102 | Ben Branson | No Cookie Cutter Formula For Building Non-Alc Spirits - The 3 Core Things and The 1000 People | Seedlip, Seasn, Sylva Labs

Chris Maffeo: 00:00:00

This is the Maffeo Drinks podcast.

Ben Branson: 00:00:02

It's not a cookie cutter kind of approach. One thing is really clear that unites, I guess everything that I do and try and do is three things.

Chris Maffeo: 00:00:12

as we know it today. Back in: 2015

Our conversation has not been about secret formulas, cookie cutters, shortcuts, silver bullets, you know, not a big fan of it. He has been very clear on this.

He's been sharing his experience on building a category from nothing, a lot of shoe leather to get into the world's best bars and restaurants.

We tend to see the success in hindsight, but it takes a lot of time and effort educating somebody that is not familiar with a category that is actually brand new. He's sharing the fact that he has spent months in creating a launch plan and he never looked at it again. We dive into this.

It's a very interesting bit of the conversation.

Ben Branson: 00:01:08

We want to build drinks brands that are going to be here for a long time, not a short time. Doing it properly will always, I think will always win in the long run.

Chris Maffeo: 00:01:18

Ben is also sharing what he's learned through Seedli, his current projects, Sylva Labs and Seasn and all the unglamorous part of building distribution, which we know for founders is always a bit of a wake up call when you create something truly magic. But at some point you have to go out there and sell it.

He talks about why securing the first top accounts is really helped him to to build the category, to build the brand.

He also shares very interesting approach to the category to competition on a world of non alk that is totally different today from what we, what we used to see in the early days of Seedlib. So it's a very interesting conversation and I, I hope you will enjoy it. Let's dive in now. Hi Ben, welcome to the Maffeo Drinks podcast.

Ben Branson: 00:02:15

Thanks Chris.

Chris Maffeo: 00:02:15

Fantastic to have you finally.

I heard so many things about you since my good old corporate days where we were working with alcohol, free beer and there were always seed lip bottles hanging around the office to get some inspiration. Good take, fantastic. Let's start. It's a great honor to have you and finally get to talk.

I listened to quite a few of your podcast episodes and I was fascinating. So I'll try not to ask the same questions because I don't want to with the Uncensored CMO.

It's an uphill battle to challenge that because that's a great inspiration with Jon (Evans).

Ben Branson: 00:02:50

Yeah, he was great.

Chris Maffeo: 00:02:52

Fantastic. Let me quote you on some of the things. I'm a big fan of LinkedIn and I'm always getting your posts.

I like your openness in talking about the industry and the category. One of the things that is interesting for me is the fact that when you launched Seedlib it was basically like a first mover in the category.

You were building the category before building the brand. And this is one of the things that I'm often discussing on build the category, don't build the brand.

Since those days the Non Alk and the low and no has hugely developed and people see the potential but you still get some challenges. People are still challenging. What's about Non Al spirits?

Ben Branson: 00:03:37

Yeah, I think there's a couple of bits of really important context. One is it's no secret but I find it interesting that Non Alc beer, the first Non Alk beer was made over 100 years ago, right?

Not like Non Alk is not new in that sense but it took then to the 70s and Beck's blue launching and people kind of thinking didn't taste great, right?

ke Athletic brewing coming in: 2016

Then it all went quiet, then a big dusty brand came in but was a bit rubbish and then somebody else came in and actually catapulted the category forward when it was ready. So that's probably the first thing to say with Non Alk is like it's not actually new.

en Seedlip launched which was: 2015

Like that simple way before we got to talking about distillation and Non Alk spirits and Seed lip and what cocktails you could make, it was really focused on telling some of the world's best bartenders, chefs, beverage managers, buyers, retailers that this should be great choice regardless of the alcohol content. That's what we spend most of our time doing.

And so that conversation has obviously changed and awareness has grown and more people are Moderating and change the way they drink. And obviously there's now a $25 billion kind of non out category and lots of growth and all very exciting.

But I still see most brands in the non al space not talking about the category and not developing the category and not taking any, I guess, sense of ownership within the category and their role within the category.

And it's when you look at the fact that there is limited space on a back bar or in a fridge and limited space on a shelf, I think non alk is probably guilty of. Anybody now can make a product and sell it online. People can put stuff onto Amazon or they can have a website.

There's this idea or fantasy that anybody can launch stuff, which is amazing in one sense.

But when you apply that thinking to the real world and to a bar that has finite space and a shelf in a shop that has finite space, that's where the category dynamics really come in. And that's where the category story really comes in.

Because you'll know you're talking to people who you want to sell a bottle to and it's got to make sense for them and there's got to be an understanding of their offer, their audience, their price tiers, their etc.

And yeah, I think that comes as quite a shock to people launching drinks companies who've done a great job online and then start learning how it is in retail or in the on trade.

Chris Maffeo: 00:08:15

And this is like the old thing about the drinks ecosystem that I'm trying to talk about. There's often too much focus on the end consumer.

The drinks indices is considered wrongly in my opinion, a B2C industry while it is a B2B2B2B2C industry.

Ben Branson: 00:08:33

Yeah, I like that and I like that thinking and I agree with it. The probably all the marketing books tell you about the consumer, the consumer, the consumer.

Everything's about your consumer or they call it the customer. That becomes confusing in the drinks industry because who actually is the customer and who is the consumer?

And like I always think about kids, food, baby food, I've got three daughters, I am the customer, I am not the consumer. Right, yeah. Buying gifts of the shopper, the shopper, there's another one.

And yeah, knowing who the real buyer is and who the real decision maker is, when you've got long value chain of distributor, wholesaler, bar, restaurant and then some kind of consumer at the end of it, they are not the priority like the end consumer in launching something in my experience.

And definitely what we're doing with Silver and with season and what we did with Seedlib was, yeah, of course, you've got to understand there's a need for your audience and who you're targeting. But actually so much of the work, so much of the initial work.

Chris Maffeo: 00:09:55

Is.

Ben Branson: 00:09:55

Not about the end consumer. Unless you're selling direct online, you're not even selling to the end consumer. You're far removed from them.

You've got to be able to sell to your customer first and it's their responsibility to sell to your consumer.

Chris Maffeo: 00:10:19

Yeah, and this is interesting because it's the allure of the online, you know, that, okay, the world is your oyster and you can sell whatever you want and so on.

But then you are, I'm always talking about stepping out of the meeting room or the distillery or wherever you're sitting and going to the trade and this low entry barrier of E commerce or at least perceived low entry barrier because in the end there's quite a lot of margins taken away anyway.

You think that it's going to be easier because everybody can have a website and do a shopify, do something, especially in alcohol free where there's less barriers than with alcohol.

But then you are basically putting yourself even further from the end consumer from the occasion of why are people buying that product and what is the actual need for that product?

And what I liked about what, you know, I'm quoting you, or what you were writing some time ago, you said like seed lip is what you drink when you're not drinking, you know, and I love that, you know, occasion or okay, what demand space or whatever. Like, you know, if we go into corporate Jergen.

But I am fighting a bit of a crusade against target consumer, you know, as we were discussing because for me it's mainly about the occasion. So it can be you, me, my wife, your wife, my uncle, whoever it is, trying to move away from the demographics of genders and people and age brackets.

But it's like, why are you doing that? And to your point, if you go to a fine dining restaurant, if you go to a n. Upscale restaurant, I mean, I. And I don't want to drink for any reason.

It can be from my wife being pregnant to whatever. I don't feel like drinking.

Tomorrow I have a big meeting, whatever, you know, I don't want to have a, a tonic water or I don't want to have a, you know, something that doesn't really go with the food or a soda, you know, and what's the need?

That's what I feel the space for non alk or low alk ultimately is for you, what has the occasion played as a role in building Seed, Leap and now Silva and Season?

Ben Branson: 00:12:34

I guess my method, on reflection, and this is hindsight because I don't have a process, right.

I don't have anything to sell of like, hey, here's how you develop new brands or here's how you invent new drinks or here's how you create new categories. It's different every time. And it's not a cookie cutter kind of approach.

One thing is really clear that unites, I guess everything that I do and try and do is three things. One, there's a need, two, there's an occasion connected to that need and three, there's a serve, right? It's really simple, it's those three things.

And for Seedlip, we had the need of what to drink when you're not drinking. And we had the occasion that was in the entree, adult socializing. And then we had the serve, the cedar Pentonic.

And so that is literally as simple as we made it. And we've got those same three components for season, the cocktail bitters and for silver, the aged non alcoholic spirit.

And that is a good formula that I've been doing this 10 years or so. Stand by those formulas. But just to go back to your, your kind of comment on D2C, Chris, I. So Seedlit launched, it did not launch online. I hated D2C.

I didn't buy anything online. I didn't want to do it. I did stupidly put my mobile number on our website though, which was a really silly idea.

I buy lots of things online because I don't like leaving the countryside and having to go into a shop. What I really hate is the idea that somebody might have to go to 100 individual websites to buy a hundred individual products.

As you said, there's low barriers. You can set up a website, it's pretty, it's pretty cheap to do.

You know, you can kind of get a Shopify account, you can plug it all in, you can, you can take orders, right? And I think obviously initially, if people haven't got a lot of funding, there's no problem with that.

The problem becomes when brands start thinking, unless they're a subscription model, that someone wants to keep going back to their individual website time and time again. We saw this with Seedler when we launched kind of D2C and we were very on trade focused and had a bit of retail.

I'm talking UK specifically here, but it applies to the US as well. D2C was great, right, because we didn't have lots of geographical retail across the country.

People were hearing about it, trying it in the on trade at an event, their friend was telling them about it, they could buy it online. Very frictionless, very easy. And then when we expanded, our retail distribution did see went down. And I was so happy about that.

I was like, that is people going to the supermarket to do their weekly shop and being able to get what they need. They don't need to come back to our individual website.

And whilst I don't care about that end consumer all the time, I do care about not thinking that our brands are the center of the universe or that people actually give a shit about our brands. People don't care as much as I care about my brands. Right. Nowhere near.

And so yeah, I think it is about having that groundedness or that respect to go, how can we make this easy, easy for us, distribution wise and easy. The consumer, if they love what we're doing and want to keep buying it, great, they don't have to keep coming back to our website to do that.

Silver's been interesting though, because Silver is in all these top Michelin star restaurants and fancy places and it's in Selfridges and those kind of fancy retail places. But we have a D2C piece there because we have a limited edition product.

And so because we're doing limited releases and we only sell direct and there's no wholesaler and we are considered by a lot of our on trade accounts as a producer, not just another product they buy in. That is where I guess D2C for us, silver wise has actually become really important.

Chris Maffeo: 00:17:34

This is a fantastic detail because there is no size fits all we were discussing earlier and it depends on what your brand stands for. So what I'm hearing is that because of your farming background and family history, you are probably perceived almost as a farmer, as a producer.

When the restaurant is buying the vegetables, then they're buying silver.

Ben Branson: 00:17:57

Yeah.

Chris Maffeo: 00:17:58

Because they would buy from their own farmer that they trust. So they would buy Silva in the same way because of the limited releases. Because you ship directly.

Ben Branson: 00:18:09

Exactly. And we have to control the allocations. We're making a product from scratch.

Before I come on this call with you, we've been collecting samples of Hornbeam and White Beam and some of the British native trees to run some experiments.

Because it's now summer, we ran those experiments on the trees in the winter and we want to see what the difference is between wood in the summer and wood in the winter. Yeah.

And that's very, that's, you know, Nearly the same as the smoked salmon producer or the caviar, the tomatoes, the fruit, the vinaigrettes or whatever it is. It's in that similar vein.

Chris Maffeo: 00:18:51

It's fantastic because there is a lot of these kind of blueprints. You do it this way, but you are confirming that you know there's no same way. You know, like Seedlib DTC from Silva. DTC is a different beast. No.

And also I guess it's about timings now because when the wholesalers are not listening to you and when you're launching a new brand, you need to have a place to start.

But it is very much noise for the buyer because I have a bar, I have a restaurant and I want to minimize the number of invoices from absolutely Sailors producers.

So if it's super, super, super special, then I'm willing to go on that annoying bit of going to your website and ordering and have, you know, like that small invoice for it. But then at some point down the journey. Now, I'm not discussing this for Silver because it's limited releases, so that's a different story.

But on another product you can do that because at some point the wholesaler will listen and you will tell them, I've got 50 bars and restaurants repeatedly buying my product. Do you want to stock it so that when they buy their whiskey and Jean, they're going to buy my product as well.

You know, sometimes there's this kind of like social media age and this trying to be lazy and find the shortcut. Then there's like, oh, Ben on the Mafia drinks podcast said that D2C is the way so let's go.

Or he said it's not the way, he hates it so let's cancel D2C.

You know, you know, people always rush into it's like analyze it, take it in and get it to your brand and understand why you're doing certain things instead of just he said that. She said that.

Ben Branson: 00:20:47

Yeah.

And I think if you are clear on your brand, your need, your occasion, your serve, the opportunity, the category dynamics, the consumer relevance, the wider cultural aspect of what you're doing, then the kind of strategy writes itself because it's fit for. For to kind of hit all of those key parts. And look, I. There are similarities about how I launched Seedlip and how I launched Silver and Season.

There are common threads, of course there are, but they are different brands. They are all non alk, but different categories. Within non Alkali they are.

There are different serves, there are different occasions and that means different geographies and lots of overlap. One of the world's best restaurants has got Seed Lip and Season and Silver and that's amazing. And that's a bonus.

I do think it's taking it all with a pinch of salt and doing what's right for your brand rather than here's the quick playbook and just follow this sort of cookie cutter model.

Chris Maffeo: 00:22:05

I work with so many brands, you know, beer and spirits. I still do. And it's always like, yeah, but you know what to do. It's like, yeah, but I don't know exactly what to do.

I know the path, but that's why I love the name drinks ecosystem because it is an ecosystem. There are bees and bears and salmons and tigers and I don't know if that day the tiger is sleeping or got extinct.

Unless I go out there and analyze the environment. You need to get your boots on and a stick and be aware of wild beasts. You don't know which wild beast is going to come out of the bush.

Ben Branson: 00:22:42

I think you can waste a lot of time on theorizing plans and decks and strategies and demographics and profiles, but it's not based on the real world. I think one thing I've done with all my projects is I've had enough of a theory.

When I think back to launching Seedlit and if someone said who's sort of seedlit for? I would have told you it's for people who like nature. But what the fuck does that mean? You know, what kind of nature and what kind of people.

But the lens that gave me to identify Seedlip as being a nature company that makes drinks and that being our purpose rather than just making drinks. A way we could be part of wider culture and what people really, really do care about.

It also meant we could go and design gardens at the world's biggest and most well respected flower show or we could launch Seed Lip in garden centers. Like it gave us a brilliant, beautiful filter.

You imagine it's a kind of training session for a bar team and they're arranging flowers or they're making terrariums or there's a spoon carving workshop or whatever it is. It gave us such freedom to connect with people on their interest and, and introduce a drink.

Rather than make it all about our drink and see Lip and Season. The theory is we're targeting foodies, right? Foodies who like drinks seasons.

An ingredient company, not a cocktail bitter company, it's an ingredients company.

And so that opens us up to a whole different audience and different opportunities that are more, maybe more foodie kind of focused rather than going, oh my God, we've just got to be in old fashions and. And Sazeracs and which. Which cocktails need cocktail bitters. Okay. That's what we've got to go and be in. And then silver. I mean, we're a tree company.

Right. So the trees, the woodlands and that whole world of culture.

And that means like we've had woodworkers and furniture designers come and visit the distillery. That means we're talking to all kinds of events like dinner in the woods feast and fire in the forest.

And so, yeah, in a world where non alks competitive and saturated. Alks competitive and saturated and there are low barriers to entry, it has never been more important to be distinct and to.

It's not even about standing out, but it is knowing your.

And knowing what you've got and making sure that has relevance and meaning in other people's lives and is a big enough idea or occasion or cultural space or interest. The. Yeah. Other people can. Can get stuck into it. 1.6 billion people on the planet rely on trees for their livelihood. 20 of the population.

We have a universal concept and material. Yeah. Every. Everybody can draw a tree. Right.

And everybody grew up around them in whatever shape or form that psychologically we are finding becomes really powerful when you are building a brand, an idea, a world or a community. I think there's a lot to be said for. And I love products. Right. That's what I like doing.

But I can't have great products without them being well dressed. They've got to be well dressed.

They can't just be great liquids because if they're well dressed, they can have a place in the world and connect to an audience.

Chris Maffeo: 00:27:10

This is super fascinating for me. How do you avoid getting sidetracked in that forgetting about the trade where you get into the garden centers or the tree world and the wood world.

The reason why I'm asking this question is that I see many founders and many brands go on the shiny object, which is, okay, let's do marketing campaign, let's do a rooftop party, let's do a dinner in the woods. Like to quote your example. And then maybe your team gets sidetracked and then all they do is that one.

And they forget that the actual value pool is actual restaurants and bars and all these other outlets.

Ben Branson: 00:27:50

I think it's both. So I do think, and I can only talk for our experience, Chris, but trial is incredibly important for us.

The on premise is all about trial because it's all about best first experience. And that with Non alk is a very, very important piece, right? It might be the first time someone has tried a non alcoholic product in their life.

And so that's quite proportionately that's a big risk they're taking. That's a change in behavior which is very painful for people to do.

We only have, and I'm not sure if this has been updated, but I did some work with a coffee company maybe 10 years ago before Seed lit and they told me that this was a global D, but it's global big, very big coffee business. And they told me that people only have seven drinks in their repertoire, right? Only seven kinds of drinks.

And you go water, tea, coffee, that's three done.

So in order to get a new drink into that seven, you're having to replace something or be an alternative to something and you're having to ask someone to change a behavior that is really, really hard. From ordering what they usually do to trying something different.

When you're in a really nice place like a really nice restaurant or a really nice bar, there is implicit trust that you are going to be given nice things to eat and drink, right? There's a willingness to be amazed and be wowed and be introduced to things that maybe you've never tried before.

And so that primes a person to be very open minded. Already I've eaten reindeer brain and tongue and all the rest of it.

So I know that feeling of being really open minded, of like I'm here, you guys amaze me because this is an experience. So for Non Alk that's really important. And therefore we focused. It wasn't all of our volume. Seed Lip wise came through the off trade.

But what was really important was everybody I've ever spoken to who has ever tried Seed lip has first tried it in a bar, a restaurant, a hotel or at an event. Not. I've never heard anyone say to me, oh yeah, I saw it on a shelf in the supermarket, I bought a bottle and thought I'd give it a go. Never.

Chris Maffeo: 00:30:41

No way.

Ben Branson: 00:30:42

And so the on trade for Non Alk provides this. There's volume there now, right? Silver does six bottles a week and the Fat Duck, it's only got 14 covers. That has changed.

But definitely in the early days, Seed lit needed two things. It needed to give people a really great first experience and it needed as much credibility as it could fucking get.

I never had to say Seed lit was good. I was very fortunate to go it's in these kinds of places and they know what they're doing. And they know what things taste like, so listen to them.

And that was a fantastic shortcut to credibility. It took a lot of shoe leather and hard yards. But I think at one point we're in 300 Michelin star restaurants.

Chris Maffeo: 00:31:29

Wow.

Ben Branson: 00:31:30

And so you tell someone that and there's an implicit, oh, this must be good.

Chris Maffeo: 00:31:38

Yeah. Then again, B2B before the C. Yeah, yeah.

Ben Branson: 00:31:45

You know, Heston Blumenthal said some amazing things about season and silver. People listen to what he talks about. People listen to chefs. There's no point in me telling you it's good I made it.

So I'm not going to put anything out there that I think is rubbish. Word of mouth amongst friends and recommendations is really important and powerful. Being able to sign post.

Here's the kind of company we keep if you are a premium product, I think regardless of what industry and what sector. Yeah. I think having credibility around you is very important.

Chris Maffeo: 00:32:28

e. You were Talking about the: 1000

We started at the top, which I usually call the bottom because it's at the top in quality. But for me it's at the bottom because I like to see the reverse.

Ben Branson: 00:32:44

Yes.

Chris Maffeo: 00:32:45

Pyramid. The most influential customers and people, bartenders, chef buyers.

What is interesting for me, and I think is often misunderstood and I'd like to hear your view on, is that this 1,000 people, they keep moving and changing. I may have been one 10 years ago because I used to go out much more than now and now I'm fading away. So I am, you know, a second tier kind of thing.

But then there's a new 25 year old me coming into the trade and maybe being a bartender. And so how, how important is to, to keep the relevance of these 1,000 people as the brand moves and grows.

Ben Branson: 00:33:28

So I think there's two aspects to it. One, people know this approach, right.

Of kind of go and get the best accounts and start small and then go and be in the supermarkets, the supermarkets, look to the top retailers and what's going on in the trends and you go and do that. We defined it as being halo versus habit.

And so the halo was the place you'd go once a year and the habit is the kind of place you might go once a week or once a month. Right. It's more of a habit. Whereas you might only go to the fat duck once in a lifetime. Right.

You see this with bars looking to the top, cocktail bars, restaurants inspired by the top restaurants, musicians. This influence model Kind of happens and works. We were really clear that we wanted to keep hold of the relationships that we built.

That was very important to us, is very important now because I'm talking to a lot of the people that I talked to 10 years ago.

I'm back talking to the guys at the Fat Duck or the guys at Selfridges or Jordy at Berry Brothers or the team at Blue Hill or like I'm going round again. So I've wanted to maintain that kind of reputation and those relationships.

Even though Seed lit was then in Tesco's and Sainsbury's and Waitrose and lots of supermarket distribution, I do think the two can coexist. It's not a race to the bottom.

I've seen brands get this wrong where they forget about the independence, they forget about the importance of the top of the trade. It becomes this race to having five relationships of five buyers for five supermarkets. That's 5,000 distribution points.

And you are at the mercy of that. And then you have nowhere else to go. And when you want to go, do you know what?

We've got this really amazing new product that we want to launch or we need to. The average price of our category is decreasing and so we need to up the value and premiumize the brand.

Well, one way to do that is to go back to the independence and go back to the top of the trade. But if you've kind of stuck two fingers up and gone, forget about it. We don't need you now.

It's going to be very difficult to go back in there and look, buyers and bartenders and top chefs, like everybody shops in some sort of supermarket. You know, everyone kind of goes to all kinds of pubs and venues. I think people get a bit.

And I felt this before, but what are they going to think when we go into a supermarket? You know, are they going to hate that? You know, Seasons in the Fat Duck, it's on Amazon. It's okay.

It's not in the crappy pub next door to the Michelin Star restaurant. But in order to build a business, depends what kind of size business you want. But yeah, you can. You've gotta.

You've gotta be able to flex the distribution strategy and have those levels of scale required to build bigger businesses.

But I do think you can do that without losing what makes brands, which is that beginning bit and that halo and those great independence and those people that own their own businesses or own their own restaurant and talk founder to founder. And that is so important to me.

And I get on with those People I like speaking to buyers, but I get on with people who are have their own business a lot better.

Chris Maffeo: 00:37:43

For me, whether we're talking about relationships or being in top Michelin star restaurants and supermarkets, it's about not alienating, you know, one of the groups, you know, because the moment you are just like, I don't care anymore about independent restaurants or our hiding wine shops because the money is with the big five retailers. You know, that's the moment where you're alienating and you're doing stupid things.

Yeah, it's super fascinating because you mentioned it before, the fact that people tend to forget. You call it the top, I call it the bottom, but we're talking about the same thing.

I like to call it the bottom because it's the foundation of a brand for me in distribution. The moment you forget about those people, that's where brands collapse.

I work with brands trying to go for rejuvenation, restart, rebrand and premiumization. I'm always telling them this is like it's exactly the same thing as when you're launching a brand.

You forgot about them for 10 years and now you're trying to go back to them. Let me go back to one point you mentioned earlier, the planning bits. I remember an old post of yours talking about the fact that you had.

I'm reading it now because the Ganttar it was great.

aunch plan for Simply back in: 2013

Yeah, this is so clear and I've done it so many times, you know, and I've stopped, I've decided to stop doing project. You know, whoever asked me for a Gantt chart, I tell them, you know, forget about it, I'm never going to do it.

But within that action, what's your learning in moving and preparing for it, then not necessarily following it, but probably having it in the back of your mind, what's the learning for that?

Ben Branson: 00:39:40

I think the real thing that did was gave me an opportunity to learn about the drinks industry and learn about what was required and maybe try and avoid mistakes or surprises. And I think it was a little bit like giving myself some homework. You know, it's like a project of like, here you go, here's your brief.

Launch a new non alcoholic drinks brand. Go and plan it out. What do you need to do? I haven't done that. Claire and I didn't do that when we Launched Acorn.

been working on seasons since: 2017

s and ultrasound. And only in: 2024

So these things, you know, Season six years before it launched, like, these things take a long time in my head anyway. And that's not because I am deliberately waiting for the right time to launch them. That is just how long they are taking.

Like, that's just, that is just how long it takes when I feel like it's. I'm not gonna let it down. That's all I want to do. I'm not interested in selling bottles. I'm not interested in building big businesses.

I'm interested in making things that I'm proud of, of high quality, that meet a need in people's lives and that they enjoy. So when it's ready, that's when they're gonna launch. When it's ready.

And, and this time, you know, the last few times, I've not had to do that Gantt Chart. I've not had to do all of that. First time learning about the drinks industry. You've been in the drinks industry a long time, Chris.

Everything in the drinks industry for you is known, right? Is second nature.

You know the jargon, you know the companies, you know how value chain works, you know who the distributors are, you know who the bar shows are, you know it's bottles, you, you know pricing, you know all of that. And you don't even have to use any energy on that.

When you're doing something for the first time, as everyone will know, in any kind of area of your life, use a lot of energy. And it's really annoying and it's scary and it's frustrating and you can't figure it out and you don't just know it.

That was part of that process with Seedler. That was part of that two year piece of learning the drinks industry. How does it work?

Like, how do these bottles get on back bars, you know, and how much do they cost the bar wants to make 80, 90% margin. It was constant revealing. And I haven't had to learn all that for the first time, this time with Silver in Season.

But what I am having to learn is I've got a distillery. How does that work? How do I do that. How do I even set that up? Like, what accreditation do I need?

I need blue plasters, not skin colored plasters, and I need hand gel and hair nets, et cetera, et cetera.

And then throw in the fact that I'm working with this material, wood and trees, to make liquids that beyond really American oak and barrels, we've got no idea about from a taste perspective. And so I couldn't do that. I couldn't do silver as my first business. No way. It would have been too much.

I could kind of get around on botanicals and distillation and kind of see the pentonic and, you know, I could manage that. But yeah, silver is. Silver's a whole nother level.

Chris Maffeo: 00:44:16

This is so fascinating for me to hear because I remember listening to one of your other episodes and you were mentioning something, if I remember correctly. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it was something about, you know, you didn't have this kind of light bulb moment. No. Like it.

It kind of like developed what you are, what you're talking about now. And listening to you feels like someone who's super curious about the world and about life.

You have all these little ideas and stuff and then they mature into your head and. And when they are blooming, then that's the moment where you take them to the world.

Ben Branson: 00:44:54

Yeah, I spend a lot longer thinking and reading and looking and yeah, kind of processing than I do making. I am not an example.

And I'm not saying this is because I'm really good, but I have never done 200 iterations of something or 50 iterations of something. I've never done that I'm into do all of the thinking and the clarity and the research, understanding and testing.

And then you only need two or three times iterations of product development. It's not my experience when I read companies saying they've done 400 iterations or it's taken 400 attempts. That's not my process anyway.

That's not my.

Chris Maffeo: 00:45:57

I can relate to you on Measure.

Ben Branson: 00:45:59

Twice Cut once, like that kind of. That's my theory.

Chris Maffeo: 00:46:03

But. But again, it's about.

And I'm mentioning this because for the founders listening to this episode, the fact that there is no blueprint for the right thing. I talk about myself now for the podcast, for what I'm doing. I also sometimes feel like, fuck, I came up with this.

I find an old note to myself in an old notebook which is exactly the same quote that I come up with, you know, a week ago. And I'm like, what the fuck? What Have I been doing for five years?

You know, like, I knew this all five years ago, what you know, but now it is different because now it's the results of other learnings, other books I've read, other people I spoke to, and Now I feel 100% safe. While before it was more like a theory.

Ben Branson: 00:46:50

Yes. Yeah.

Chris Maffeo: 00:46:51

And now I know. I know it works this way.

Ben Branson: 00:46:53

The interesting thing I find, Chris, is that, you know, 10 years ago or so there weren't podcasts like this, right. There wasn't as much access to information. I remember buying book called Business for Dummies, right. I bought that physical book.

I remember looking into the British Library was a source of information for entrepreneurs who are starting businesses. The British Library, right? Go to the library and sit down and pull papers and look at stuff. I had to go and have, you know, it was coffees.

Can I take you for a coffee? It was talking to people I didn't have as any. No one did. Didn't have all of this information kind of so readily available at our fingertips.

If people are listening and thinking of starting a business, it's amazing to have this access to hearing other people's stories and other people's approaches, but don't. Yeah, you follow someone else's approach is a bad idea. I think it's a cherry pick. Take the best bits and.

And make sure you work out what's right for your business and your brand and the opportunity that you're going after. Because it, yeah, it's got to be individual.

Chris Maffeo: 00:48:24

And this is a great learning. And, you know, we tend to forget that. I think it's human nature that we tend to look for the silver bullet, like, tell me what I need to do.

Some people call me now, there is a silver bullet. I'm not a magician, you know, I don't have a crystal ball. I can tell you the steps and what you should look at and analyze and we can do it together.

But I cannot tell you the future, how it's going to look like, you know, because you want to sell millions of cases. Because it depends on the budget, it depends on your competitors. It depends on so many, like a myriad of things at the same time.

It's also about genuine curiosity and learning. I used to hate reading. I come from a family. My mom was a Latin teacher. I grew up with books.

I had a rejection for books because they were sending her free books. You know, we were drowning in books from publishers, just sending her books. And I hated reading. Then I started reading probably 25 or 20 years ago.

Now if you look at my bedside table, I'm reading 10 books at the same time. My wife is just thinking, are you crazy? How do you manage to do that? It's a history book, a business book and cocktail recipes.

But if you lack that, that drive for genuine learning, I think it's a challenge to do any business, in my opinion.

You know what you were saying about learning and then not having to do that many experiments because in your brain you have already done a lot of experiments because you are getting the distilled version of that knowledge.

But for the people listening, be curious and be asking questions and challenge yourself, challenge your thinking, not fall into the trap that I know it all. I honestly challenge myself.

I've been in the drinks industry for a long time, but I started in agencies, then I went into beer five years ago I had no idea what a nine liter case was and then I did the wset. I challenged myself. Probably listening to what you are saying.

Also coming from outside the industry is this Challenger mindset that puts a chip on the shoulder. You have to prove yourself, you know, when you enter and then you are challenging things that maybe other people take for granted.

Ben Branson: 00:50:40

Sure, yeah. I think the reality is that if you're starting a food and drink business, it's very likely you're going to fail.

Nine in 10 food and drink businesses don't make it past the first year. Right. So that's a 90% chance you are going to fail. Rationally speaking. Why would anyone do that? There has to be another reason.

There has to be something more and that could because it's really personal to you. That be could be because you want to try what it's like to set up a business or set up a brand. But yeah, there's no shortcuts.

And don't read LinkedIn too much because you will, as I do, read it and think, fucking hell, I'm not going fast enough. This is. Everyone else is finding this easy. We want to build drinks brands that are going to be here for a long time, not a short time.

Doing it properly will always, I think will always win in the long run.

Chris Maffeo: 00:51:38

I agree.

In my little world, trying to really repeat it over and over again, it takes a lot of effort and you don't know what has been going on in their head, in their life, in their business, because you only see it when the brand is relevant and famous. It always takes 20 years to make an overnight success and that's it, you know, that's how it is. I do this mistake myself sometimes.

You Know, like, I look at my podcast and then I look at other fantastic podcasts and I see, like, how the hell do they have, like, thousands of reviews? And then I look at them as like, hey, first of all, they are like, five years older than me, ten years older than me.

Maybe some of them are one year younger than me, but I don't know, what's the team like? I'm self produced. I'm by myself, sure, editing my own episodes.

Ben Branson: 00:52:27

It actually doesn't matter. That's the other thing. Seedless was obviously first, and then lots of other products came in and.

But we were really clear on our response to competitors coming in. And the only analogy I could give and we. We had as a team was we were not going to ignore it. This wasn't about being blind to it.

We had a Slack channel. Every single product that launched was posted on that channel. It was important that everybody was aware of what was going on.

Number two, if there was anybody that was infringing our trademark, we were going to take legal action. And that was really important because there were brands who were coming out trying to directly copy our name or the logo.

That's really important because the only thing that anyone is ever going to pay for if you ever want to sell your business is your trademark, and that's a piece of paper that says your brand. Because people can copy liquids. There's a lot of clever people. You're not doing anything that is unique, actually.

So the only thing that has value is your brand. Number three, we were never going to make any decisions solely because of a competitor.

It was literally like, we're in the driving seat and we've got our wing mirrors either side, and we're aware of what's going on, but we're not changing lanes. We're not kind of stopping. We're not going faster. We're not doing anything just because of what's going on with the competition.

And I think that's especially for new categories when they get all exciting and lots of people pile in. I think that it can be really easy to be constantly spending your time thinking about what's the competition doing? Oh, my God, they're coming for us.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. And it becomes a real distraction.

Chris Maffeo: 00:54:26

Super, super valuable. Super valuable. So, Ben, I'm aware of your time. Let's wrap this up.

Tell us, how can people find you and get in touch with you and find your fantastic products?

Ben Branson: 00:54:37

Sure. I'm not gonna give you my mobile number and put that on the website like I didn't see it.

Chris Maffeo: 00:54:42

It's on the website anyway.

Ben Branson: 00:54:43

It's not. So best way. I'm seeip Uncore Ben on Instagram. I'm Ben Branson on LinkedIn and I really do try and respond to DMS on there.

So please reach out and say hello. It's se drinks.com season your drinks.com and silver labs.com. they're all on Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn. My podcast is called the Hidden 20%.

That's my charity where I get to sit down with people and talk about their brains.

Chris Maffeo: 00:55:17

Fantastic. Thanks a lot, Ben.

Ben Branson: 00:55:19

Thanks, Chris. That feels like a snapshot and feels like we didn't cover a lot, but I know the time goes, doesn't it?

Chris Maffeo: 00:55:26

Yeah, it does. And I mean, I'll probably have you on again and hopefully I will come and see you at the farm.

Ben Branson: 00:55:33

Come and have a walk in the woods and taste, taste some trees.

Chris Maffeo: 00:55:38

I love that. Fantastic. Thanks a lot, Ben. Again, thanks. I would like to reflect on what are the key learnings from from this episode. What are the key takeaways?

The first one is the category before brand. You know, we share this philosophy with Ben. It's about building the category before building the brand.

You have to do a job for the category before you actually talk about the brand and you find the space of your brand within the drinks ecosystem. Then the three essential elements, the fact that you need to have a clear need, a clear drinking occasion and a clear serve.

That's a fantastic approach. Although this is a bit of a minimum common denominator is not a magic formula.

He explicitly said the other thing that it's something he said, but something that I wrote a few articles about and I'm sharing it during my masterclasses all around the world, is the fact that the industry is a B2B2C industry. It's not a B2C. We tend to think always about being consumer centric, but it's about focusing first on the customer.

So the retailer, the bar owner, the bartender, the restaurateur and then the consumer. The other thing is the premium credibility strategy.

Let's call it the fact that he has shifted the conversation very interestingly on, okay, this is what this XYZ Michelin star chef or, or top bartenders says about my product is not what I say about my product. And that shifted the angle of the conversation to something that is like, if you disagree, it's fine, but take it with them, don't take it with me.

And then the last but not least, the cultural aspect. We discussed this I think with with Stephen grass on episode 27, the Brand World. The Onion he calls it.

And what Ben says is that, you know, like this, you know, Seedlip is a nature company that makes drinks. Season is an ingredient company that makes drinks. Silver Lab is a tree company that makes drinks.

So you always take the approach, first of all, what's happening in your world? Before the drink, I mentioned the event at the high end flower shop. You are there for the flowers because you love flowers. And then try Seedlip.

Now it's not come to the seed Lip event. That is a very small nuance but makes a big difference. So I hope you enjoyed the episode.

One thing I want to ask you is try to think of who are the two, three people in your circle, whether your colleagues or friends in the industry, other founders, bartenders, managers that would benefit from listening to this conversation and share it with them. It helps uplift the industry, uplift the conversation about non alcohol spirits and the category in general. And we all gain from it.

So I hope you enjoyed. Tune in again for the next episode. That's all from the Mafia Drinks podcast. And remember that brands are built bottom up.