Is it nearly Christmas already?

This year has just been flying by and I can't believe the Chritmas season is already upon us.

This of course means lots of parties and lots of Muddler Cocktails to be drunk! The first of these events we have just confirmed today. Muddler Cocktails will be sponsoring the Hammersmith Pantomime, Mother Goose, between the 6th and 9th Dec which is held at the Hammersmith Town Hall.

This is a fantastic charity event which has 600 people a night attending and between ticket sales and the bar they hope to raise £50k for charity this year! Muddler Cocktails are going to have their own bar for the first two nights as well as being stocked behind the main bar, offering punters a refreshing change to the usual glass of wine or beer. Aparently there are a few tickets left so if you fancy getting in the Xmas spirit then why not come along, you can find details on http://www.viewlondon.co.uk/tickets/mother-goose-tickets-feature-1504.html

Trying not to get too distracted by Christmas as it's not even Decemeber yet, there has been some exciting stuff happening behind the scenes. We have been back in the taste testing lab and are currently working on some new flavours for the New Year. This sounds like the easy bit of the job but getting it right is far from it. There are no scientific formulas to making a delicioius real fruit cocktail, infact it's far from it. Once you have the basic concept of what it is you want to create it really is a case of trial and error, a little bit of this, a touch of that and a lot of try and try again!

We have a strong vision for creating intense flavours and these just don't happen by chance but when they start coming together its definitely worth the wait and all I can say is that we're getting close to creating another.

Talking of experimenting I was speaking to one outlet the other night who was going to offer mulled wine and Muddler Cocktails as the drinks at the beginning of the evening. This got me thinking, I wonder what a mulled Muddler would taste like? I haven't tried it yet but warming it up with an orange and a few spices could work really well. We've got our annual Xmas dinner on Saturday night which Rupert is hosting this year and I'm helping out. Perhaps we will experiment on this one. We will let you know how we get on you never know it could be the next big thing, Muddler Cocktails winter warmer!

Fame (& Fortune)

Having hogged the lime light a little on the PR front with a couple of quotes in The Grocer Rupert has been keen not to be out done. In true Jessop fashion his quest has resulted in, not a mere quote but, an entire article on himself!

Below is a scan of the article which is featured in this week’s Night Magazine along with the questions and his answers. It’s a great piece which summarises exactly why and what we are doing. Have a read for yourself but I was completely sold! It also means that I've got off extremely lightly on my blog writing duties but I'll make sure to make up for it later in the week....

RUPERT JESSOP

Rupert Jessop is a co-founder of Muddler Drinks Ltd, who in the summer of 2007 released Muddler Cocktails (www.muddlercocktails.com), ‘The Real Fruit Cocktail’. The first variation is raspberries, blackberries and blueberries muddled (crushed) and shaken together with cloudy apple juice and a generous helping of oak barrel sugar cane rum. He has a challenge on his hands as he seeks to convince pubs, bars and clubs that there is life in premium, convenient, 100% natural cocktails. Initial results are positive, but time will tell whether he can create a new drinks category….

I got into my job…

because I created the position. Whenever a friend (Henry Debenham) and I went out for a drink with our friends we would come across a recurrent problem. While most people opted for the usual there were always a few who didn't know what they fancied to drink. No matter how many drinks you listed there just wasn't anything that was alcoholic and really appealed to them. So we set about seeing if we could find out what might appeal and coupled with a liking for fresh fruit products and cocktails it wasn't long before we had our light bulb moment. Our research proved that everyone liked the idea of being able to have a real fruit cocktail in a bar or club but the problem was you just couldn't get them. So we decided to give up what we were doing and start a company that could deliver a solution. What did I do before that? I was a Management Consultant at Accenture for seven years. Although the variety was good, producing and executing strategies for other people didn’t sit right with me. That coupled with an interest in the drinks market meant that I was keen to turn the light bulb into a winning formula.

If I met myself 10 years ago, I'd tell myself…

that the well paid and good career progression job I’d just got in the City would be a stepping stone to having a small company shaking up the drinks industry. I’d then pick myself off the floor and put me back on my student bar stool. Then we’d go for a curry…

My job involves....

Everything! Henry and I (founders of Muddler Drinks) have never formally split down the company responsibilities. We both have different skill sets so jobs naturally fall to our strengths… but we both always have opinions on how everything should be done. Our disagreements are often documented on our company blog (www.muddlercoktails.com/blog.html) but they are all resolved amicably (often over a Muddler) and they help us produce a drink of the highest standards.

I love this business because…

our company is producing what people want, a quite literally fresh and new product. We get loads of comments about how they love the fruitiness, that it's totally different because you can actually taste the alcohol and that it isn't sickly sweet like other RTDs. Hearing people enjoy your product because of what you set out to do is a great feeling.

The biggest challenge I face is…

offering something truly original in a business that wants to categorise you alongside existing products. People think we are an alcopop – WE ARE NOT. Our competitors are the premium ciders, glasses of wine, and spirit and mixers like the G&T and Pimms. The challenge of breaking these pre-conceptions is why I got involved in Muddler. If I wanted the easy (but busy) life I would have stuck at my City job.

The biggest opportunity is…

creating a new category of drink. Innovation is not a new cider or beer in a slightly different bottle it is offering consumers something that they have never been able to experience before. Our product is not like anything else. Our biggest opportunity is to show the industry the potential of Muddler Cocktails both for the consumer, as a delicious new alcoholic drink, and the industry as a premium profit driver.

The To Do List

To top off what has been a very positive week, I've just written my 'To Do' list of all that has be done immediately, and the good (but bad) news is that it is growing.

Its odd working largely on your own, particularly for a man that spent his time thrust deep into large projects in huge banks. To not have meeting invites backing up and spend all day storming up and down the office trying to get something moving is bizarre for me. It is very different when you get to actually think about what you need to do in some peace and quiet. There is always Henry to shout at or abuse on MSN, but even that is relatively tranquil!

There are also days when the number of business emails I receive is down to what I can count on one hand rather than the days where I might come back off a week long break and have in excess of several hundred business emails to wade through. So the peace is great for allowing you to focus on new flavours and do stuff like plan and think through in detail how Muddler approaches '08, but the reality is that it can get a little dull.

Over the last few months the focus has been on trying to secure deals with larger companies that could offer us nationwide coverage. This is a largely thankless task where lots of stuff is emailed, sent and phoned out and no response comes back from the organisations. So you end up every day just sending and chasing down more and more organisations.... not a particularly enjoyable experience.

The last week has seen a bit of a turning point as the inbound email levels have picked up, phone calls are being returned and everyone is beginning to talk of how we could all work together in '08. So from having an ever declining 'To do' list or one where the same chasing tasks came up on it time and again I've now got one that is properly growing. Mix in with this the fact that November seems to be the new December and all the social and business functions I'm being invited to are getting earlier. It looks as if November could be a busy period for me and Henry.

So what do I prefer, the quiet life where we spend the days strategising (I'm not sure if that is a real word) and you can occasionally nip off to play golf

or

the run we are currently having of requests and news coming each day to contend for times looking (or should that be dreaming) of what will happen in '08?

There's no competition for me and Henry. We both came from jobs where the client requests never stopped and there was too much going on. We quit these jobs not because we disliked being busy and powering from one thing to the next, but:
1. To have control of your work destiny, rather than just being a person in a massive corporation
2. We had the killer idea... 'Real Fruit Cocktails'!

So there are big disadvantages to setting up on your own, but there are also a great number of advantages (e.g. our commutes have both shortened a lot!). However a shortening 'To Do' list is something I never want in anything I do.

Anyway, must crack on the 'To Do' list isn't losing any items.... unless you include writing the Blog as a task!