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The MAFFEO DRINKS Podcast is a leading drinks business podcast, listened to in 120 countries worldwide with 125+ episodes. Honest conversations about how the industry actually works, from the bar and what it means for the boardroom.
This Episode is hosted by Chris Maffeo and brought to you by MAFFEO DRINKS.
This Episode is hosted by Chris Maffeo and brought to you by MAFFEO DRINKS.
This Bottom-up Cut is with Jack Orr-Ewing, the founder and CEO of Duppy Share, the UK's largest independent rum brand.
When should an independent spirits brand start investing in consumer marketing?
How do you take the first steps in the market?
How do you select the right accounts at the right stage?
And what happens when you try to own an occasion the market hasn't asked for?
When should an independent spirits brand start investing in consumer marketing?
How do you take the first steps in the market?
How do you select the right accounts at the right stage?
And what happens when you try to own an occasion the market hasn't asked for?
Find all episodes featuring Jack Orr-Ewing here.
Bottom up.
Wanna know what the conversation above means for your team? It's in the paid section.
For €100 a year you get access to Maffeo Confidential (Private Podcast) and get this analysis and access to the full archive of 125 episodes, each one translated from industry conversation into the commercial decisions underneath it. Find out more at maffeodrinks.com
Creators and Guests
What is MAFFEO DRINKS?
The Maffeo Drinks Podcast is a leading business podcast in the drinks industry. More than 125 episodes. Listened to in more than 120 countries. This podcast closes the gap between Bottom-up reality and Top-down expectations with conversations about how brands are actually built, from the field, not the boardroom. Hosted by Chris Maffeo, founder of MAFFEO DRINKS, with over 20 years across 30+ markets.
Guests include some of the top voices in the Beverage Industry. Founders, Directors, Top Brands and Distributors such as Mark Ward, Jack Orr-Ewing, Maurice Doyle, Ben Branson, Heather Greene, Philip Duff, Steven Grasse, Francois Monti, Georgie Bell, Robert Simonson, Imme Ermgassen, David Gluckman, Brian Rosen, Danil Nevsky, Felice Capasso, Nick Gillett, Paul Hletko, Racheal Vaughan Jones, Andre De Almeida, Kaitlin Wilkes, Paul Thomas, Stephanie Jordan, Roberta Mariani, Adrian Michalcik, Hunter Gregory, Filiberto Amati, Julian Davies, Alex Ouziel, Daniel Szor and more.
It's a honor to have you here. I think we bumped into each other on LinkedIn for a for a while but never got the opportunity to speak. And now, you know, finally, we managed. So I'm really I'm really happy.
Jack Orr-Ewing:I'm excited. And I'm an I'm an advocate and a follower of you on LinkedIn and look forward to your your updates. It's always got interesting things to say.
Chris Maffeo:Thanks, Jack. You are the CEO of Duppy Share. Let let's dive in on, you know, one of my dear topics, which is creating demand versus creating brand awareness. I've been in endless conversation in corporate where, you know, all all the brand managers, marketing managers are talking about, we need to grow brand awareness. We need to grow brand awareness and I get goosebumps when I when I hear that because you know for me brand awareness as such is a very fluffy term that can lead to a lot of like money spent but not in an effective way.
Chris Maffeo:So what what is your take on how do you build demand for a brand in your experience?
Jack Orr-Ewing:Well, mean, one is find yourself a slot on the hottest podcast in the country. That is absolutely the way to go, But I completely agree with you. We've been talking a lot in the office. You know, we are The UK's number one premium rum brands. We do about 30,009 liters.
Jack Orr-Ewing:We've been marketing ourselves at times, you know, with big budgets, times with more trimmed budget for nearly ten years in the country. You know, we are still not a well known brand and, you know, brand awareness is something that is incredibly expensive and hard won. And that's just in The UK where we are quite a significant, you know, player within the independent spirits kind of category. The big mistake that you often make as a independent spirit is to overly focus on consumer awareness, trying to drive your pull through from the consumers by doing expensive events or investing in influencers or putting lots of money into social media. When, you know, as you say, the real game is to build your distribution footprint and to work with your trade partners to actually get your product selling.
Jack Orr-Ewing:And, you know, it's an incredible leap of faith when you really think about it, that you're giving away bottles or spending a lot of money in a festival or a, or giving, giving away drinks or spending money on an influencer for those people to go and buy what is an awful loss of drinks from the very few pubs or bars that you might have managed to get listed in at the early stage of your brand. You've got to sell an awful lot of cocktails to cover a £500 influencer fee, which is a tiny amount of money to spend on an influencer. So, you know, I think the big learning for me over the last five, six years of running this brand has been to really delay your consumer marketing until you've got the distribution footprint to back it up. And I think that is later than a lot of spirits founders might hope for in their journey.
Chris Maffeo:Wow. That's a you you don't know how happy you make me to to say what you said because it's exactly my my philosophy because especially in my experience is that even if you approach a thousand consumers, potential consumers that by the way drank your brand for free in that festival, most probably or they bought it at a fair price or whatever that would be, you know, then even if they love it, they took a picture of it and then they have no idea where to go and find it. That that is the biggest issue. What I always recommend is that, okay, I'm I'm not against doing events as long as they are small, let's say, sustainable events, but they should be in the trade where your product is distributed. So if I want to go back to it next Saturday, I know that I can find that product in it.
Chris Maffeo:There's a lot of people that do that, that they take for example, like a fancy hotel rooftop bar or whatever where they're not distributed and then they throw a cool party with super cool people. And then these people go back their rooftop and then it's like, never heard this brand. Yeah. There was a party. There was a private party two weeks ago.
Chris Maffeo:Sorry. Like, we've never we've never heard that brand since.
Jack Orr-Ewing:Exactly. And the one thing you quickly learn about super cool people is that they very rarely buy their own alcohol. You know, they all go to the same parties and, drink for free the whole time, and none have ever bought a bottle of spirits in their whole life. So, the worst market to target, with your sampling anyway.
Chris Maffeo:We spoke about distribution. So how how do you move the first steps in a country? What was your experience or at least what what would you recommend to do? Because does it start with the neighborhood? Does it start with the city?
Chris Maffeo:Does it start with the country itself? How do you pick the city? How do you pick the place to start?
Jack Orr-Ewing:So I think we were very lucky in our timing. So Duckby founded in 2015 right in the middle of the gin boom. There was there was kind of new gin brands and distilleries popping up all over the country, you know, let alone London. And, know, we were going into a bar and saying, can I talk to you about my rum brand? And they would say, don't you mean gin?
Jack Orr-Ewing:And so the refreshingness of of it being a rum brand was a was a little bit of an an in and there was less of a, you know, we were one of the first big independent. I think we were the first independent rum brand found in The UK for over a hundred years when we started in 2015. Now, you know, that is not the story that is today. And it's incredibly easy to found a spirit brand today. On Master of Malt, when I started, there were two fifty rum products.
Jack Orr-Ewing:You know, there are over a thousand now. You know, there's that just to show the kind of innovation and the growth in the category, all great things for a leading independent spirits brands, but it does, you know, makes you a lot less unique and a lot, so, you know, your sales pitch much harder to land. From, from Duffy's perspective, we don't own our own distillery. We don't have a business center. We were hap-, we were founded in Notting Hill and Notting Hill Carnival is the Europe's largest street party and a huge celebration of Caribbean culture in the sort of center of London.
Jack Orr-Ewing:That for us feels like a bit of a marketing and a kind of, that's where our tribe kind of go to. And it's a wonderful melting pot of English Caribbean and Caribbean diaspora people that all come to one place. That's a one moment in the year where we kind of own it. But broadly, you know, rum in The UK is a is a broadly drunk spirit, but you need to be listed in an awful lot of places. While our heartland has always been London, our desire as a brand is to get into national listings as early as possible.
Jack Orr-Ewing:And we've always managed to find ourselves that spot as the one independent brand that sits in the rum category alongside the kind of mainstay competitors. And, you know, I love walking into a pub and seeing your Appletons, your Mount Gay's and your Krakens, Bacardi, Captain Morgan, and Duffy. And I love being that one quirky independent brand within that category. And probably always a nice space for an independent brand within those kind of more mainstream brands. And, you know, you might be seeing a fraction of the volume that they would be getting because you can't afford to buy your space on that list, but you can definitely justify your place on that shelf.
Jack Orr-Ewing:And that's kind of how Duffy's been successful in The UK. It's slightly different story when you talk in the international markets that we're in, in Czech Republic, where you are is a good example of that. You know, we don't have that biggest independent, you know, kind of category card that we can play. So it is a much more of a traditional bartender by bartender, starts in Prague, spend a few days in Brno, try and get ourselves into the top 20, top 30 bars and play more of a kind of premium traditional route into the market. But I do think, yeah, UK and and the kind of route to our biggest success has been get into the nationals as quickly as possible and try to expand your distribution footprint from as early as you can in your journey.
Chris Maffeo:It's very interesting because what I what I what I usually talk about here is is is also like the fact that there is always for any spirits category, there's always a traditional consumption occasion and a more modern one, you know, a wider one. So of course, like when you think of a rum occasion from a restaurant perspective or from a bar perspective, we were discussing this that you don't actually have a clear ethnic provenance to to look for, like in terms of like what agave would have or Italian spirits or beer would have. You don't have like a Chinese, Japanese, you know, you don't have the the very widely available kind of like cuisines of the world.
Jack Orr-Ewing:Caffeine cuisine is not even in the top 20 most searched for UK cuisines, you know, in The UK. And I was listening to your your podcast by Paul Thomas. I was listening to him talk about it. If you are a tequila brand, you can legitimately go to Mexican restaurants in every city and to build your tequila brand through that. The same for Maltzey gin or Peroni.
Jack Orr-Ewing:You could just do that through Italian restaurants. But, you know, the number of searches for Caribbean food in The UK is less than 5,000 a month, you know, versus in The UK, you know, on Google search, the equivalent in the top 10, they're most of them are half a million plus. So there's really isn't a sort of massive interest in Caribbean food that is changing. And Turtle Bay restaurants is the kind of absolute lighthouse, most amazing partner that we've got. And their founder, Ajith Joe OrrEwing, is one of our investors, has given us amazing access to the Turtle Bay menu.
Jack Orr-Ewing:And they're one of our biggest customers. You know, they sell more through 50 Turtle Bay restaurants than we do through 400 Asda's or 400 Morrison's. So they, you know, they're a fantastic partner, but there just aren't many of those in The UK. You know, the second biggest Caribbean restaurant chain, I think, is Cottons who have six or seven sites. And the third biggest is rum kitchen with two.
Chris Maffeo:So how did you how'd you select the the the bars that are right for you? So when when it comes to what could be a target occasion or what could be a focus that you have, like, you have a a typology of outlet that for you makes sense to start from?
Jack Orr-Ewing:So our sort of perfect example is between five and twelve sites. Informal premium is our kind of what we call an informal premium. It's quite an urban trend that we've definitely seen in London. You'll see it in New York. I probably don't know enough about the FNB scene in Europe to make comment on it, but places where you've got sort of reason, you know, high quality, high quality food that's served in an informal way.
Jack Orr-Ewing:So places like Gourmet Burger Kitchen, Honest Burgers, Passion Bun, Pizza Pilgrims, Meat Liquor, they're high energy, food led. They've got a small menu of maybe 10 drinks and you can take one or two of those. They're the sort of places that might do three or 4,000 bottles a year. And that, and you, and you can get your arms around them. You can train their staff.
Jack Orr-Ewing:You can give them incentives. You can get them all wearing t shirts and they're selling enough per site to make it all worthwhile. And that's our absolutely perfect count. Know, they're not particularly geographically set, you know, even Pizza Pilgrims doesn't necessarily call itself an Italian restaurant. And it's really about, you know, right target audience.
Jack Orr-Ewing:They like to have a pre or during dinner drink. They're the really, really nice sites. We love to target those. To go back to your question about rum's occasion, I would say rum's greatest strength is it also has greater sweetness at the same time. And it's its kind of versatility.
Jack Orr-Ewing:You can have a rum punch. You can have a rum old fashioned, mojitos, daiquiris, pina coladas. There's this kind of enormous range of drinks that you can serve. And, you know, you you're talking everywhere from your sundowner on a beach with your family, where you might have a pina colada all the way through to drinking rum and Cokes at 03:00 in the morning in a nightclub. It's a huge stretch of occasions to go after.
Jack Orr-Ewing:And unfortunately, none of them are really big enough for you as a independent brand to own. You know, there is no Aperol spritz moment where enough people are drinking pina coladas for you to become a pina colada brand. I I was, you know, listening to you and Paul talking about some incredible brands, you know, your, your Guinness moments, your Peroni moment, your Aperol moment, your Magnus moment, you know, Hendrix. You absolutely know as someone even not inside the industry, what those moments, those occasions are, how that drink is served. They are big international brands with great distribution power, as well as marketing money to, to create that moment and to deliver that moment in that occasion and to have a little bit of power over your distribution, to be able to kind of make sure that that moment's delivered.
Jack Orr-Ewing:I think the kind of difference of experience between the independents and the startup versus the global is just absolutely no control of your distribution until quite late on in your journey. And even with a great distributor, you don't really have that portfolio power. Yeah. So, you know, as much as I would love to say, share is in our name. Rum is a collective collegiate experience.
Jack Orr-Ewing:It brings people together. There's no better example of that serve than the rum punch. It's got it's steeped in history. It's a delicious drink. It's very popular.
Jack Orr-Ewing:We would like the Duffy moment to be a sharing serve. You know, so we want, you know, punch bowls. We spent a lot, a lot of money and time and thought building out beautiful punch bowls, ordering, you know, extra large cocktail shakers. It's really tricky for a brand our size to go into the trade and say, we want to be a rum punch group serve. And I want you to list my punch bowl.
Jack Orr-Ewing:Here's a punch serve. I want you to put that on the menu at 25 and serve it in these gold cups. They're like, who the hell are you? You know, you can't be there for us. No one drinks this.
Jack Orr-Ewing:No one's walking into pubs asking for golden punch bowls at £25 each. So there isn't an occasion for that and we're not big enough to drive it. The role of that independent is to be nimble and to be flexible and to work with your sales opportunities and to kind of fit your brand into what they need. If they're looking for a late night daiquiri serve, you, you, damn sure you can make a damn good daiquiri.