Franklin & Sons talks ‘big shift’ in tonic and mixers
We caught up with Franklin & Sons to find out how the British mixer brand is leveraging the low-and-no trend to its advantage.
While Franklin & Sons’ is integral to many gin and tonics – both at home and at the bar – the brand is also sustaining itself as a serve of its own, or within a non-alcoholic cocktail, buoyed by the growing influence of the low- and no-alcohol sector.
Speaking to The Spirits Business on the brand’s lessening reliance as a spirits mixer, Peter Thornton, senior brand manager, feels there’s been a “big shift” for the mixer category.
Previously tonics were mostly used as a vehicle to lengthen cocktails, whereas now they can just as easily be the ingredients for cocktails that don’t have to be alcoholic.
Thornton explained: “That’s the thing for us, where we’re steering massively away from the term ‘mocktail’. I’m not a big fan of it. I haven’t been for a lot of years. Why can’t it be a cocktail? It’s still a cocktail, but it’s just got no alcohol in it – a cocktail is a cocktail.
“When we’re doing menus and similar things for people now, we just incorporate alcohol-free drinks into the normal menu, so we’re not doing a separate section, to make it more normalised.”
On how this works to Franklin & Sons’ favour, he noted: “One of the things that we’re very pleased with is the range that we’ve got, if you play within that, and the flavours we produce, you can actually create non-alcoholic cocktails and different flavour combinations by just mixing our own products by themselves.
“Of course, fruit juices and things like that, absolutely knock yourself out. But with our spread of sodas, lemonade, tonics and all the flavours, we’re really lucky we can work as proper good-quality standalone drinks, in that you add some Mandarin & Ginger Soda to a raspberry lemonade, and all of a sudden you get a slightly drier, fruitier and quite a bit more zesty sparkling non-alc drink, you know?
“We’re really pleased with how our range can literally just play amongst itself and we do encourage that within accounts.”
Thornton adds that the brand is currently working on projects with groups and hotel chains to push this avenue further.
“How successful this will be volume-wise is yet to be seen because we haven’t launched it yet, but it’s certainly of big interest to the national groups we’ve talked with.”
Leading flavour trends
Thornton also suggests the dynamic between spirits and mixers/tonics has also changed to an extent.
“We’re at a point where the time, depth and energy that people are putting into their non-alcoholics is as much as spirit brands used to do with new flavours of spirits; be it vodka, gins, Tequila. You know, they [non alc] are following, if not leading, flavour trends.
“Before, you would just wait for pineapple Tequila, or whatever it might have been, right? Then obviously, all of a sudden, like 50,000 new pineapple Tequila brands or coffee Tequila would pop-up, whereas now a lot of soft drink producers are coming up with the weird and wonderful – and spirits brands are creating profiles to go with their flavours.
Thornton says he believes this shift stems from the gin boom.
“Obviously the flavours of gins and colours of gins and all the rest of it exploded. Then lockdown hit, so consumers had more time on their hands, and they had that time to research, to educate themselves, to become more adventurous.
“I strongly believe that those two things have had a massive impact on, you know, Joe Public, if you like, the consumer, allowing themselves to be educated and therefore be more adventurous, which is not at all a bad thing.
“In fact, it’s brilliant, because now – be it at home or in a venue – you see more creativity in menu creation, the cocktails themselves and even the garnishes.”
For Franklin & Sons, the aim is to continue looking at trends and the new, wonderful and interesting flavour profiles.
“Some work, some don’t, some last, some won’t – that’s the whole point, not necessarily being disruptive as such, but certainly being creative,” Thornton added.
“It’s a big part of what we do and what we’ve been doing for a lot of years. The last big one that sort of raised eyebrows, as it were, when we launched Rosemary & Black Olive. And also Pineapple & Almond.
“These are flavours that you don’t necessarily associate with drinks, let alone mixers and tonics. We’re always looking for new flavours and new ideas, and not necessarily from fruits and the usual places.”
Last week, the brand released an apple and pear-flavoured soft drink, which tapped into growing nostalgia for orchard fruits.
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