BuzzBallz, Booze With Benefits & What’s Next for Gin | Stu Bale founder of Crucible - Slurp or Skip

Stu Bale, founder of Crucible, joins us for a guest episode of Slurp or Skip to talk drinks innovation, bartender culture and what’s really happening in the on-trade. We taste our way through Another Hendrick’s, BuzzBallz Biggies and Crooked Stance Gin, while getting Stu’s take on whether gin still has room to innovate, why BuzzBallz has become such a success story, and whether the future of drinking could lie in functional drinks that actually make you feel something. We also get into the realities facing hospitality, the growing role of pre-batched and RTD cocktails in pubs and bars, what drinks brands get wrong when trying to win over bartenders, and why cocktail competitions should perhaps focus less on theatre and more on creating drinks that can actually make money behind the bar. Plus: are drinks trends still born in bars, or is TikTok now calling the shots? And is the best route to innovation sometimes simply making something delicious rather than interesting?

Transcript:

Hey everybody welcome back to another episode of Slurp or Skip and today is another guest special

joined by a good friend of mine Stu Bell from Crucible. Stu knows the entrée like the back of his

hand and now runs Crucible which I'll let him tell you a little bit more about.

Yeah so Crucible is I guess it's kind of it's an agency now it wasn't it wasn't when I started it

it wasn't intended to be an agency.

My background was in working cocktail bars. And then I moved to work for a consultancy company

called Strange Hill. And I did that for about five years. And we did a lot of bartender training.

We did a lot of opening of kind of fancy hotels all around the world. And we did a bunch of product

development. And after I'd done five years there, I wanted to do my own thing.

a lot of my peers were setting up their own bars but I kind of wanted to do something a bit

different and this was around it was in 2017 so it was kind of around the rise of WeWork and that

kind of shared workspace sort of thing so I was like if I needed somewhere to do my consultancy

work to a level I was happy with yeah it wasn't just destroying my kitchen and then maybe other

people would want to use that space as well yeah so i can set up this co-working space with all of

kind of fancy equipment and just a nice working environment nice and opened up like a gym so people

can pay membership and come in and use the space to work on their own projects but then what

happens is people more people get coming to me for projects and i can't do all this by myself so

there was lots of kind of interesting and useful people around so it kind of grew organically and

now I've got a nice wee team and we still get people coming in and using it as a membership space

and yeah it's just kind of grown in its own arms and legs.

So one of the projects that I formerly worked with Stu on involved chromatography gas spectrometry.

Gas chromatography, yeah.

That's why you're the scientist mixologist and I'm the PR guy. But yes, I think from when I worked

with you, it was amazing to see the level that drinks creation could go to and mixology could go to

and the science behind it. I think often when we think about food, Heston was the guy who did the

science of food and made it quite scientific and ambitious and creative.

I didn't really see too much of that elsewhere inside food, but actually the work that you guys do

in terms of looking at flavour and viscosity and textural drinks. It's such an interesting space.

I mean, the stuff that Heston really kind of pioneered, that kind of stuff in this country.

I mean, a lot of the stuff,

there's a particular book called Food Pairing by a scientist called Bernard LaHouse.

Actually, a lot of his earlier work is kind of what inspired Heston to do this. And then there's

another food scientist, Harold McGee, who's based in America, who was another big inspiration for

Heston. But Heston was the one that kind of really put it in the mainstream over here. What I find

really kind of fascinating about that is a lot of it is kind of it's where the art meets the

science and you can see things that things that go really well together like for example well when

we did Jim Mare it was it was strawberry and almond went really well together strawberry yeah was

it strawberry and almond I can't remember so for example something like uh rhubarb and pink

grapefruit okay and that goes really well together and you you might you might stumble across that

by yourself but then when you start looking into it you realize that they share a bunch of

chemicals and that's why it works together and or you might find that they actually they don't

share chemicals at all and that's why they complement each other as well so it's kind of there's

different reasons why things work together yeah generally there always is a reason so it's quite

interesting to find out what the reason yeah nice i just saw the mccain chips have done a pop-up

martini bar where there's a chip in the martini um i won't ask for your thoughts on that but that

sounds like they've just took the two trends and just dumped them together rather than doing some

of the integrity and science behind why those two might work say that again is that real yeah it's

real yeah yeah 100 and i was also kind of like i don't know how the chip is going to well it will

instantly be awful because it's being dipped in a martini Like in terms of, yeah, I don't know.

Because what you want a chip to be crunchy, right? Yeah, exactly. How long is it going to? Three

seconds, maybe, if not? Instant. Really interesting. Well, I made some really good chips in the

office recently. It was like a five-day process. I lacto-fermented the potatoes and then...

Yeah, I put a video up for it, you should check it out, man. I fermented the potatoes for five days

and then fried them at one temperature, chilled them overnight, fried them again at another

temperature.

So like triple cooked, but with that initial process, doesn't it? Yeah, the lactose fermentation.

And what does that ultimately do, like break down the starch inside? It kind of breaks down the

starch slightly, but then also it kind of really...

It makes the chip kind of seasoned from inside out. Okay,

interesting. And the whole thing gets a root. It's like an umami bomb. Yeah, nice. It's wild.

Interesting, nice. I've always wanted a deep fat fryer. Yeah, fair. I've always wanted to make my

own crisps. Maybe we could do that on the next one. Right, without further ado then,

we're going to get into our first drink today. And so this is another Hendrix.

no prizes for guessing what this is it's another type of hendrix uh but from a flavor perspective

we're seeing orange blossom and cacao beans interesting on the nose we'll just try it neat first

and i've got a bit of tonic as well um so new launch from the brand obviously the gin boom is kind

of well and truly gone But obviously from a volume perspective, it still does serious quantities

within both the on-trade and off-trade. We used to work together on gin briefs back in the day.

Where do you see gin at the moment? The work that you're doing with bar teams and the on-trade and

brands, are you seeing a lot from gin or is it actually really in other sectors? As you said, it's

kind of had its moment and all of the... Everything that potentially could have been explored might

have been explored, do you reckon?

well no because you can always explore more i just think that there's not i don't think there's as

much consumer interest in it yeah fine my benchmark for the gin exploration about like my parents

are all like yeah for years years before they were all like oh we could try this we could try this

and try it now they've reverted back to their their gordons they're just interesting just like it

so we always again when you're in like in the industry or specifically even in the london bubble

you can be, I guess, negligent in the sense that you might be like, well, the gin boom's done, but

you will still see a gin menu in a lot of pubs and bars in the regions now. So that's when you know

a trend has completely hit the mainstream is when you can get it in your local when you go back.

That's what I've seen, the equivalent now is every f***ing bar has a spritz menu.

Yeah, yeah, fine.

So when you were like, oh, we're going to do some gin, I was like, f***ing hell. But actually,

I'm a real sucker for Orange Blossom. So I've gone from being f***ing big sceptical to actually I'm

quite interested. Very intrigued. I also think it's interesting to see... Obviously, one of the

major success stories within Gin decide that they needed at this moment in time to bring out a new

flavour. I think Orange Blossom... I mean, they've done a few. Yeah. But this is a bigger scale.

Yeah, I think so. This is launched Q1 of this year. So we're a few months into getting into it.

I just think it's interesting where we're seeing so much difficulty with a lot of spirits. but the

spirit sector in general, how we are trying to innovate, where we're seeing the growth and success.

So we don't really have an RTD on the table, although we sort of do, if that is an RTD.

um someone would be in trouble someone would be in trouble maybe in scotland that's an rtd um but

um obviously hendrix decided to launch this in large format um you know most brands these days are

launching either in an rtd in a can um or something new and completely different right um so i

think it's interesting that they've done this um yeah i'm going to taste it see see what we think

of that but

you know actually i quite like it yeah Quite smooth. No real heat, no real burn.

A little... quite a bit of sweetness. It's quite sweet, but I guess that's kind of come from the

cacao. And the orange blossoms there, but it's there at a nice level, and orange blossoms kind of

always a challenge because you need to use such f***ing small amounts, otherwise it just ends up

tasting like soap. Because you do get like an oiliness, which I assume comes from the... That'd be

probably from the cacao. Cacao is really oily, but orange blossom is just a kind of really nice

florality. Let's chuck a bit of tonic in it and see if that adds much to it.

I mean, it doesn't strike me as a Monday morning gin, which is... We usually do these on a Friday.

Jess and I once said, never again doing this on a Monday because the energy levels first thing is

like, oof. Especially when there's a World Cup going on.

Definitely a nice, you would call this a summer gin. I don't think the packaging necessarily

screams that, but it's obviously very in keeping with the brown house and whatnot. There's not so

much juniper either. No, very, yeah, very little actually.

I mean, I don't hate it. I don't love it. Maybe it's another gin in it.

Not to put you on the spot, is there any parts of gin you think, if you were tasked with trying to

revitalise gin, which is hard to say because it'll be a bit greedy,

I guess, for them to have another boom, where do you feel like there might be unexplored

opportunities? Was there anything you actually wish you'd done with gin that you hadn't ever done

before? Do you think there's potentially a particular cocktail serve that's You know,

the martini's having a bit of a moment at the moment. If McCain's jumping on the martini trend,

then it must have hit the fairly mainstream. Yeah, is there any way you're seeing, you think gin

could have another little... I don't know, I mean, innovation in gin has led to people putting more

and more different botanicals in things. Yeah. Maybe we need less. Maybe we just need to look at

Juniper plus one thing, Juniper plus two or three things. Maybe strip it back and just look at the

quality of what you're putting in there rather than loads of f***ing other things. Yeah, nice.

Okay, that's really nice. I guess when you think about things like vodka, they try and strip back

as much as possible, right? If you think about whiskey. But then actually, broadly speaking,

flavor is where a lot of the growth is coming for a lot of these big brands. So they have to just

add more. Something that I say quite a lot is that there's a big difference between interesting and

delicious. And ideally you want to be both, but if you only have to be one then you should be

delicious. Fundamentally for a beverage, yeah. And I think a lot of drinks,

a lot of innovation kind of falls into interesting rather than delicious. Yeah, fine. Nice.

in jurassic park where jeff goldblum's like the scientists were scientists were too busy thinking

if they could to see whether they should and i think there's a lot of that kicking about nice that

is a good line i might have to steal that um interestingly i've just read on the back of the bowl

it says it's not for everyone so you know hopefully they won't be offended with whatever we're

about to say next um is it a stubble skip for you i i could i wouldn't skip it i don't think no I

don't hate it. Okay. Yeah. Is there a middle ground? No, certainly not.

So I'd have to put you on the spot. What about sip as opposed to... You're changing the show.

Our name gets confused. We've had slurp or burp, slip or slurp.

Any others, Jess? She's not there.

Okay, fine. So I think that's a slurp from you. Yeah. It's not a big one. Yeah. Okay,

fine.

I think it's a slurp for me because they've tried something new and innovative.

I do love the gin category. I think from the early outset of my career through spent so much time

within it. I'm intrigued to see how well this performs just given the state of spirits generally

and gin on its own. So I'm also going to go with a very gentle slurp too.

So Stry, what are you seeing with the work that you do? What are brands coming to you with?

What are bar teams looking for? Whether that's the spirits specifically themselves or flavours?

What I've seen really interesting in, off the back of the spicy margarita trend,

it seems like everyone and their dog is launching a spicy version of,

which is cool.

Is it exciting innovation?

Would you not just still be as well adding a dash of Tabasco? Yeah.

And does spicy belong outside of tequila potentially as well?

I mean, I can't deal with spicy food at all, so my answer is no.

But for me, it's interesting how that has kind of that spicy margarita trend has kind of created

this chain reaction or thing. And in a similar vein with the spritz trend,

I mean, we were talking a minute ago about there used to be a gin and tonic menu, now it's a spritz

menu. And I think now other brands are now looking to take some of that Aperol market.

if their category is not necessarily usually within that space. If your spritz is adjacent, how can

we make it better? Yeah, nice. I think the spritz one is so interesting because obviously we see so

much around the struggles for alcohol, in particular high ABV.

actually there are some things that buck the trend which we'll come on to into a second but the

spritz trend i think is just a purely example of that beautiful looking serve broadly speaking it

usually looks quite nice within a glass yeah you can add quite an extra bit premium on top of it

with adding a reasonably low-cost ingredient in terms of soda.

And obviously it then appeals because it can reduce the ABV of the drink. So I kind of get it,

but again, it feels like the category is really scrambling just to try and find whatever's the next

quick bit of growth, do you think? Yeah, I think, and then the interesting thing is that with some

of these big companies,

by the time their innovation has got through all the levels, have they missed a bus?

Yeah, I always think this with everyone's launched a pistachio slash Dubai flavoured chocolate

drink. Yeah, I guess the other one that I'm being asked to look at more and more is the kind of

functional adaptogen things. For the mushroom drinks,

for example, and to... To be able to make good on some of the claims on a lion's mane mushroom

drink, you need to have so much f***ing mushrooms in there that it would have to be like a mushroom

soup. So if you've just put like a little sprinkle of the mushrooms in, then yeah, you're cool. You

can say it's a lion's mane thing on the can, but it is going to do absolutely nothing.

Yeah, Jess and I talked about this the last time, last episode I think we did, with collagen. So we

work with a collagen brand, but so many brands are adding collagen to the product and they talk

about it in the thousands of milligrams, which is basically five grams. Yeah, which doesn't touch

the size of anything. Like daily quantity they want you to be having is like 30 grams or 25 grams

plus, right? Which is really interesting from a functional perspective. So from functional to what

some people might call... dysfunctional uh what a transition um we have gone with the much loved

big balls the biggies the buzz balls uh this is their world cup edition uh but in the biggies

format um this is the gold melon honeydew melon flavor um retailed at about 18 pounds on nectar in

sainsbury's otherwise over 20 pounds registered retail price 13.5%,

you're getting just shy of two liters in this thing. We can't obviously say from a legal

perspective this is a ready-to-drink cocktail because I think that would knock someone out.

However, Buzz Balls obviously have really just took the ready-to-drink cocktail market by storm.

So in the grocers, Britain's biggest alcohol brands compiled by James Beeson,

Stella Smirnoff Budweiser, still continue to doing really well but buzz balls being the standout

story and it's rocketed 193 places in the rankings to 48th britain's 48th biggest alcohol brand um

it's obviously highly shareable packaging limited edition merch so this is obviously their world

cup range um but yeah ultimately proving they've got like cultural relevance and i would always put

i would put buzzball basically in the same sort of camp I'd put like line bikes. They've got that

same kind of cultural cool with that target audience. And I think that transcends, you know,

the younger legal drinking age, Gen Z and probably millennials upwards. And so,

yeah, they've been a real success story for the category. Obviously, there's also brands like AU

Vodka who are performing really, really well as well. But just demonstrative of how RTD cocktails

are currently the growth channel. for a lot of these big drinks companies. And now you're seeing,

I think, Dave Lewis, who's now at Diageo, used to be Tesco CEO. He was like,

we need to be doing more RTDs and they're pushing more of those out in the coming months. So yeah,

where we've once had premiumization, it's now actually really around convenience. Innovative

flavors and a format that works for consumers. But yeah, let's try Buzz Balls,

Big E's, Gold Melon, World Cup edition. I can't believe that in their World Cup edition,

they haven't got a Scotland flag on the front of that. Well, it's because the product will be

redundant already. Sorry to timestamp this. No, but you're right, to be fair.

They could have done a nice little Buckfast twist or something. That would have been fun. Right,

let's see how we go.

No, I know I said I loved orange blossom before, but I also am a sucker for melon things.

Interesting. That wasn't planned either, so I don't know why I poured myself an extra large one on

a Monday morning.

I mean, I can smell it from here. Smell it from here. First impressions on the colour?

Classic melon.

I mean, the smell is so beautifully sweet. I'm a sucker for actual sweets, and it smells like I've

just opened... a lovely pack of like apple flavored sweets. Are they still a thing?

US definitely, yeah.

And in all of those tax evading American sweet shops on the high street.

Smells incredible of sweets and joy and just childhood.

Yeah, I wouldn't say it smells particularly melon.

Taste-wise, I don't think I'm more either getting an awful lot of melon. Although honeydew is

quite gentle, isn't it? I really wanted to like that. For me,

it's journey juice.

Like train tinny journey juice. Right, yeah. It will get you where you need to be going and

wherever that might be.

I've got a sweet tooth and that's really sweet for me. That's too sweet for you. One of those on

the way to a night out, on the way to a party, at a barbecue. They're obviously now sold in

Wetherspoons. Oh, really? Interesting. Which obviously adding the entree dynamic to RTDs,

which I might ask you in a second. Taste-wise, not getting an awful lot of melon, but I don't

think people are buying these necessarily for high distinctive flavors.

I mean, I think that... For me, buzz balls are really interesting because there's all this

narrative about people don't want to drink anymore and the kids aren't drinking. And actually,

I think it's more a cost of living thing. I think that people can't afford to drink.

reason that buzz balls is pretty much the only thing in growing and growth but yeah this trend is

because actually bang for your buck pound for pound you're struggling to get more units per per

million per pound and i think what's interesting this is still a us-based product yeah um we've

done a lot of work with like us-based wines for example they're often a lot sweeter they're trying

to bring younger consumers into the market

There will always be a lot of naysayers with, broadly speaking, slightly high ABV, fun,

bright, interesting flavors. But I think ultimately what makes this whole category interesting is

consumers can have choice. And to your point here, you or I who work in the drinks industry,

we like to back our palates and we are interested in flavors and different combinations of

ingredients and that sort of thing. There is a time and a place for all drinks. And I think...

for a category that broadly speaking is a lot of issues it's nice to see some success stories um

especially because this started from a teacher in the us yeah i think it's it's great i think with

some ice and squeeze of lemon banging yeah true So you're critiquing now our service.

The podcast service isn't good enough.

Slurp for me. Slurp with ice and lemon. Slurp with ice and lemon. Nice. Cool. We've been very

diplomatic. So last but not least, we've sent this in actually. It's a gin called Crooked Stance.

Really small batch based here in the UK. And what really caught my eye when I first came across

this was... One, really interesting packaging, pink wax seal. But two,

with every release that they do, so this one only being 159 bottles, they work with a different UK

-based artist, which I thought was like a nice twist on what Gin's currently doing. And you can

save the bottle, get it refilled, so there's a sustainability angle on that as well. So this is

their 80s edition, so we should be getting juniper, blood orange, green cardamom. grapefruit peels

sage grains of paradise and coriander so we'll see and stew is an expert in flavor so i'm intrigued

to see what you get from this good sound probably melon from yeah yeah the melon from the buzz ball

you just said yeah fair well

instantly compared to the hendrix way more juniper way more juniper a lot more heat as well on the

night it's a perfectly well made okay yeah um I don't think it adds anything to the conversation.

Okay. I don't...

Yeah, I mean, it's a well-made spirit. Good. But... There's loads of them.

There's loads of them, yeah. I think what's interesting is the whole... They've obviously tried to

do something different with the packaging.

Almost like, you know, the voice for artists, help get artist names out there, that kind of thing.

Small batch. I mean, something like this is more someone's hobby than anything else. Yeah,

absolutely. Yeah, when you're doing quantities of this size. But I'm pleased to say that you

thought it was a well-made gin. Yeah. Which, from a flavour of a man... Yeah, it's quite a

classic. When you stay within these parameters, it's kind of hard to...

Hmm. With a bit of tonic, actually, it gives it even more life. Yeah.

It opens up some of those extra flavours.

I think it smells pretty good. I have to admit. For me, personally, if I was a gin drinker, well,

I am a gin drinker, but if I was buying bottles of gin, from a taste and enjoyment perspective,

I'm actually getting a lot more out of that than the Hendrix. I know they're different,

but... If you signed up to get a gin and tonic, this is much more what you'd expect to get.

That's why I was saying, going back to the Hendrix, I'm not quite sure what the occasion would be

for that. Yeah. We've talked, obviously, a lot about spirits.

Gin in particular, not particularly flavour of the month at the moment, but we're seeing two very

different ends of the spectrum here. For me, it's crazy that we're still seeing new gins all the

time. Yeah. But I think it was in the doldrums for so long, they can't afford to go back there,

right? It used to be that thing in your mum's cupboard or your nan's cupboard that you just

wouldn't even touch, even if you wanted something to sneak out the house. Broadly speaking,

you obviously work with a lot of hospitality teams, a lot of bar teams.

What are the issues within hospitality are well documented? What are the main things you're seeing?

Where do you see different establishments trying to buck the trend? And where do you see some

potential signs of hope and opportunity? What I'm seeing is quite interesting in that

As kind of always is the case, the bars always kind of follow what is going on in the kitchen,

what goes on in the kitchens. And for a long time in kind of bigger chain restaurants,

maybe anything over five or ten sites, then they'll have had a lot of ingredients,

sometimes whole dishes made, and it's made centrally in a central production unit. Right. and then

that's sent out to all the units so that there's consistency across sites and I think in the last

few years that's something that bar groups are really starting to look at and I think that there's

a bunch of reasons for that I mean I think that getting staff is harder than ever getting good

staff and then even once you have the staff it's difficult to

to afford to pay them. So you need to have less of them, which means there used to be slack in

rotas where you could pay people to do training. That's even harder to do now.

So you're having less staff that haven't been trained as well. So the solution is to have a lot of

the prep done offsite.

So I was interested that you said that you're broadly speaking like a fan. of buzz balls because i

was kind of like as a man who's you know worked his career in mixology worked with bartenders and

the entree now seeing some of these products infiltrate the entree yeah as i mentioned so with buzz

balls being available in wetherspoons um do you actually see that as a positive because what you

can do is take away a lot of the um the difficulties and um issues that you know producing good

consistent quality cocktails and i'm talking not these you know the amazing london bars that we

have here in sure it's what i'm talking about your mainstream across the uk your average pub and

your good wet led establishment do you think it's actually a good thing that we're seeing more rtds

pop on those spaces you think other brands within this space like math funkin etc um do you see

that as a good thing for the on trade or do you think i think what is I think what is good is good

for consumers because I think the most important thing for consumers is consistency and if you're

unable to train your staff correctly then you should be doing something that you know the consumer

is going to get the same thing every time. because there's nothing worse than even going up to the

same bar on the same night. And because you get your drink off someone, a different person, you get

something completely different. And then that's... That's always been my biggest issue with craft

beer. Right. Is that you're spending the same amount for something you have no idea the quality of

or the taste of. Which is why I do think we've seen a big sharp rise in the Continental Lagers

again. Because people want that consistency. They want to know that if they're going to spend maybe

£7 plus on a pint. Yeah. It's going to taste like what they think it's going to taste like. Well,

yeah, I mean, or just not like a pint full of hops.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Just pure citrus in your face. OK, interesting.

Nice. And do you see any kind of flourishes of like positivity for the hospitality industry?

Do you think there's any kind of opportunities for growth that potentially some people are sleeping

on or anything like that?

Or do you think a lot of it is just coming from the top down in terms of what the government

decides, tax, etc? I mean, that's the thing. I think that the hospitality is in a really funny

place just now. that this VAT cut that hopefully comes in would be a great thing.

I think it'll be interesting because I'm sure the consumers are going to be expecting 10% off all

the drinks, where actually the operators are all seeing 10% back on. So I think that'll be a

really, I don't think that's going to be the instant fix. Everyone thinks it's going to be as

interesting.

Obviously it'd be a great help. I mean, I think that...

If you look back, the last big financial crash

in 2007, 2008,

when lots of bars closed around that time, which meant there was lots of empty sites and lots of

really good independent operators opened in that post. And I do wonder if we're seeing lots of

places close just now. And actually, that's going to lead to lots of cheap sites being available.

And is that going to lead to some really exciting new things? More innovation and stuff. I actually

saw this like, trust me, probably the biggest lover of the Great British pub you can imagine. I saw

someone say something really simple and I was like, maybe they're right. They just said, were there

just too many pubs? And I think about some of the areas I've grown up and lived in and there would

be about six pubs in like... a few hundred meters square radius you know and it's like they served

a period of time where consumers probably would barely even eat meals at home do you know what i

mean it's like you would go out to the pub every single evening, and society has just changed,

and I don't know if we'd ever go back to that, right? Because we can do so much more in our own

homes, right? TV, the internet, whatever, whatever, whatever. And so the fact that maybe there were

just too many pubs, which is horrible and sad to say, but it's almost a bit like churches, right? I

feel like churches, and again, I've got no data points to back this up, and I'm probably, maybe

it's the Monday morning gin, but it's like... It's sad that they're no longer being used as

churches, but is that because there were just so many of them in the first place and now society

doesn't require that many? It doesn't mean pubs are going to continue to decline at this rate. It's

just we had too many. It's funny you lump the church with pubs because it's just historically

that's people's third space and now people's third space is the phone. Yeah,

and now it's the phone, which is a sad thing. So, Crooked Stance Gin, a small producer,

got in touch with us. We are always 100% honest on this. We don't take any bribes.

I think it's a well-made gin. I like the idea. Go check out their website. They've got different

artist collaborations that they're doing.

It was a slurp for me. I think it was nice. It was a slurp. I wouldn't buy it. Yeah. But I

wouldn't, if that makes sense. But if someone gave it to you or you were served it. If someone gave

it to me, I'd be more than happy to. Yeah, nice. Perfect. Okay, Stu, so what do you think drinks

brands get wrong when they're trying to win over bartenders in the entree?

I think that bartenders like to think of themselves as a creative bunch. Okay.

I think that... the last thing they want is to be dictated what they should be doing with

something. But I think what they're looking for is to be inspired and then kind of left to be free

and do their own thing. Okay, nice. And when it comes to things like cocktail competitions or

challenges to come up with a creative serve or anything like that. uh where are you seeing like the

resistance and the kickback to those sort of things and what can brands be doing um i mean to

really appeal to the entree so i i think what what's really interesting about cocktail competitions

is actually and particularly when the actual economics of running a bar are so challenging at the

moment that actually it's one thing to be able to create and a ridiculously fancy really involved

drink but actually if to make that balance the books you have to sell that for 45 pound a pop then

that's not really helpful to anyone yeah so actually i think what would be very relevant and you

are seeing some some brands kind of do this in bits and bobs is actually part of the competition

means that you have to make your drink economically viable to serve nice in your bar and for a lot

of bartenders that can be the very first time they're ever thinking about the business of running

bars which actually is if we're looking at but hospitality as a career that's got to be an

essential life skill to have you've just given me an instant idea because i grew up on this ready

steady cook but for cocktails so you only have like five pounds to spend on ingredients how do you

make it as good as possible spirits obviously not included And then next question,

Stu. Is the on-trade still where drinks trends start? We often say to our clients,

you know, brands can be built in the on-trade and then they grow in retail. Or with things like

social media, is that really where brands are launching and then consumers are requesting it from

bars?

I'm not really sure. I'm not massive on...

On social media, I don't have TikTok. I go on Instagram once a day for work.

But I don't spend hours on reels or anything. I don't think bartenders would want to be told,

I saw this on social media, can you do this? I think bartenders would always want to feel like

they'd started something.

To that point, do you think that could be, I often think this with industries where there's

significant change or innovation, you have to be quick to adapt as much as you want to hold true to

your traditional values. So I always think about this with like the Black Cab, for example, didn't

innovate quickly enough. Uber took a large chunk of that share. Now they're starting to see

innovation, but it almost feels like it may be too late, with the exception of London, obviously.

With the on-trade, is this putting pride and personal creativity aside,

where you can still do those things once someone's in your establishment, is there almost a

suggestion to say, maybe being more aware of what those current trends are? And there'll be a lot

of ours that do do this, but I'm talking about the broader. So, you know, like when Dua Lipa adds

jalapenos to a rose, or Tom Hanks, I think. Is that a thing? Yeah. And Tom Hanks did Diet Cocaine.

which is diet coke uh topped with champagne and that was like his way of celebrating without having

a full glass of champagne so there's all these like weird and wonderful things that again they

might be short-lived trends like coming back to the dubai chocolate thing i would be interested to

know how much of those things filtered through to through filtered fruits and whether or not you

know so for example the martini trend now is a big thing where did that recent resurgence start

from and there's a lot of like it girls on Instagram have now seen swigging martinis where they

once used to have wine or soft drinks or mixes or whatever. I guess,

yeah, is there an opportunity there, do you think? I guess it's difficult to say. It's hard to say.

I mean, I'd never heard of Diet Coke and Champagne. I've never heard of Jalapenos and Rosé.

I just feel like maybe it's an opportunity. Maybe that's just a new idea. yeah that whatever we see

growing so another one half and half guinness so you have half zero half alcoholic because the zero

is so good yeah you can now actually have like a really sessionable guinness um i've seen that pubs

in ireland have done that that kind of thing um it feels like if you're more on top of those trends

could you have more success in the short term maybe i don't know if it's as easy as i think you'd

spend half your time doing that rather than yeah and and then i don't know if i'm using this

correctly but then you you're letting the tail wag the dog yeah yeah but sometimes you have to

innovate before you have to move with where things are going rather than sticking to your yeah

maybe i don't know because you can still stick to your principles of like well-made cocktails

whatever but you are basing them on whatever the current trends are and easier for the entree to do

than brand specifically as well yeah maybe any flavors you're genuinely excited by

I'm genuinely excited about if there's going to be some non-alcoholic functional things that

actually can make you feel something. Yeah. I think that's really interesting. That's not

necessarily a flavour, but that's a thing. Have you tried Centia? Yes. Did you find that worked for

you? Functionally, yes. Taste, no. Interesting. Okay.

Are there any functional drinks or even those ones with like adaptogens and things like that? Are

there any of those you're particularly excited about or do you think that's a real opportunity?

I've worked on them with a client that's not come out yet and I think it's f***ing amazing.

You can't say anything like that.

When is that hopefully going to be released? Hopefully at some point this year. Okay, nice. We'll

look out for that then. Awesome. Thanks everybody. Thanks Stu for your time. Always a pleasure.

um your unfurled opinions on both flavor products the entree hostility um absolutely love to love

to hear it um let us know in the comments if there's anything we got wrong if there's anything you

disagree with or if there are any products you or i should be uh tasting soon um and otherwise

we'll catch you on the next one thank you very much can i take that buzz bolt yeah