Soft-drinks and low/no-alcohol specialists, Alfresco, celebrate their 25th birthday this year. That calls for a few (alcohol-free) drinks!
“To this day, you’ll hear 50-year olds saying they’d prefer not to drink at all than drink a no-alcohol beer … Kaliber has a lot to answer for!”
The signature drink of Alfresco Drinks Ltd – an additive-free sparkling elderflower drink – was conceived in 1999 as the in-house soft drink of the Alfresco Restaurant at the Bath Spa Hotel, of which company founder Robin Sheppard was general manager. The business truly took off after identifying the opportunity for genuinely appealing low/no-alcohol drinks beyond the simplistic notion of attempting to replicate standard pub drinks.
“We’ve come a long way since the days of Billy Connolly promoting Kaliber by reciting tongue-twisters after downing several pints of the stuff,” says managing director, Julian Ebbutt. “The premise in those days, was that your average lad in the pub would be embarrassed to be spotted not drinking actual beer, and so the brand was designed to look as much like any other lager brand as possible. Unfortunately, they forgot to make it palatable!”
“We’ve now reached the stage where our soft drinks and low/no-alcohol products are just drinks in their own right. People choose them whether they are driving or not, whether they are in ‘dry January’ or any time of the year. The quality of taste we’ve achieved with products like ANON, Urban Rajah, Espresso House is off the scale.”
Since coming on board in 2018, Julian has expanded the portfolio, the distribution and the logistics capabilities, capitalising on the push-and-pull influence of the vastly improved low-alcohol products on the supply side, and a range of health and lifestyle trends on the demand side. Julian has also introduced an agility to the business that enables Alfresco to identify trends and quickly launch new products and brands to respond to them.
The original Alfresco drink is still an important part of the portfolio, but now sits alongside a whole range of traditional soft drinks, functional drinks and mineral waters in a variety of packaging formats.
As well as growing Alfresco’s own portfolio, Julian has forged relationships with big brands across the UK and Europe such as Prêt a Manger, TGI Fridays, Espresso House, Black Sheep Coffee, and a number of smaller start-ups and entrepreneurs – all of them drawn to the company’s creative approach to branding combined with Julian’s contacts with co-packing partners capable of meeting size, format and recyclability requirements.
For Julian, it’s the low/no-alcohol sector that highlights the differences most obviously between now and the company’s launch 25 years ago. “There was a whole generation of people – roughly my age! – who were put off low- and no-alcohol lager in that period. To this day, you’ll hear 50-year olds saying they’d prefer not to drink at all than drink a no-alcohol beer, for example. Kaliber has a lot answer for!”
“Fortunately, younger generations have started to recognise just how good low- and no-alcohol products are these days. Of course, the quality and range is unrecognisable from those early days. That is absolutely the key, and so some critical mass is building up, and those drinks are becoming a positive choice, rather than a fallback option.”
“I see it a little like the vegetarian and vegan movement. Ten years ago, there might have been one token dish on the menu. But once you get the choice and the quality right, then the sector starts to snow-ball.”
“We launched our own brand of non-alcoholic spirits during the pandemic and have now expanded the range to include five drinks, all of which have received critical acclaim and multiple industry awards.”
“The Dry January movement has also been an important factor. A lot of consumers discover for the first time just how good the low and no-alcohol alternatives are, and there’s also the less quantifiable feeling that you are still ‘part of the party’ when your drink looks and tastes like the thing everyone else is drinking.”
“One thing – as a sector – that we need to do is to keep on educating and, ideally, eradicating some of the confusion around the differences between low-alcohol, no-alcohol and alcohol-free. We are still obliged to label drinks that have less alcohol than a banana, for example, as ‘low-alcohol’ and so that can be confusing for the consumer.”
With 25 years under their belts, Alfresco will continue to innovate and react to trends, with Julian constantly on the move, looking out for opportunities to promote the sector, and to increase the business’s agility, whilst overcoming the logistical challenges that the UK’s exit from the European Union has brought about.
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