnerships and collabs but i think they're being overused i think it's now become diluted i think it's still got to be authentic and it's got a the successful ones are when the aha moment so i'd say do two instead of 10 but do them well cool and the final one what's the biggest missed opportunity in marketing right now i think for me i think more of what's happening here on this on this podcast and i think more around marketers uh coming together to solve the current world of marketing that's evolving too fast with the additions of ai with additions of you know different strategies and different types of businesses evolving.

48:00I think the water is becoming a little bit murky and I think we're all defaulting to the same stream where I think possibly there could be more knowledge sharing, knowledge base growing and more like real world marketing discussions that can be had. Well, Miguel, thank you for joining us today. Really looking forward to seeing what Bootlegger has in store and how you guys grow. and I can't wait for this episode to drop. Thank you so much for having me. And as I said, Jamal, my final answer there, I think what you guys are doing is great. Even opening it up to WhatsApp groups to be able to ask questions.

48:36This is fundamentally what we could do more of. And I think you guys are on a really good journey. I said, thanks for your interest in Bootleggger. Thanks for your interest in me. And I'm happy to recommend this to anyone. I think I've really enjoyed the journey of getting to know you guys. So thank you so much. Awesome. Thanks, Mikkel.

49:23Thank you.