Vital Stats
- Company:Fever-Tree
- Launched:2005
- Founders:Charles Rolls and Tim Warrillow
- Visit:fever-tree.com
What is Fever-Tree’s Unique Selling Point (USP)?
For us, it’s always been about putting the quality back into the mixer category, from the packaging, imagery, even style of serve but nowhere more so than the ingredients themselves. When creating Fever-Tree, the mixer category was dominated by a couple of multinational conglomerates that had become driven by manufacturing efficiency, rather than quality or flavour.
Our meticulous focus on quality resulted in a very different approach to product development – we delved into the history books to find the most authentic and highest quality ingredients we could, then we went out into the field to track them down, spending time with specialist producers and experts to create our products.
There’s no other company going to the lengths we do to source these fantastic ingredients.
Watch the video below on how it all began …
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Since it’s listing on the London Stock Exchange, Fever-Tree has seen an impressive 20x increase in the share price. Can you expand on the some of the challenges that were faced, as well as how you overcame them, when listing Fever-Tree?
The listing was a great opportunity to attract long term investors in the business as well as enabling the Company to reach a wider consumer audience as we discovered lots of our shareholders are also advocates of our products!
What do you wish you had known before starting the business 13 years ago, or what advice can you give to entrepreneurs?
My advice to any entrepreneur is to do your research, but also listen to your instinct. There were definitely some nay-sayers for us in the early days, and it’s fortunate we did our best not to listen to them.
When it comes to ingredient sourcing and packaging – where do you begin?
Within a couple of months of meeting my co-founder, Charles Rolls, we set off on a pursuit to find the very best ingredients, literally travelling to the ends of the earth.
Our initial research took us to the British library, where we learned that quinine, the core ingredient in tonic water, comes from the bark of the cinchona tree – colloquially referred to as the ‘fever’ tree. In search of the best quinine in the world, I discovered the last remaining plantation in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the most dangerous parts of Africa. So I travelled there to meet with the growers and to this day, this is where our quinine is sourced.
The journey continues to this day, whether it’s our fresh green ginger from Ivory Coast, Cochin ginger from India or closer to home, our lemon from Provenance or hand-picked elderflowers from Gloucestershire.
Similarly for packaging, from the very beginning we would not compromise on quality, using single serve glass packaging to premiumise the mixer category in every way we could.
We see you’ve launched a new ‘Aromatic Tonic Water’ – what is your key to innovating and creating a product?
With any product innovation, it is key to listen to your consumers, look at the trends, find out what people are talking about, what they are buying, what they want more of. This is how it all began when creating Fever-Tree. Charles and I had noted, from different ends of the sector, that premium spirits were driving the growth in spirits category. Consumers were increasingly seeking out craft ingredients and flavours in place of commoditised, mass produced products, but this movement towards premiumisation had passed the mixer category by. There was a clear opportunity to put quality, choice and excitement back into a long-forgotten, stagnant category.
The whole company is built on innovation and we are constantly developing new mixers, new flavours, new ideas and in doing so, creating an array of flavours to pair with the myriad of premium spirits out there.
Our unique Aromatic Tonic Water is a great example of this – it is perfect to mix with gin to create the ultimate pink G&T, a hugely popular drink amongst consumers. This tonic water is made using angostura bark from South America and pimento berries from Jamaica to create a sweet, spicy flavour with a wonderful pink hue.
Where do you see Fever-Tree in 5 years?
What’s so exciting, is that we’ve only scratched the surface! Whilst G&T consumption is still in strong long-term global growth, the spirits category is not just about gin; and the mixer category is not just about tonic. The trends that we identified at the outset are only accelerating. We’ve seen that quality has broad appeal – people are wanting to drink better quality spirits in greater numbers.
Here in South Africa, the same trends that drove the G&T revolution in the United Kingdom are beginning to emerge. There’s a real ‘gin explosion’ in South Africa, with the emergence of an abundance of craft and local gin brands, as well as more established premium brands becoming ever more present. We’re already seeing some great opportunities for co-promotional activity both in retail but also across hotel, bars and restaurants and we believe there is a significant opportunity to increase our footprint and visibility across South Africa, capitalising on this revival of simple, long mixed drinks such as the gin & tonic.
But Gin only accounts for 6% of global premium spirits, presenting a significant opportunity for us with other spirit categories. Dark spirits, for example, accounts for 10 times as much as gin, and we are the first company to develop a full range of mixers specifically designed to address this very notable opportunity.
What is Fever-Tree’s mantra?
Charles and I created Fever-Tree with one simple premise, which still holds true to this day, that if ¾ of your drink is the mixer, use the best.