An Interview With Martita Mestey
A good idea. It all starts with this. You might have thought ‘I wish you could buy’ or you might have tried something and thought ‘This would be really lovely if’. Generally your idea should make something already out there even better or solve a current problem/fill a gap. I don’t know about you but I have these all the time!
As a part of our series called “5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Food or Beverage Brand”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Alli Briaris.
Alli, 52, is the Founder of Drinks Kitchen, www.drinkskitchen.online, an award-winning non-alcoholic British drinks brand.
Alli, from Weston-Super-Mare has always had a passion for innovation in the drinks world, and has brought that passion to Drinks Kitchen. She first identified the need for a high-quality, non-alcoholic drink that wasn’t just an alcohol substitute when she chose to give up alcohol herself at the start of lockdown.
Combining her decades of drinks industry knowledge with her love for cooking, Alli has created the three core products that form Drinks Kitchen; Orange Cinchona; Spiced Rhubarb and Herb Verde. The range is made with botanical distillates and extracts, and then blended with sugar to make a concentrate which is then bottled. The user can blend with sparkling water at home to make a delicious, alcohol-free cocktail.
All three products were awarded Great Taste Awards in 2022, with Spiced Rhubarb achieving two gold stars, Herb Verde achieving one gold star, and Orange Cinchona achieving an award for the second year running (2 stars and 1 star).
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
The youngest of 3, with 2 older brothers, I definitely grew up not wanting to be the baby of the family. My brothers were 5 and 7 years older than me but I wanted to read the books they were reading and be out and about with them. You can imagine what they thought!
I definitely think this formed my competitive nature, which mostly manifests with myself but I can be a competitive board game player and at school I was into most sports and loved competing both individually and as a team.
I also loved cooking from a young age and enjoyed taking over the kitchen to cook dishes. I was quite experimental, often over-ambitious, making foods that my mum probably wouldn’t cook as she was a brilliant but more traditional cook. I’ve loved the creativity of cooking and making delicious tasting concoctions ever since and this probably has alot to do with what I do now.
Can you share with us the story of the “ah ha” moment that led to the creation of the food or beverage brand you are leading?
My first real job was running wine shops, 5 over 6 years and then eventually I worked in a marketing new concept development role for the same company. I loved that industry so much. It was incredible meeting wine and drinks makers from small to large and the passion they had for their products. In the last few years though I thought my consumption habits of wine weren’t healthy. I began to feel more anxious about the long terms effects of alcohol and I really noticed feeling tired and under par after drinking. In 2020, lots happened — the pandemic of course. But I also gave up my job as head of marketing for a drinks company and I decided to have a break from alcohol. I started trying non-alcoholic options as I liked to have a special drink at the end of my working day. By this time in my career, I guess I knew quite alot I about ingredients and great flavour. When I found out that a food and drink development centre had opened that same year in my home town — well it just seemed like the final piece of the jigsaw.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I’ve made loads of mistakes. I’ve printed posters the wrong size. I have printed one with an obvious spelling mistake on. I’ve made an appointment with a customer and then realised they are in a totally different location to where I thought they were — it was 2 hours further away!
When you are wearing so many different hats running a business, mistakes will happen. Just accept that and get on with it. But with the really important stuff like making your product — don’t cut corners, double check everything and give yourself enough time.
What are the most common mistakes you have seen people make when they start a food or beverage line? What can be done to avoid those errors?
Well my background has been sales, marketing and new product development so in lots of ways, I already have the grounding that many entrepreneurs don’t necessarily have. But for me, even if you are a small business, you need to treat your product as a brand. As well as tasting good, the packaging and the communication needs to be top notch to. And it takes time get these elements right — sometimes longer than creating the actual product. But you only get one chance to make that initial impression.
Let’s imagine that someone reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to produce. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
So you have your product idea. So first, do you homework! It sounds so boring but it’s really really important. Check out all the competition, how they taste, what they cost, where they sell and what the packaging and communication look like.
Then look at your product idea. Where will this sit in comparison. What’s its unique point of difference and how is it going to stand out, be better. Once you have this you need to work through all the costs to make sure it stacks up. Doing all this before will save you alot of pain later.
Many people have good ideas all the time. But some people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. How would you encourage someone to overcome this hurdle?
Break it down into a long list of all the jobs that need to be done and work through them. If you aren’t normally a list person then you’ll need to make yourself become one where business is concerned. Do a big task each day and then some of the little ones. You’ll be amazed how much you have done in a month, 2 month, 3 months etc. Make sure you do review how far you have come and reward yourself.
Oh and be prepared for set backs but don’t let that de-rail you. It is absolutely part of the process. Just put your resilience pants on and work through it. (You will need lots of pairs!)
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
That’s a tricky one to answer because it depends on the skill base of the person. Potentially using one could save time and money in the long run but it will cost you alot more upfront. So if you do — make sure you do your homework; agree costs and milestones up front and check in regularly with progress.
There are lots of free courses and support available usually for starting a business so check out what you can get for free.
But don’t be scared about lack of knowledge either. You can learn and I have really loved the learning process on my business journey! I built my own website pretty much and I am definitely not an IT geek!
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
Firstly it depends on your personal circumstances. But it also depends on your business goals and the start up costs involved. I think that you need review all of these and figure out the best route for you. Plus you may well end up doing both, starting on your own and then looking for funding as you progress. This is likely to be the route I will take because as your business grows, it often grows in leaps and therefore the funding required also leaps.
Again check out if there are any grants, free support to help you on your journey.
Can you share thoughts from your experience about how to file a patent, how to source good raw ingredients, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer or distributor?
Filing a patent is a long process and not so easy for food and drink. But registering a trade mark for your brand name and logo is much easier and can be done directly with your trade mark register. You don’t need to pay anyone to do it for you — it’s easy and affordable. Don’t be scammed by the many companies who will try to get money from you for this process and only respond directly to the official registration service.
https://www.gov.uk/how-to-register-a-trade-mark UK
https://www.uspto.gov/ US
You can usually search online for good raw material ingredient suppliers but make sure that you have a call with several to understand about their business, their accrediations, sourcing process, technical expertise and MOQ’s. You have a responsability to make sure that you are using good quality products so using a good supplier is really important.
If you aren’t going to make the product yourself then you can find a contract packer in a number of ways.
There are usually trade associations which can help within your sector and also speicalising in contract packing services like this one below. You can ask around or search online. Once again it’s important to do your homework to understand how they work, the accreditations they hold like BRC/ISO etc, what there minimum production quantities are and the support they offer. Visit and check out their standards and how you get on with the team. The UK site below had a good start up tips page.
https://bcmpa.org.uk/
https://bcmpa.org.uk/resources/tips-for-start-ups/
With regards to finding retailers and distributors, first you need to pull together your sales pitch and this might be more formal or informal depending on the business size. You will want to create some sales tools; leaflets, mailings or presentations which you can go through with potential customers.
Then start to reach out to your potential customers. This could be by attending trade shows, contacting direct, using Linkedin etc. It can take time to get a response and in my experience face to face always works best especially when they get to try your products.
Its worth keeping a note of who you contact, when and what happened so that you can build a contact list to refer back to.
Here is the main question of our discussion. What are your “5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Food or Beverage Brand” and why?
- A good idea. It all starts with this. You might have thought ‘I wish you could buy’ or you might have tried something and thought ‘This would be really lovely if’. Generally your idea should make something already out there even better or solve a current problem/fill a gap. I don’t know about you but I have these all the time!
I’ve mentioned previously about my journey to deciding to make a non-alcoholic drink. There are
now quite a few different products in the non alcoholic and low alcohol category. For
Drinks Kitchen, I wanted to focus on the ingredients and flavour as one of the key differences so
that I could create lots of different recipes over time that were unique and not trying to replicate a
particular type of alcohol.
2. Good idea becomes reality. So you need to play around with making your idea, in your kitchen, with some help. Does the reality fit to your idea? It might not be perfect or right first time around and you might have to do lots of recipe development to get it right. This could take days, weeks or even months depending on how complex it is, how experienced you are and what ingredients you find and use to make it.
I think about flavour all the time. I think about the ingredients and how they taste. In my head, I think that this ingredient and that ingredient will work wonderfully together. But it doesn’t always work out. Sometimes one just overpowers another. Some recipes just need the quantities refined and it works!
3. The Homework. Here it is again! This is the biggest one of all so I can’t cover everything but
do your analysis of the marketplace and your competition which you should do indepth and write up notes on everything — build a folder of all of this which you can re-fine for your business plan.
I actually really enjoy this bit but its easy to get carried away and fall down rabbit holes — I love reading about producers and makers! I bought lots of competitor products, tried them and more importantly used them over time to understand how easy to use they were, how affordable they were i.e. per drink. I checked out ingredients, nutritional information, shelf life, where they sold, what there websites and social media looked like.
4. Costing your product. If the MD of my last company read this, he would smile and think that he had trained me well!
Once you have your recipe, build your ‘bill of materials’ — list everything that is going to be in your product and then cost it thoroughly -beyond the raw materials and packaging, allow for wastage, production costs, labour, marketing, overheads so that you get a really good base cost. Then you can work up whether your product can make money and be competitive/affordable for your target consumer.. You need to add on logistics costs — these are expensive — especially now plus a good margin for your customer/distributor/wholesaler.
5. The Brand. What is looks like, tastes like, what it stands for, how you want your consumers to feel about your brand and why they choose it. How it will look on shelf in a retailer or hospitality venue. What is looks like in the glass, on the plate or out of the bag. What I’m trying to say is that you need to think about the whole thing up and beyond the product itself as it will be all of this which helps create the brand and the brand experience.
I love using cost effective tools to help me create a consistent and professional brand image. I use Canva — its a really affordable way to create social media posts, leaflets, posters etc. I have set up brand colours, logo’s, text styles so that all of my communication is on brand and consistent. You can do this yourself to save money as its expensive to use agencies. Having said that, I used a fantastic agency to create my brand logo and packaging to start me off — investing in that is absolutely worth it but you must give a clear brief.
Can you share your ideas about how to create a product that people really love and are ‘crazy about’?
My goodness, this is the million dollar question! I think if you follow the 5 points above, you should be onto a really good start. But and there is a but, you must be able to be pragmatic. You have to be able to stand back and assess unemotionally how good your product is. And you need to get lots of feedback so get out there and let people try it — gauge their reactions. This will help you know and hopefully before you spend too much money. By the way, it could be that its tick, tick to the above but that does not guarantee success! It will be alot of hard work with knock backs along the way, good timing and luck which will give that result. I’ll let you know when I get there!
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I can’t say that I have success yet. I have a good product and it’s growing. I don’t want to over hype what I am doing with Drinks Kitchen Non-alcoholic Range but I think that alcohol is over-glamorised and over-promoted. I am not anti-alcohol at all but I think many of us do consume too much (and I include myself in that, especially in the past). The facts about the cost to our health from alcohol are well known, so if products like mine begin to change the balance and help to continue to cut consumption then I think that can only be positive.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
We humans are complex souls and we often use alcohol and drugs to a. make things even better or b. make things better. The problem is that they often don’t in the moment and generally don’t in the long term.
I would love if what I am doing could connect with others and create a movement which helps us focus on using positive means for a better life. There are so many threads to this and so many reasons alcohol and drugs end up being such a crutch in peoples lives.
But I’d love to be part of the movement which helps prevention of the problem. From teaching children and young adults the importance of positive habits and how they help with good mental health and providing more access to these into adulthood and old age. I think a lot of what I’m talking about here needs a new take on building communities so that their is free access to communal sport, nature, singing and creative arts in life.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Alli Briaris Of Drinks Kitchen On 5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Food or Beverage Brand was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.