New samples go down a treat!

The new Muddler Cocktails have got off to a flying start. Not only has the men in white coats given them the all clear (meaning that they are safe to drink!) but some taste testing at the end of last week confirmed that the new improved recipe is ticking all of the boxes!

• Not too sweet
• You can taste the alcohol like a real cocktail
• Deliciously fruity
• nothing artificial added!
• Look fantastic
• I could drink this on any occasion...

Now we just can't wait to get it out there and in the hands of people who can bring it to the masses and quick!

As part of our mission to achieve this on Friday we took a trip back to Manchester, where Rupert and I were at University, to meet up with a very innovative company who already distribute a well known premium bottled lager. It was great to meet people who had come from such a similar position as ours, share stories which were uncannily similar! as well as the energy, drive and passion to make things succeed. We hope more will come from this as it could be a powerful combination!

Manchester really is a buzzing city which has changed almost beyond recognition since we were there 8 or so years ago. Unfortunately we weren't up there long enough to sample the city delights, or Mojo, which we have been told is the place to go in town. Instead we caught up with one of our old uni house mates Will and his wife Sophie, who had kindly agreed to put us up for the night, although how much choice they had in the matter I'm not entirely sure! They've settled into suburbia proper with a local boozer and curry house opposite. I have to be honest it's not a bad little set up I mean what more do you need? Other than Muddler Cocktails of course!

This week it feels we are back on track, we've got the new product and it's delivering in all areas, so it's time to start cranking up the PR machine again and throwing everything we've got behind this. Bring it on is what I say, I reckon we've got a hot summer ahead of us and it's our mission that people should be able to enjoy the deliciously fruity flavour of real fruit cocktails wherever and whenever they want to in the form of Muddler Cocktails, 'The real fruit Cocktail'!

One year full time and the men in white coats arrive

Well they said it would never happen... we've survived a full year in business. Isn't there some statistic about how many businesses fail in their first year?

About a year and two weeks ago Henry and I both sat down at our desks and said... right, what do we do to make this dream a reality. Although we had done 8 months preparation, this was a different feeling... what do you actually do to get a business off the ground? Since then Muddler has had full time management (if you count Henry and I as management) and we've bounced through every challenge.

A year of highs (and certainly some lows) we are in a good state. We've only properly talked about jacking it in once (which we were easily convinced out of), have not invested as much money as we had thought we would need to, have a great core of suppliers who have supported us throughout this year, no one has sued us and after filling in every conceivable government tax form we've not been banged up. More importantly we are really looking forward to the year ahead.

Currently we are starting to approach suppliers in the on-trade (bars, pubs, clubs) with the revised product for this year. To go with this is some revised trade marketing material has been knocked up. There is a high degree of confidence from Henry and I that we have everything in place for the negotiations. We are slightly further down the line with a couple of supermarkets and some discussions this week could lead to us being in a position of getting down to specific details.

Also this week in the quest for perfection Henry and I are off to see the men in white coats... well scientists. They are going to take a look at our whole manufacturing process and mixes to give the scientists approval on taste and that we are getting the best possible real fruit cocktail to market. However, it is at a university... so maybe it will end up being the less scientific method of trial that we have ended doing up until now... drinking it. I have a feeling instead that it will all get a bit scientific, I'm going to have to dust down that A-Level Physics certificate to show that I'm up to the task of understanding it all, kind of.

If I can remember to, we'll take a camera so that we have proof of us with the men in white coats.

If I'm honest, I think the only chance of real straight jackets being required is if the conclusion to Muddler drinks is a full-time return to the city/ advertising, we've still got the passion for Muddlers and almost everyone we speak to (trade and non) has the feeling that.

Although there is a touch of insanity in Henry and I... there is no need for the straight jackets (yet).

Muddler Cocktails Fruitlift

Firstly apologies for not having written a blog in the last couple of weeks. But we promise that we have had good reason! Since the end of the summer and our initial run of Muddler Cocktails we have been busy consolidating all of your feedback and looking to improve our offering even more!

Most notably we have introduced a new flavour! This is a vodka based cocktail which has been muddled with Mango, passionfruit and peach. It's a deliciously fruity little number and has gone down a treat in taste testing. We can't wait to get it out there. We have also been working on a third flavour but you will have to wait a little longer for this one I'm afraid!

The other thing to have changed is our bottle. One of the biggest bits of feedback we had was that people wanted to see just how fruity the drink was. As a result we've created a new design that does just this and here's the result....Let us know what you think but the feedback we've had so far is hugely positive.

As if this isn't enough we've also been working on our packaging as we start to talk with some of the big supermarkets. Below are some pictures along with Alex (our designer) helping me mock up some samples yesterday for a meeting we had this morning.

As you can see it's all hands on here at Muddler's still which we believe is the best way of ensuring quality.

So what do the next few weeks entail, well lots more meetings as we go about securing our first major outlets in time for the summer when we hope you'll be able to sit back, enjoy better weather than last year! and relax with a refreshingly fruity cocktail in your hand!

As always we will keep you posted with regular updates....

The year of Opportunity

Happy New Year from Muddler Cocktails!

We hope getting back into things hasn’t been too arduous! Certainly took me a few days to recover from the New Year celebrations, one too many cocktails I think. As my girlfriend pointed out to me, somehow it’s only ever the one that is too many!

I managed to get away for a week to Gambia for some winter sun which was very nice and slightly strange. It was at the time when it was really cold over here so stepping off the plane to 30 degrees, only 6 hours after stepping on it, was a weird feeling to say the least and one that I never quite adjusted to, I spent the whole week thinking I was dreaming!

Of course going on holiday was the perfect opportunity to do some research for Muddler Cocktails. The hotel had a beach bar which had an extensive cocktail menu and happy hour, that seemed to last at least 2hrs! The lovely Marianne was head bartender and took great joy in making up some delicious and fruity cocktails, giving me lots of inspiration for future Muddler Cocktail recipes.

Having had a nice break over Xmas and New Year, we’re feeling energised and ready to take on 2008, making it the year that Muddler Cocktails really breaks into the market.

As we come to the end of the first full week we’ve hit the ground running with lots of activity going on and it looks like we’ve got some interesting meetings lined up already. More on this soon I hope.

Well I hope your New Years resolutions are also still going strong. If one of them was to be more healthy, to eat and drink more natural produce then remember you can’t get more natural than ‘The real Fruit Cocktail’.

As far as resolutions and new beginnings for us at Muddler Cocktails, this quote rings very true:

‘We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day.’
~Edith Lovejoy Pierce

Quite exciting really....!

Merry Muddler Christmas

Its been a while since I've written one of these... Henry will claim it's because I've been out at too many Christmas parties, there is an element of truth in that (market research?) but I've also spent a lot of time buried in the numbers. It is the grubby side of the business, but getting them right and everything lined up for 2008 will allow us to really build on the good initial reaction that Muddler got in 2007.

Henry and I have spent 2007 doing a raft of different things to our 'old world' jobs and its fair to say that we've loved almost every minute of it. There have been highs and lows, but most things are fun and when you look back at commuting and the trials of office politics you know that Muddler is right for us personally.

One thing we never thought we would be doing is PR, and then concluding that it isn't actually too difficult (apologies to our mates in PR).

We thought we would struggle for column inches all over the place and never thought we would make the national press. In reality we've hoovered up the column inches in 2007 and hit several national publications (including a daily). Like most things we've decided to take this part of our business on ourselves and invest time in it. Like most of the things we've done we've tapped up our mates initially (thanks in particular to Gav) and carefully thought about how we were going to do it and what we wanted to convey (Henry loves some deep thinking). Then we have just done it and been overwhelmed by the success. The reality is that people like the simple message and think this truely is something great and interesting to report on.

I'd heard that we recently got more column inches in Morning Advertiser (the leading pub trade magazine). When I took a look around their website I was pleased to see that we had press a couple of months ago and interestingly it was a taste test. Even better news was that we scored 16 out of 20 in their independent tests:
http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/news_detail.aspx?articleid=51020

by my very rough and ready analysis this positioned us 2nd out of 11 in taste trials that they had performed.... a fine result and confirming that there is demand for our product.

Furthermore, without contacting the Morning Advertiser for several months we have stayed at the forefront of their minds and we are down as a product to watch out for in 2008:
http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/news_detail.aspx?articleid=54937
A great feat when you consider we are the only independent company mentioned in a review of 2007 and predictions for 2008.

So we are leaving 2007 on a high and looking forward to 2008 even more. Henry and I wish all our customers, suppliers, friends and blog readers a very MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR.

The success of the blog has surprised us (and Henry didn't know what one was when we started) and it has served as a great therapeutic tool for us. It has also been in demand, when I do see people they often moan that it has been a few days since the last post. I'm also surprised by the diversity of the readership, we know that the following people regularly read the blog:
- Friends
- Family (yep even my Mum uses it to find out what we've been up to)
- Work colleagues from our 'old' jobs
- Our suppliers (hello to the fruit people in particular)
- People associated with a large international drinks company (who own an F1 team)
- People who think they are our rivals
- Customers
- People who have read about us in the press.

Anyway, I'd better go... I have Christmas presents to wrap. My family should be assured that you are not getting a case of Muddlers (again) or even one of those XXL Muddler polo shirts I have spent most of the year trying to get rid of.

MERRY MUDDLER CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL.

Marvellous Muddlers!

The very nice people at Delia On-line have written a brief piece on what they have called Marvellous Muddlers! Take a look at the following link, it seems that they were quite taken with how good they taste.

http://www.deliaonline.com/articles/food/food-and-drink-news,2086,AR.html

I can't wait to send them our new variant which I reckon will be an even bigger hit! More news on that in the new year...

We had a fantastic time at the Hammersmith Panto, a big thanks to all of those who got behind us and supported Muddler Cocktails and in particular Johno. Unfortunately we couldn't be there in person for the last couple of nights but judging by the amount they got through it certainly sounds like they had a very good time and most importantly raised the most ever for charity!

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!