Brunswick Aces co-founders Stephen Lawrence, Diana Abelardo and Dr Cameron Hunt.
Founded in 2017 by a group of like-minded neighbours, Brunswick Aces is Australia’s first non-alcoholic spirit brand. Champions of business innovation, the label’s co-founders serve up beverages at their inner city Melbourne cocktail bar and also sell products via a well-stocked web store.
In an effort to find drinks they could all enjoy, the group used their collective skillset, including science and engineering, to develop three non-alcoholic sapiir blends and three alcoholic gin blends: Spades, Hearts and Diamonds.
By launching these twin ranges, Brunswick Aces have ensured that everyone can enjoy the same drinks with the same flavour profile and not feel left out. We chatted with Brand Director Stuart Henshall to find out more about the business inspiration behind Brunswick Aces.
Stuart Henshall: Once we started sharing our creations with friends and family, and began receiving glowing responses and increasing demand, we knew we had something potentially great on our hands.
Between 2017 and early 2020, we focused on growing our two non-alcoholic blends, Spades and Hearts, with premium venues and found strong market demand in the Middle East very early on. The Middle East remains one of our key markets to this day.
After the first year of the pandemic, data came out that signalled our relationship with alcohol was going one of two ways: greatly declining or worryingly increasing.
We predicted that in a post-COVID-19 world a rebalance would happen – those who had increased their alcohol consumption would want to drink less and those who had reduced their alcohol intake would be looking for somewhere to socialise without the temptation.
Opening the bar for us had always been a dream, but COVID-19 accelerated that for us. We were called mad for opening something as avant-garde as a non-alcoholic bar, particularly in the middle of a pandemic, but it has paid off in spades for us.
As our product was created from a personal need we didn't conduct any market research. We create products based on our own preferences and they just so happen to appeal to a wider audience.
Since we began in 2017, the growth of the non-alcoholic industry has been incredible. We've gone from a couple of products to some of the best non-alcoholic drinks in the world coming out of Australia.
Opening Australia's first non-alcoholic bar has given us a great insight into what non-drinkers and moderators are looking for. We use this insight as we look at new brands to stock in the bar, bottle shop and online [in our web store].
As we're all about community, we have been focused on organic social growth and drawing people to us naturally over time. We've done very little paid digital advertising, with our success to date being a 95% PR led approach. Customer experience, our quality products and community focus has been our reason for success to date.
Learn more about how to create a social media strategy.
When business planning, keep customers in the forefront of your mind to make sure you’re catering to their needs.
This article does not necessarily reflect the views of Telstra or its staff.
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