Didsbury Gin has teamed up with JD Wetherspoon to stock its flavoured gin in their venues across the UK.
JD Wetherspoon’s buying team chose Didsbury Gin’s Raspberry and Elderflower drink to become their newest premium flavoured gin to be sold at 775 of their venues.
The team at Didsbury Gin were originally approached by Wetherspoons to take part in their gin festival, which is currently running at selected sites across Britain.
They were tasked with sourcing the gin for the 18 day event, blind tasted one hundred gins to be included in their gin festival, with ten brands being invited in to pitch for just five spaces at the festival.
On pitching for their space at the festival, Didsbury Gin walked away with a deal to become Wetherspoon's newest premium flavoured gin.
The deal comes soon after the start-up’s appearance on hit BBC Two show Dragons’ Den.
Aired this January, after a bumper year making gin, Mark Smallwood from Middlesbrough and Liam Manton from Manchester bagged themselves three minutes to pitch their plans for world domination to the BBC show’s five resident multi-millionaires in a bid to convince them to invest their own cash in the craft gin company.
After some initial banter between the multi-millionaires, Liam and Mark hooked in offers from both Jenny Campbell and Tej Lalvani.
With the promise of help scaling up the business and reducing costs so they could increase production of the gin, enabling them to offer the right price point to take their product to the bigger retailers and restaurant and bar chains, Liam and Mark took Jenny’s offer of £75,000 for 33.3 per cent of their business.
Since the show was recorded in April 2018 Jenny has already guided Liam and Mark through a rebrand, an upscale of the business as well as legal and financial advice, and they are now in the process of announcing a number of listings with some of the UK’s biggest bar groups, which they have been working to secure since the show was recorded.
Co-founder Liam said; “To be asked to pitch for an initial one month listing, and come away with a national menu listing is testament to the quality of our gins.
“It’s great to see Wetherspoons championing new young British businesses and showing the same belief and passion for our products as we do, this will be a great partnership. They have been very supportive throughout the procurement process and we are thrilled to be working with them on such a large scale”
Mark added: “It is great to see the Didsbury Gin brand growing nationally with the trade partnerships we have put in place. JD Wetherspoons Pubs is such a huge household name, it is a great win for us to be included on their menus.
“We have been working hard behind the scenes since the show was recorded last April to put some great deals into place.”
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